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"I think a lot of kids whose mental growth outruns their maturity gravitate to science fiction."
- Dan Simmons
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| Flexible Frank | ||
| An all-purpose household robot. |
| Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer, it offended me.
For the problem to be within the scope of one engineer, almost all of Flexible Frank had to be standard parts and must not involve any new principles...
 ('Door into Summer' by Robert Heinlein) Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? Answer: any work a human being does around a house. He didn't have to play cards, make love, eat or sleep, but he did have to clean up after the card game, cook, make beds, and tend babies - at least he had to keep track of a baby's breathing and call someone if it changes. |
| Technovelgy from The Door Into Summer,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the household robot from Ely's Automatic Housemaid, by Elizabeth Bellamy published in 1899.
Thanks to @SMOF_ for the great cover graphic.
Thanks to Pete for suggesting this item.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Door Into Summer
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to The Door Into Summer
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Flexible Frank-related
news articles:
- Twendy-One Robot Is Your Humanoid Helper
- REEM-B Robot Autonomous Helper Video
- Care-O-Bot Robot Does Chores One-Handed
- Basil Reification Robot
- ATLAS Robot Now Does Housework!
- Elon Musk et. al. OpenAI Household Robot
- Housekeeping Robots Easy To Imagine, Tough To Make
- VirtualHome: Teaching Robots To Do Chores Around The House
- Dyson's Secret Household Robots
- Unitree H1 General-Purpose Humanoid Robot
| 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.'
