Robots have been all over the news recently. The home improvement store Lowes announced that they would be testing out a robotic sales assistant in one store this holiday season, and the internet giant Amazon plans to set up an instant delivery network of robotic drones that will be able to deliver packages to consumers within hours instead of days. Even Google is jumping into the fray. They made news a few days ago when the agreed to lease several old airplane and zeppelin hangers from NASA. The tech giant plans on turning one of these hangers into a robotics facility, where one of their stars, Ian, will get to practice his martial arts routine.
Ian is a 6’2” robot that weighs in at 330 pounds. His purpose, beyond just being really cool, is to help in dangerous search and rescue situations. If a building is burning or has collapsed the idea is that Ian would be able to perform the most dangerous jobs and protect firefighters and emergency responders by keeping them out of harm’s way. Similar robots are being developed or even used in other fields, such as bomb defusing robots and oil spill robots.
Ian is still in training, and part of that training is to imitate the karate kid’s movie routine. Ian balances his 330 pound body on three stacked cinder blocks and gets into the classic crane pose. He waves his arms up and down while balancing on one foot, and in the end he even gives a little kick. At first glance it doesn’t look too impressive, but after realizing that I probably could not do this I have a new respect for Ian. The researchers plan to eventually give Ian an internal power source, so that he will not have to be plugged in at all times, and they will also probably cover him with some type of shell, so that his innards are not constantly exposed.
This is not the first time Ian has been in the news. He came in second at the Robot Olympics, completing tasks such as getting into a car and driving it and carrying a fire hose. While these may seem like mundane activities, for robots they are exceptionally hard. We are just getting to the point where robots could become a major part of everyday life, which is a scary but exciting prospect. I look forward to seeing Ian and his compatriots in real world applications, hopefully sooner rather than later.
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