I love robots. Big, small, huge and fighting, or tiny and sneaky. I've always loved robots. The recent Transformers series of movies have highlighted robots in a big way, and I think it's all great. Also,
Pacific Rim showed us huge robots fighting giant monsters! With the
Avengers and now Avengers 2 we have Iron Man and an evil robot (Ultron). I'm smiling ear to ear about it all. I can't wait to see miniaturized robots flying around--perhaps a remake of
Fantastic Voyage.
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| Iron Man, the villain Ultron, and Captain America |
Today's robots mostly build stuff--assembly line robots, or automated cutters, or 3D printers--and they destroy things--demolition, military robots--and they explore distant worlds. Of course there are also medical robots, but they are mostly directed tools used by human operators. I think we are quickly arriving at the point where robots will do quite a lot in regular life. I doubt we'll ever have fully autonomous robots (able to think and learn for their own), mainly because life is simply too complex for a programmed mind to handle. Now, if we could create artificial intelligence on the scale of what we see in movies it would be possible, but I have my doubts. Anyway, scientists will continue pushing toward that point until time comes to an end.
What makes robots fun is how they can be human and yet not. As an example, think about Data from the Star Trek series. It's a common story tradition--using something not quite human to express human concerns, issues, and troubles--and robots are perfect for the job. The great thing is we aren't even all that worried when a robot is destroyed, because we can rebuild them! Great stuff. One of my favorite movies is
The Iron Giant, which lets that happen in fact. It is my wish that robots see a long life of use in reality and stories.
- M
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