robots

Twitter user _danilo uses an example from Star Trek to explain some of the dangers of having an industry that lacks face-to-face interaction with its own workers. It's scary enough to imagine your job being done by a cold, calculating robot, but what if your boss's job was done by a cold, calculating robot? For something with more Star Trek fun and less technocratic dread, here's an awesome Tumblr post on how hard humans go in Star Trek.

It's happy hour somewhere, right?

5 amazing types of robots who can, play catch, work in space, act in terrible plays, throw bricks at people, and just generally be creepy. Looks like the singularity isn't too far off.

The word 'robot' generally has negative connotations attached to it, but MIT's mini cheetah robots are absolutely adorable. MITBiomimetic Robotics students recently took the dog-sized robots out for a play on the university lawn, and the result was way cuter than we expected. The robots aren't designed to just be cute and play soccer - they were built with the purpose to save lives with elderly care, deliveries and emergency response. 

The mini cheetahs can run up to 5 miles per hour, flip themselves over if fallen, and they're relatively cheap to make and repair. Controlled with remotes, the agility of these robots has not been seen in robotics before. The next hurdle for the team is to build cameras onto the robots, enabling them to walk around without being remotely controlled by humans. But for now, they're delighful to watch. 

Even though we're just at the tip of the iceberg of technological advancements, it seems like every second person is creating a robot of some sort. There are robots that deliver things to your house; robots that can perform heart surgery; and now, there's a sea urchin robot. Sure, I can understand why someone might want to create a robot to do a tedious task or perform it more precisely than humans can. But a sea urchin inspired robot... why? Well, I guess the answer is, why not? 

Well well, would you look at that? What a time to be alive huh? Honestly, surprised it took this long for headlines involving sex robot brothels to jump across our news feeds, but here we are. The Spanish company (sex robot brothel) in question, LumiDolls was recently quoted saying they're eagerly trying to expand their operations over to the UK soon as they can lock down an investor. The spokesperson for LumiDoll went on to say, "With LumiDolls, customers can perform any of their sexual fantasies they do not dare to do with a woman. This allows them to fulfill their wildest fantasies that maybe with other people they can not, maybe they have some physical complex that does not allow them to be comfortable with a person, and with a doll it makes them much easier.

As you might know, NASA's Curiosity Rover, a car-sized robot that snaps super cute selfies, has been roaming around Mars for seven years. It's purpose is to find life on the Red Planet, but in the meantime it's been taking chemical samples of the earth (is that what we call it?) on Mars and sending us back some cool photos. In the most recent installment of Mars photography, Curiosity took some black and white photos that are desolate, lonely and a little creepy. But what else could we expect from a planet that is devoid of any life (until we find it)? Check out Curiosity's latest photos below. 

Contrary to what science fiction predicted robotics in 2019 would be like, robots are nowhere near being autonomous yet (although they are able to do some pretty cool things). It's taken researchers a long time to get robots to be able to walk like humans - so getting them to respond to different environments with fast reflexes is even further away than our hopeful ancestors imagined. But these researchers are looking at things in a different way, and a robot that can walk and balance like a human may be closer than we thought it was. 

As if the Star Wars sequels weren't meme'd enough already, we've got yet another one for you that we're really digging at the moment. This trending meme, known as "Congratulations! You Are Being Rescued," is a jab at the evil art of gaslighting. Some of these satirical scenarios throw some major shade!

The US Air Force's X-37B 'spaceplane' has just landed after a covert 780 days of orbiting the Earth. Little information about this spacecraft has been revealed, but here's what we do know. 

NASA's Curiosity Rover, which has been hanging out on Mars for the past seven years, has just taken an adorable, out of this world (ha ha) selfie. We think it's the best selfie a robot has taken yet.  

A restaurant in San Francisco has changed the face of fast food: instead of employing cooks to flip burgers, they invented a robot. It slices the vegetables, grates the cheese, grills the meat and arranges your burger for you before your eyes. The future of fast food is here, and it looks tasty as heck. 

With the advancement of technology comes an increase in convenience, and this Japanese airline is promising to abolish one of the biggest inconveniences there are: travelling. For healthy, young people, sitting on an airplane for 10 hours is a slightly cramped adventure, but for people with illnesses, disabilities, or other circumstances that make travelling difficult, 10 hours on an airplane can be harrowing. Enter the Newme: a robot that can does the travelling for you. 

Most of the time, life doesn't go as smoothly as we want it to. Life has nasty little surprises around the corner. But there are some things that will always work like clockwork: machines. There are no nasty surprises with machines. No getting caught in the rain without an umbrella. No parking fines on your windscreen. No dropping your toast on the floor face down. None of that. Mechanical things are dependable. Predictable. So here are ten mechanical GIFs of things working that will satisfy your innate desire for order. 

AI seems to be moving forward in leaps and bounds these days (sometimes literally). In the latest advancement of robotics, OpenAI has just released footage of Dactyl, it's AI powered robot (which has just one humanoid hand) solving a Rubik's cube. It's not about the speed, but rather the dexterity required to solve a Rubik's cube one-handed (heck, even solving a Rubik's cube with both hands is difficult for me). The most impressive thing is that the robot learnt to solve it all by itself. 

It might sound like a miracle, but it's actually technology: a man who was paralyzed four years ago was able to walk for the first time since then, with the help of an exoskeleton that can read his mind.