Page 33 - Robots Androids and Animatrons : 12 Incredible Projects You Can Build

Battlebots
http://www.battlebots.com/
Robotica
http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/robotica/
robotica.html
MicroBot Wars http://microbw.hypermart.net/
Civilian uses for robotic drones
Robotic drones and lighter-than-air aircraft (blimps) developed by
the military could be put to civilian use monitoring high-crime
neighborhoods and traffic conditions. Because the aircraft do not
have any human occupants, they can be made much smaller. I feel
robotic blimps will be used more often than robotic aircraft because
they will be safer to operate. Aircraft need to be moving in order to
maintain lift. An out-of-control drone aircraft can become lethal if it
flies into anything. Blimps, on the other hand, are safer because
they travel slower and float gracefully through the air. If surveillance
aircraft become reliable enough, they could also be used to monitor
traffic, warehouses, apartment buildings, and street activity in high-
crime areas.

Domestic
12 Applications for domestic robots are numerous. We all could use
robots that clean windows and floors, report and/or do minor
home repairs, cook, clean the upholstery, wash clothes, and
change the kitty litter. This raises a debatable point. Should we
classify our current labor-saving devices like dishwashers, ovens,
washing machines, and clothes dryers as robots or machines? I
think that at the point that they autonomously gather the mate-
rials needed to perform their functions, like getting food from
the refrigerator for cooking or picking up clothes around the
house for washing, they will have passed from the machine stage
and become robots.

What we haven’t thought of yet—the killer application
It is often said, mostly in regard to software, that to gain popular-
ity you need a “killer application.” In the olden days of computers,
it was word processing and spread sheets. What will be the killer
application for robotics, the one application that will make every-
one buy a robot? I don’t know the answer to this question. I do
know that robots will find many more uses and niches that haven’t

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