The Robot Invasion Analysis

In the article “The Robot Invasion” by Charlie Gillis discusses the development of robots and robot design and also our possible future with them.

The author starts the excerpt with a comparison to NASA’s Ames Research Center to spilling lunch on your backyard patio (487). The result of this is a “brigade of ants” that appear and become one synchronized machine as they move food. Charlie then goes over how scientists have failed at mimicking nature. This statement relates to all subjects in science as well as robotics. He then uses examples as well as pose questions. “Four months ago, a Canadian computer science professor named Andrew Vardy posted footage on YouTube of toy-sized robots he’d modified to sort plastic pucks randomly placed on

The author asks “If scientists can pack so much utility into such a compact package, how long before the larger, android-style robots as envisioned by George Lucas debut in our factories and offices?”(489) this is a valid question, as it gives the reader a new perspective to think about. Because of the high costs of a humanoid design that frontier of robotics has not been explored, thus more “military-funded experimental programs, or corporate giants like Honda, which developed a droid-style robot prototype named Asimo as a stunt to promote its car brand.”(489) Next, Charlie talks about Baxter, “the first commercially available humanoid robot meant for industrial use.”(490) He uses emotionally charged and biased language by the last few paragraphs of the excerpt. “Yet friendly as Roomba seems, robots retain their capacity to stoke our most atavistic fears. For every friendly android like C-3PO, after all, pop culture can offer a platoon of marauding killer-bots whose impassive efficiency raises the neck hair (The Terminator). Or some dystopian world of people dehumanized by the machines around them (Wall-E).”(490) another example is when he talks about Akira Mita’s idea. “A Japanese engineer named Akira Mita has proposed buildings in which swarm robots follow the occupants from room to room, adjusting temperature, humidity, lighting and music according to the person’s mood. That might not be everyone’s ideal of