If none of the experts will heed my warnings and we're going to continue messing around with robotics, I want guys like Arthur Wait designing them. Engineer and amateur chef Wait recently won Grand Prize at Microsoft's Robotics @ Home Competition with his SmartTripod design, which provides a handy way to record demos, tutorials and Instructable-type videos without a cameraman.
I'm a fan of Wait's robot because it's designed to be subservient, and unlike those maniacs at the Ishikawa Oku Lab he has not chosen to give it lightning-fast reflexes to make it athletically superior to humans. Also, it seems like it would be pretty easy to knock over in case it went rogue. And it's clearly useful. Have a look:
I wish every aspiring roboticist would follow Wait's example. The tenets are easy to memorize: 1) The robot must be useful, and 2) We must be able to easily defeat the robot in hand-to-hand combat.
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