So obviously I’m interested in this partly because it’s made out of Lego and has machine guns that fire metal balls etc:
I mean who wouldn’t be?
The main reason I’m interested though is that it’s has First-Personalisation Capabilities… ie: you can see through its eyes.
This is something that Cati Vaucelle did as a research project at MIT Media Laboratory / Tangible Media Group.An idea that has huge potential I think… I can see us getting to a stage where our robotics become good enough that a lot of people spend more time embodying a robot than being in their own skin, so to speak. Imagine a surgeon’s rig… instead of being next to a patient she operates through a machine – with 6 arms and microscope eyes.
She can perform keyhole surgery where she sees from the POV of a micro bot (also with 6 arms and microscope eyes) right inside someone’s body.
Meantime, she’s sitting in her living room, 12,000 miles away and later that day she’ll perform 3 more operations, all on different continents.
This could go in a million different directions. It’s one of the most exciting technologies that hasn’t quite happened yet that there is I think. Want to be a bird? Want to be a plane? Want to go on a safari hunting spiders 10 times bigger than you?
Meantime… it’s toys and weapons though. Until robotics technology catches up.
[…] so when I went on about doctors using remote robot exoskeletons for surgery… well obviously someone’s already doing […]