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"What I have in my stories is ethics. Ethics and morality are very different cups of tea. I adhere to a very strict rigor of personal ethics and I demand it of those around me as well."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| 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... 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. |
| From The Door Into Summer,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Unknown in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the household robot from Ely's Automatic Housemaid, by Elizabeth Bellamy published in 1899.
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
- Toyota Delivery Robot Home Helper
- 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
| Maintain Your Megastructure |
| Humanoid Robot's Muscles Biomimic Ours |
| Animatronic Robotic Baby Exposed |
| China Deploys Robot Traffic Police |
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As far as the future is concerned 'they're the only experts we have'.
'The walls and ceiling bore an irregular spacing of illuminum tiles...'
'The planes flew continuously, twenty-four hours a day...'
'It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.'
'...a single perfectly level platform, which rose so high above the water that it was not splashed by the waves.'
'Is an extra-factual memory that convincing?' Quail asked.
