I was browsing through some articles on cnet.com and I found a very interesting one titled " Korean Housemaid Robot does Laundry". According to the article, The South Koreans have developed a robot that they call "Mahru-Z" and this robot can do laundry. Mahru-Z is 4 feet tall, weighs 120 pounds, has arms, legs, a rotating head, and can see objects in three dimensions. The engineers who designed the robot say that it is capable of picking up a dirty shirt with its hands, throwing it in the washer, and pushing the correct buttons of the washing machine with its six fingers. Sounds like the perfect gift for a college student.
And if that wasn't enough , Mahru-Z also has a maid robot named Mahru-M that can assist in doing the laundry. Mahru-M, however, is an earlier version and moves on wheels instead of legs. Theses wheels can serve as an advantage though since it results in increased mobility. Mahru-M can deliver clean clothes to the owner while Mahru- Z does the laundry. The designers of Mahru-Z say that it is, for now, the most advanced robot in terms of mimicking human movement.
It seems that we are getting closer and closer to the point when robots can perform almost all of our daily tasks. Albeit, none of these robots are practical for home use but they will eventually get there and that can be scary to think about.
If you want to check out the article, here's the link:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10438089-1.html?tag=mncol;title
That sounds like it would be creepy, having robots wandering around doing housework. With all the movies like iRobot, and Wall-E, it seems like the media is predicting a time when robots really do take over all tasks that we deem insufficient of human attention.
ReplyDeleteI think it is unbelievable to consider the idea of developing housemaid robots for help with everyday tasks. Although the idea of robots is not a new one it is astonishing to think that that they could exist within my lifetime. Although currently we have technology just as impressive as robots, a robot seems superior to anything we have already created. Sometimes I try to tell myself that we could never have robots living in our houses doing our daily tasks, however I remind myself of all the robots that exist in hospitals today which help perform surgery daily. When you think about it, these robots are just as impressive if not more impressive than a housemaid robot. This is what insures my belief that we will in fact have housemaid robots within my life.
ReplyDeleteHow much technology are we going to create before we can start considering ourselves lazy. I mean laundry, common. This is a great invention but defines "Lifestyle of the rich and the famous". I know at my house this would never get bought, even if it was affordable. Simple tasks like doing the laundry, sweeping, and making dinner build responsibility. They even make those sweepers that sweep an entire room and do it all by themselves now. So, instead of getting up and walking around and pushing a vacuum, you can now sit on the coach with your half gallon of moose tracks ice cream and watch Oprah. Obesity problems didn't turn up as much in the olden days because people worked. I'm not blaming obesity on technology, but take a second to think. How many physical tasks have technology eliminated for you today?
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