You’ve probably seen Honda’s well-known Asimo bipedal robot in action before but Dexter is a new one to me and boy, is he impressive. Whereas Asimo has been known to fall over, Dexter has been designed to approach the whole walking thing from a different, more stable angle.
Asimo is pre-programmed and the surface must be flat but Dexter balances dynamically – like us – which makes the walking movement freakily like our own. It’s taken six years for Trevor Blackwell at Anybots to figure out how to create a robot that can simulate just how we walk and balance. Even better, Dexter gets better with practice and within a week was walking without his rollcage.
To show the dynamic balancing in action, just watch this hilarious, yet common, pub conflict scene reenacted by a couple of pushy robots. “Hey you, c’mere!” Bill Hicks would laugh his ass off.-Martin Lynch
According to boffins at the LIFT 07 conference on technology in society, we could be becoming swamped by our little friends and losing the ability to make clear decisions. Phew, what a relief, I thought it was the alcohol.
Many experts think that the communications overload by being always contactable is impairing our ability to split our work lives from our social and personal lives. On the flip side, others said that the proliferation of gadgets and tech have allowed us to boost of cognitive abilities. According to Professor Fred Mast, of the University of Lausanne, in an interview with the BBC:
"I think that we can become overloaded. It depends on the situation, but I think we are underestimating the brain's capacity to adapt to new challenges. Studies have been done showing that people can actually enhance their cognitive abilities, which helps them to process more information at the same time. And their performance even transfers to other tasks.”
Watch a video interview on “Addicted to Technology” here. Now, back to fuelling my addiction. -Martin Lynch
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
Contributor | Tamlin Magee
