Robot Living

A new book by Daniel H Wilson called Robopocolypse is due out this summer. You may remember Daniel from some of his other books, How To Survive A Robot Uprising or How To Build A Robot Army.  Stephen Spielberg somehow got an early draft of the book and has already optioned it for a movie due out in 2013.

Robopocolypse is about , you guessed it, a robot uprising.  Daniel describes the book like this:

With “Robopocalypse,” I intentionally went with something that you can convey easily. It’s a robot uprising in which technology turns on humankind and tries to kill us. From there, I tried to introduce complex themes and be thoughtful and punch the reader in the gut with the actual story and my characters.

Check out the complete interview over at Collector’s Weekly, where Daniel talks about Carnegie Mellon, robots and how he got into writing.

You can pre-order the book at Amazon.

Link via (Collector’s Weekly)

Tags: book, movie, robopocolypse, stephen spielberg

In a match similar to that of when Deep Blue played Garry Kasparov in a famous chess match, another robot will play on the quiz show Jeopardy this coming February.

The robot created by IBM is called Watson and will play against two previous winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

The winner will claim a $1 million prize.  If IBM wins it will donate they money to charity and Ken and Brad will donate half of their winnings to charity if they win.

Tune in to Jeopardy on February 14 – 16 2011 to watch the matches.

Shown here is a picture of Deep Blue from Wikipedia.

Link via (Fox News)

Update 2/17/11 and the winner is……..Watson, but not without a few wrong answers

Washington Post

Tags: Jeopardy, Ken Jennings, robot, Watson

Rubot II, the Rubix Cube solving robot, set a new world record this past weekend.

Rubot II was built by Peter Redmond of Mechatrons, based in Dublin Ireland.

Rubot II was at the The Maker Faire , held for the first time  in the Queens area of New York at the New York Hall of Science.

First The Rubix Cube was looked at by an official, and then was given 50 random turns by an audience member.  Then Peter put the cube in Rubot II’s hands.

As soon as Peter released his hand the clock was off and counting.  The time was displayed on Rubot II’s chest.  After a few seconds, Rubot II paused, and I thought something was wrong, but he was just in deep concentration.  Then his hands began to fly and soon the Rubix  Cube was solved in only 37.5 seconds!  A new official world record!

Way to go Rubot II!

Click through for the video of the record setting event.

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Tags: maker faire, Rubix Cube

via (Make)

Tags: drummer, music

While the real word cup continues, the International Humanoid Robot Olympic Games is now over. Besting out teams from the United States and South Korea, China has won the International Humanoid Robot Olympic Gamesthat was held recently in Harbin, China.

Link via (Shanghaiist)

Tags: China, robots, world cup