According to the promotional material for
Robots: From Science Fiction to Technological Revolution, "The 1980s were the PC years, [and] the 1990s the Internet years, [but] the first decade of 2000 will belong to the robot."
"When people think about the future, they envision a world of robots. Robots intrigue, amaze, worry and disconcert. Now on the cusp of the 21st century, they are poised to saturate every aspect of our culture, from medicine, science and industry to artworks, toys, and household appliances.
Robots by
Daniel Ichbiah (Harry N. Abrams, June 2005, $37.50) is the first visual survey to focus on this increasingly important, always newsworthy scientific development and its effects on society.
"Covering automatons, androids and all maner of artificial intelligence, both fictional and real, this massive, comprehensive volume describes the robot's fascinating history and speculates on its probable future. Interviews with scientists, surgeons, manufacturers, science fiction writers, artists, toy creators, and a host of other experts bring tremendous insight to the subject, and the copious illustrations provide visual examples of robots in every environment. As entertaining as it is informative, this one-of a kind book is an indispensable guide to approaching the Robot Age."
As Will Wright, creator the video games
Sims and
Sims City writes in his Foreward to
Robots, " The primary challenge facing robotics today is that of situational awareness. We can build capable hardware that can perform useful tasks under human control. But the hard part in automating that control is giving computers the same level of awareness that the human has... We need to give our robots the ability to build better models of the real world.
"Ironically, though, as we build robots that are, in some sense, models of ourselves, we begin to glimpse that one of the fundamental skills that we must learn is to give them the ability to build models of their own."
On a related note, Seth Schiesel writing in the
New York Times reports that gaming's future, as exemplified by the interactive drama
"Facade" (pictured right), lies in the creation of "virtual characters powered by artificial intelligence techniques, which allow [characters] to change their emotional state in fairly complicated ways in response to the conversation being typed in by the human player."
..." 'For a long time, games have been judged largely on their graphics,' " echoes Lane Davis, one of the organizers of the first
Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference, and chief executive of
Mad Doc Software. ... 'The graphics hardware is...getting powerful enough that basically everything looks good now. So what is starting to differentiate games is what is happening inside the characters, how the opponents behave and make plans, how comprehensively and realistically the worlds respond to what the players want to do.' "
..."As put by
Chris Crawford, a legendary game designer of the 1980's who now focuses on interactive storytelling technology: 'As a game designer you are an absolute god. One kind of god says, "O.K., now this leaf will fall a little bit here, and then this wind will blow a bit over there." The other kind of god says, "Here are the laws of physics. Go for it." ' "
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 6/07/2005 01:44:00 PM
Comments (1)
Hello,
I'm the writer of the book. Me too, I was impressed by the foreword of Will Wright !
Glad youb enjoy the book
Take care,
Daniel Ichbiah
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posted by Ichbiah Daniel @ 7/03/2005 5:00 PM
