So what does it do? «In the future,» we read in a press release courtesy of Science Daily, «robots must be able to solve tasks in deep mines on distant planets, in radioactive disaster areas, in hazardous landslip areas and on the sea bed beneath the Antarctic»—as well as in the cracks of otherwise inaccessible archaeological sites. Kyrre Glette, one of the researchers behind the press release, imagines a robot being sent into «the wreckage of a nuclear power plant,» for example, where it encounters a stairway it had not been anticipating needing to climb. The arms of one of the robots is fitted with a printer. Goldberg Robotics
[Image: From Science Daily/University of Oslo]. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see this specifically discussed in terms of navigating spatial environments, be they mines, caves, or architecture, explored and mapped by an instant machine-ancestry self-produced specifically for the task at hand. This produces a new robot, or a new part for the existing robot, which enables it to negotiate the stairs.»
The original robot—which was thus not single but a crowd waiting to happen—moves forward through the landscape by sending detached variations of itself further ahead. «The robot takes a picture. Posted Friday, November 14, 2014 • comment(s) Robots emitting robots emitting robots: this is one way that machines will learn to navigate extreme spatial environments. For the moment, it’s stuck.
