Pen Pen's Evangelion
A Pen Pen for your Thoughts
This section will just be for, basically random thoughts and feelings. Since my thought process is mostly random you can probably expect this to be updated frequently. Back to Previous Pennys. Back to Pen Penny.
Robotic Role Models
Robots that were originally designed to play soccer will now be clearing mines in war-ravaged countries. Now, the first question in everyone’s minds shouldn’t be which countries are they going to, well, unless you’re in one of the war-ravaged countries, or unless you‘ve lost all logic functions (functions? Like a robot, get it? I‘m hilarious). No, the real question is, people made robots that play soccer? Think about this for a second, people would have had to get paid in some sort of currency to do research, make different designs of soccer-playing robots and build prototypes of the soccer-playing robots, in which the prototypes may have failed and they would have to go back and re-design the soccer-playing robots.
But before any of that, someone would have had to thought to himself: though we have all of this civilization; there are still wars all over the world, there are still impoverished families, there is still the chance of a nuclear holocaust, there are orphans, families weeping as their loved ones succumb to illness, children dying of starvation, and many other horrible things happening right now on this very planet, what kind of contribution can I make, what is it that we need? Of course! We need robots that can play soccer!
Peter Kopacek, who leads a research team at an institute for robot science said that robots are already used to clear mines but the soccer-playing robots would be “much more individualized,” I guess they programmed in different personalities; like the lazy one, the soon-to-be superstar who is also a compulsive gambler and risk-taker, the “bad boy,” the hyper-active racist, and the has-been superstar who is now addicted to heroin. Kopacek added, “the robots could use teamwork in mine-clearing.” Probably by running over them. Great idea, hey teammate, you get this one, I’ll get the next.
In robot soccer, a computer monitors the robot’s moves with a camera and co-ordinates their movements in order to score a goal. Apparently remote controls just won’t cut it for robot soccer. Not only have they taken the absolutely non-stop thrill ride of a sport that is soccer, but they’ve taken out any human elements at all and turned it into a complete spectators sport. Huzzah! What an accomplishment. This sounds like an upgrade to actual soccer, let’s send the human players to clear the mines instead, who needs them anyways? When the robots take over, they’ll already have a sport they can watch. Now, would riots still be done by humans or do we need to specifically design soccer riot robots?
The university team has apparently dedicated several years, that’s right, years, as in revolutions around the sun, developing these soccer-playing robots. And earlier this year they won a European robot soccer championship… there’s a championship? You mean, that people actually got together and organized a large-scale tournament across Europe!? Would an Asian robot soccer team be unable to compete in the tournament? Isn’t that robot discrimination!? Stop the discrimination of foreign-made robots now! So what if their circuitry is made from sub-standard parts, aren’t we all non-sentient mechanical things that are told by a central computer to move forward to move a small spheroid? Well, aren’t we? - 7/4/04
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