- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: MIT Press; New Ed edition (10 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0262632454
- ISBN-13: 978-0262632454
- Product Dimensions: 27.1 x 21.1 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,322,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
Around the world, scientists and engineers are participating in a high-stakes race to build the first intelligent robot. Many robots already exist -- automobile factories are full of them. But the new generation of robots will be something else: smart machines that act like living creatures. When they are brought into existence, science fiction will have become fact.What will happen then? With our prosthetic limbs, titanium hips, and artificial eyes, we are already beginning to resemble our machines. Equally important, our machines are beginning to resemble us. Robots already walk, talk, and dance; they can react to our facial expressions and obey verbal commands. When they take the next step and become fully autonomous, what will they do? Will we be partners or rivals? Could we meld into a single species -- Robo sapiens?In Robo sapiens, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio present the next generation of intelligent robots and their makers. Accompanying brilliant photographs of more than one hundred robots is an account of the little-known, yet vitally important scientific competition to build an autonomous robot. Containing extensive interviews with robotics pioneers, anecdotal "field notes" with behind-the-scenes information, and easy-to-understand technical data about the machines, Robo sapiens is a field guide to our mechanical future.
About the Author
Faith D'Aluisio is a former television news producer. Her documentary and news series pieces have won regional and national awards from the Headlines Foundation, United Press International, Associated Press, and the Radio-Television News Directors Association. Together with Peter Menzel, she is the co-creator of the books Material World: A Global Family Portrait and Women in the Material World; and is the co-author of Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid and visual introduction,
By A Customer
This review is from: Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (Hardcover)
This book is a really solid foray into robotics. It looks at many of the really interesting developments around the world, particularly focussing on machines that mimic the biological world in construction. For me, it lacks two major areas. The first is that fails to discuss in much detail the fact that the mechanisms are interesting, but their future in our world is dependent on the level of machine intelligence which can be imbued into each device, and the second is the financial realities of robots. Simply put, non-industrial robots are currently an academic pursuit. Tangible applications will take years more to become viable for most of these technologies.A very solid read, and fascinating for what it is. An excellent coffee table book as well as informative. The main issue is how fast it will become dated.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing quite like it,
By Dan Ronco "Author of 2031: The Singularity Po... (Bucks County, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (A Material World Book) (Paperback)
They can climb stairs, juggle balls, open a door, smile engagingly, hear and see, swing like a monkey, crawl like a crab and swim like a fish. Who? Why the robots, of course. This startling picture book explores the amazing scope of robot capabilities. The photographs of the robots and their creators provide a unique picture of the dawn of these intelligent machines. The narratives are brief and to the point, explaining just enough but always remaining as support for the pictures. As I thumbed through this book, it became clear that the development of humanlike robots will come one project at a time, not by a thunderous breakthrough from a single genius working in a dark lab. Definitely buy this book; there's nothing quite like it.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews) 13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good read that is also a great coffee table book,
By Douglas Welzel - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (Hardcover)
Robo sapiens is a collection of short interviews with people from all over the field of robotics. Each interview is at most a couple of pages long and is accompanied by beautiful pictures as well as supplementary commentary by the interviewers. The interviews themselves are pretty lightweight. You'll get some idea of what people are working on in the field, but don't expect anything in depth. Overall the book is a good, lightweight read. You can pick it up and read an interview or two and then not touch it for a couple of days. Some reviews have suggested this is a bad thing, but I think it is exactly what the book intends to provide.The book itself is rather large and contains beautiful photographs that have an artistic element to them. This adds to the browseability of the book and makes it something you might want to leave out for others.
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful album to browse and contemplate,
By Amir Karniel - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (Hardcover)
Fifty years ago at the beginning of modern computers scientists predicted that within a few years robots would do the housekeeping and then we would start to try and figure out intelligence tasks such as playing the game of chess. Today we realize that "Simple" tasks such as playing with a ball are much more difficult for artificial machines than many "intelligent" tasks such as playing a game of Chess. I believe that any attempt to produce a genuine artificial intelligence must first address the motor control aspects of our intelligence and therefore I was thrilled to see this book, which explore and glorify the robotics and the motor control research. In one look you are amazed by the modern technology, but then you look again and see that these robots are still struggling to achieve the very basic skills that every child can easily muster. Then you realize that this album really glorify the biological creatures that these robots strive to imitate. We have a long way to go before we reach the prediction of "robo sapience" which is defined in this book as "A hybrid species of human and robot with intelligence vastly superior to that of purely biological mankind". Nevertheless technology did make amazing leaps in the past and it might do it again in the future. I am looking forward to browse this book again at the end of the century with a semi artificial body and mind.Indeed you don't have to agree with the authors' perspective, as suggested by another reviewer, and indeed, as the authors admit, it is not complete. Still it is a beautiful presentation of the robotics research of our days with magnificent pictures and a fascinating futuristic concept that is encapsulated by its title. Let me conclude with the words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke from the back cover of the book: "This is one of the most mind-stretching-and frightening-book I've ever read. It's also a tour de force of photography: the images reveal a whole new order of creation about to come into existence. No one who has any interest in the future can afford to miss it." 7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The robots are coming...,
By Dr. Lee D. Carlson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Robo Sapiens: Evolution of a New Species (Hardcover)
In view of the news last week that Kevin Warwick, one of the roboticists talked about in this book, had a chip imbedded permanently under his skin, this book takes on a profound significance. The book includes interviews with some of the major researchers in robotics and artificial intelligence, and has many beautiful photographs. In addition to the news of Warwick's operation, other news of exciting advances in robotics have been reported in the technicial journals and in the news media in recent months. And with the advent of robot toys and a Hollywood movie about artificial intelligence, it seems that robotics has taken us by storm. These developments are indeed exciting, for those working in the field of artificial intelligence, and those that are not, and even though there is perhaps a long way to go before we are priveleged to be among autonomous thinking machines working and playing among us, we are witnessing a good beginning. Indeed we are very lucky to be in a time when the dreams of the researchers in artificial intelligence are finally beginning to be realized, even at a modest level. This book is, thankfully, optimistic in its appraisal of robotics, and as the name of it implies, it has a somewhat different viewpoint on its future. Robots, it contends, will not necessarily be separate independent entities possessing superior intelligence and physical capabilities. By taking on chips underneath their skin, by using hearing aids, by employing heart defibrillators, by reverse engineering the human brain, and by immersing other devices in their bodies, humans will (slowly?) evolve into a superposition of the biological and mechanical. The robots..........will be us...... |
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