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"The best fuzzy rules, the best knowledge, deal with the turning points of the system. If a race-car driver teaches you how to drive, you don't need him to show you how to drive on the straightaway. It's how he handles the curves that matters."
- Bart Kosko
 |
| Serving Robot | ||
| A non-humanoid robot designed to serve. |
| As they sat down, he aimed his ultraviolet light-pencil at a serving robot. Unlike Mardukan robots, which looked like surrealist conceptions of Pre-Atomic armored knights, it was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor on its own contragravity; as it approached, its top opened like a bursting beetle shell and hinged trays of food swung out. The boy looked at it in fascination.
"Is that a Sword-World robot, sir, or did you capture it somewhere?" "It's one of our own." He was pardonably proud; it had been built on Tanith a year before. "Has an ultrasonic dishwasher underneath, and it does some cooking on top, at the back." |
| Technovelgy from Space Viking,
by H. Beam Piper. Published by Analog in 1962 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the usuform robots from Anthony Boucher's story Q.U.R..
Thanks to Winchell Chung (aka @nyrath) for the tip.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Space Viking
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and Technology by H. Beam Piper
Tech news articles related to Space Viking
Tech news articles related to works by H. Beam Piper
Serving Robot-related
news articles:
- The First 'Drone Cafe' Started By Dutch Students
- Flying Robot Waiters From Infinium Robotics
- 7-Eleven Drone Delivers Chix Sandwich And Slurpee
| No Tips! Robotic Food Delivery In Phoenix |
| Micro-Robots Are Smallest, Fully Functional |
| DIY Robotic Hand Made After Loss Of Fingers |
| Robot Snakes No Longer Stopped By Stairs |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
