Robotics - The Future

This honmework asks you to explore robotics using Web-based resources. Type your answers to the questions using a word processor and hand in your answers in class on Tuesday, March 18.

  1. For each of the following websites look at description, pictures and videos (if available). Write a couple of sentences that describe what sorts of aspects of robotics seem important to the developers and what surprises you most about what you see. For nearly every robot/company there are some excellent videos available on YouTube, you are encouraged to look at some of them.
    1. Hanson Robotics
    2. Honda Asimo In addition to the other questions, what are two capabilities of the Asimo?
    3. Cogniron project
    4. DARPA Grand Challenge
  2. Using Web search engines find an article on each of the following. Include the URL of the article in your answer. Read enough of the article to understand what is described. The articles may be from the popular press or magazines. If you use Wikipedia you must also use another source. Make sure to give the URLs for both sources in this case.
    1. Robots in nursing homes
    2. Robot pets
    3. Robots in surgery
    4. Robots in the military
  3. How feasible do you think it will be to have robots that can take care of the elderly? Explain your answer.
  4. A recently published book by David Levy is entitled, "Love and Sex with Robots". Do you think that people could actually fall in love with robots in the future. Why or why not?
  5. Find a robot on the Web that interests you that has not already been mentioned or looked at for the previous quesetions. Provide a link to at least one website that describes this robot that is NOT Wikipedia. Write a paragraph about the robot and some of its capabilities.