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"You have to budget the number of fuzzy rules you use to control a system. It turns out, you can state the optimality principle in three words: 'patch the bumps.'"
- Bart Kosko
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| Floating Robot | ||
| A robot that floats in mid-air. |
| There was something before him in the darkness — something hanging in mid-air in that Stygian gloom! The hair prickled erect on his scalp and his spine crawled. For there, before his aching eyes, a glow came up; a brilliant crimson glow, shot with silver flashes of incandescence. And its light revealed the most fantastic being Marshall had ever seen in any nightmare.
 ('The Floating Robot' by David Wright O'Brien) It was a nameless thing of gleaming red metal, perhaps five feet in height. It had a formless head, with odd projections that might have been eyes, but there were no eyes in them. It had metallic arms, terminating in almost human hands. It had no legs, but a round bottom almost ludicrously like an untippable salt cellar, ringed by a band of what seemed to be radioactive gold. And it floated effortlessly perhaps a foot above the floor... "I am Yolan," repeated the monster, rather querulously. "What is this world? Why have I been trapped in this dark place? I am Yolan. I am Yolan." |
| Technovelgy from The Floating Robot,
by David Wright O'Brien. Published by Fantastic Adventures in 1941 Additional resources -
|
Fans of Star Trek: The Original Series might recognize this robot:
Here's the cover for Fantastic Adventures for January, 1941.
('The Floating Robot' by David Wright O'Brien)
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'Bill blinked at his own face under the plumed helmet...'
'...a robot detector circuit closed, activating a bell."
'Alex did not find it surprising that people... were electronically minting their own cash.'
'I had determined that my first attempt should be a visit to Mars.'
To follow the user like a pet while carrying their cargo!
'Deveet unhooked his catch and laid it on the bank beside him. It was a metal fish.'
'...waldoes in the screen followed in exact, simultaneous parallelism.'
'Seen close it was not completely flexible, but made instead of pivoted and smoothly finished segments.'
