Robot with a private space

This is really cool. A robot analyzing its surroundings and shying away from everything that comes too close may not sound like much, but it's a damn hard trick to pull off. Great to see machine vision and robotics finally coming to the point, where the machines can react to their environment so... animal-like. (or alternatively, Silent Hill-like)

This tech has a million and one uses, but I'm sure someone will eventually make a gadget that looks like a human baby with chocolate smeared around its mouth, and the user is supposed to try and feed it, while it does its best to avoid the spoon. I can already see the pre-Christmas ads in my mind...

I like the cat-avoiding-to-be-petted comparison better. :(

Science!

The Royal Society, the oldest science academy in the world, is celebrating their 350th anniversary by posting a timeline and related milestone scientific publications dating from 1660 to the present, including works from such names as Sir Isaac Newton, Paul Dirac, and Watson and Crick.

I wish that I could, today, get away with writing publications such as this 1727 paper by William Cheselden - in which he writes about the impact that regaining eye sight had on a boy, who'd been blind since early childhood - which includes observations like this:

"Now Scarlet he thought the moft beautiful of all Colours, and of others the moft gay were the moft pleafing, whereas the firft Time he faw Black, it gave him great Uneafinefs, yet after a little Time he was reconcil'd to it; but fome Months after, feeing by Accident a Negroe Woman, he was ftruck with great Horror at the Sight."

Excellent. :)

(If I ever get a cat, I'll definitely call it Nigger-Man.)