Things I Want

You can add to the list a solar-powered hybrid robotic lawn mower. How cool is this? Apparently it's in the neighborhood of $3,000 worth of cool... and damn, not sure that's going to fly right now, but I have to tell you... it sure is tempting. The funny part is that I actually enjoy mowing the lawn, we just happen to have a broken lawn mower right now and a heckuva lot of grass to tend to, so we're without a great solution, and then comes along the internet to tempt me with robotic solutions.

Will your job be outsourced to Dr. Roboto?

Yahoo News reported yesterday that scientists have created robot scientists, capable of reasoning about scientific data and drawing conclusions, planning subsequent experiments, etc.

At Aberystwyth University in Wales, Ross King and colleagues have created a robot called Adam that can not only carry out experiments on yeast metabolism but also reason about the results and plan the next experiment.

It is the world's first example of a machine that has made an independent scientific discovery -- in this case, new facts about the genetic make-up of baker's yeast.

"On its own it can think of hypotheses and then do the experiments, and we've checked that it's got the results correct," King said in an interview.

Watchout! It's only a matter of time until they advance so that the robot scientists are made of liquid metal and can shift into any shape or form they like, then we're all doomed!!!