Robot servants in sight!

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

In the field of technology prediction, “twenty years” is a strange Neverland. How many times have you heard an expert confidently predict a brilliant new technology will arrive in about twenty years? And how many times has any two-decades-away tech ever actually materialised?

Fortunately, the cynicism in my tone won’t stop researchers trying to develop brilliant things that will change our lives but are forever just about twenty years over the horizon.

One of those things is the good old domestic robot. An impressive stand at the Future Parc hall here at CeBit in Germany – a hall dedicated to research projects and the like – is showing off some of the state-of-the-art robotics happening in academia.
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Five reasons why Ballmer-Bot would be better than Ballmer

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Bill Gates yesterday took to the stage with Ballmer-Bot – an endearing, egg-chucking robot with the head of Steve Ballmer.

Here’s five reasons why it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give the robot Ballmer’s job permanently:

1. It wouldn’t sweat like a pig with a faulty thermostat when bounding round the stage yelling “developers, developers, developers.”
2. Robots run on logic – there’s no chance of it spunking away $47 billion on Yahoo.
3. It might catch on. Imagine Johnny Five running Google, and R2-D2 taking over at Apple. Press conferences would be awesome.
4. Robots get things done on time. Windows 7 would definitely arrive as promised in 2009.
5. Outbound attacks on the likes of Linux, Apple and Sun would be blocked by Ballmer-Bot’s built-in Windows Security Center. Then again, perhaps not…