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A comment on CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work. Parent comment

Re:CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work by intrasight on Monday January 15, 2018 @01:32AM (#16148918)
When I was a young robotics engineer, I designed a house with a hidden ceiling that hid the mechanical parts for such a robot. There were 4'x4' panels with releases and actuators to open up a hole for the arm to descend through. A 28'x28' space would only need 10 actuators (edge panels can't open). But alas 30 years later I've still not built it.
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Re:CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work by duncanawoods on Monday January 15, 2018 @02:36AM (#16149146)
25 years ago, in a high school English exam, I wrote a short story about just such a design. As is the way of such stories, the arm throttled a small child after a miscommunication! I was a little bothered that I might have unconsciously cribbed it from Asimov that I read at that age. Mechanical ceiling arms seem likely to be terrifying even if they work.
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Re:CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work by intrasight on Monday January 15, 2018 @11:52AM (#16151630)
Doesn't have to be terrifying. Make it soft and squishy and use artificial muscles not gears and motors. It doesn't have to be able to lift my piano.
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Re:CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work by duncanawoods on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @09:06AM (#16158191)
I don't find ceiling tentacles any more reassuring!
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