Just Looking ...

interestingly, I discussed the recent progress in robotics with a specialist just the other day. For better or worse, the progress is a bit hyped. They are very good at performing a task which can be programmed beforehand: playing a particular piece of music on violin or telling a written - before speech are examples of such tasks. The biggest challenge in robotics is to account for environment and adjust the reaction immediately to it. RObotina detecting obstacles and turning around them is such a task, however, the floor is smooth. In fact, just walking on a street of Toronto is a task which requires enormous coordination of neurological activity which robots yet have difficulty with. Another obstacle is materials - apparently, to construct something that imitates a human foot in all its minute functionality, one has to build it on a much bigger scale. Both problems are dependent on nanotechnology and its progress.