SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Robots: Nothing to Lose But Their Chains
from the Economist
Titan is a bit of a hulk. It can lift a BMW into the air with just one arm, swing it around and then set it down again in exactly the same spot with barely a quiver. Moving cars is a piece of cake for the world's strongest robot. ...
... At just 1.4 metres in height, Partner Robot is a wimp - but its talent is versatility, not strength. Made by Toyota, Partner Robot is humanoid. Rather than being bolted to the floor like Titan, it can walk on two articulated legs.
... As different as these two machines are, they share a common ancestor: the industrial robot. The first factory robots appeared in the 1960s. They could do only simple, monotonous and mundane things, like moving objects from one production line to another - they were drudges, like the slaves Karel Capek described in 1920 in the play that coined the term from the Czech word robota, or "forced labour."
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