Some of you probably saw Repliee R-1 all over the news a little while ago. If you can’t remember what it looks like, perhaps this will jog your memory.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eam3n8TOGGI]
Well, it turns out that this robot is nothing new. It’s six years old. One of the scientists who worked on the robot said that the original Telegraph article was based on :”junk from the blogosphere.”
I saw all the articles about this thing but never posted about it. Not because I knew it was six years old but because it looked six years old. Just seemed dull. Another robot that thinks its people. Creepy. These are the most boring robot stories of all. Besides, the techs looked old and the artistry was uninteresting.
But I’m not surprised that the Telegraph thought it was a new story. If you follow robots for long enough you’ll notice that many of the news stories are old stories. Usually, the reporters think that whatever they’re looking at just happened and act like it’s a breakthrough. There’s very few breakthroughs.
Though I can’t be sure, I think this whole problem arises because of two major factors. 1.) There’s not many robots around so they always look futuristic thus tricking the reporter. 2.) Most of these reporters do the same stupid crap I do: They don’t report on actual events but, instead, on coverage of them.
Since most robot events happen in Japan or South Korea and most western reporters don’t speak either language, they tend to cover the stories that have been translated. A robot might be out for quite a while but no one writes about it in English until last week. Then there it is. The story spreads.
I never try to cover the latest in robot news. Just the stuff that interests me. There is a bit of overlap but that’s all it is. Overlap. Repliee R 1 was neither new nor interesting. And it looked it.
Most people who have been at this for a while must have felt the same way. The story seemed limited to the mainstream internet media. You can blame “junk from the blogosphere” all you want but most of that junk was written a long time ago.
