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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
 |
| 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
| Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along |
| Robot Guard Dog On Duty |
| Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles |
| Dancing Robots Taught Dance Moves |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
