[Tyler]

Robots One of Six Disruptive Technologies
     

A Computerworld
article notes robots as one of six disruptive
technologies that intelligence officials will warn the next
president about. Their upcoming report is expected to be similar to the
disruptive
civil technologies report issued by National Intelligence Council in
April. Among the major points are that most of the building blocks
needed for robots are in place now including sensors, actuators, and
power systems. Software is reaching the point where autonomous vehicular
applications are possible. They note the near term possibilities of
soldiers augmented by robotic exoskeletons, the possibility that
terrorists will make use of robots designed for commercial civil jobs,
and the longer term possibility for social disruption as robots begin to
work side-by-side with humans in jobs like elder-care. More details can
be found in the report's Service
Robot appendix (PDF format). The appendix notes that Japan currently
leads in robot technology with the US in second place, and the EU in
third. There are also specific predictions that are a bit amusing like
"2011 - WowWee releases Robosapien v10, a toy robot that can
recognize and fetch items belonging to the user from around the home".
   

http://robots.net/article/2640.html
     

[Dante]

Thank you, Tyler

I wonder if, when we're all in our twilight years, we start saying 'thank you' to bots, and they understand why we said it....we know children nowadays treat robots as though they were equals...

[Freddy]

Interesting, this report covers a lot of the same ground as we have discussed here on this forum in the past three years or so.  I tend to say thank-you to chat bots already, maybe I got brought up well