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"I was driving a dynamite truck when I was 14 years old in North Carolina."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Robot Mice | ||
| Tiny cleaning robots. |
This item comes from a short story that is a Cold War classic, and well worth reading.
| Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean. |
| Technovelgy from The Martian Chronicles,
by Ray Bradbury. Published by Various in 1950 Additional resources -
|
And for larger items, the 'copper scrap rats' would come and seize the offending matter with their miniature jaws.
Although the iRobot Roomba is perhaps more famous, the world's first automatic vacuum cleaner is the Electrolux Trilobite, presented to the public on the BBC in 1997.
This item comes from the story There Will Come Soft Rains, published in 1950.
(Wally Woods' cartoon version)
Robot mouse fans might also be interested in the Greg Bear's dustmice, tiny robotic detectives from his 1990 novel Queen of Angels. As far as I know, the first example of this kind of technovelgy are the golden shuttles from a 1941 story by Eric Frank Russell (writing under a pseudonym).
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Martian Chronicles
More Ideas
and Technology by Ray Bradbury
Tech news articles related to The Martian Chronicles
Tech news articles related to works by Ray Bradbury
Robot Mice-related
news articles:
- Electrolux Trilobite: Programmable Robot Vacuum Cleaner
- AMouse: Bradbury's Robot Mice Get Real Whiskers
- BIOTACT Whiskered Robot Rat
- Fukitorimushi Floor-Cleaning Robot - An Inchworm Dust Mop
- SCRATCHbot Robot Rat Whiskers Video
- Mini Robot Swarms
- Kilobot Robot Swarm
- Shrewbot Uses Whiskers As Sensors
- OMG! DIY Arduino Robot Vacuum Cleaner Like Bradbury's Mice
- Autonomous Robots Navigate Like Rats
- Vero Robotic Dog With Vacuum Cleaner Feet
| It's A Giant Robot! You Reporters Have Been Warned! |
| Tactile Skin Supplier Map |
| Robot Bees 3D Printed By Festo |
| DIY Robot Scorpion Crushes It |
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'Our planes are going to start bringing in bales of discarded plastics...'
'... completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gaut...'
'So, Ender, we will now begin your education.'
'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
