We can handle mechanical eyes, fingers and even claws. But forever-twitching whiskers, however necessary or helpful, are discomfitingly lifelike, casually erasing our preconceptions of "machine" and "organism" -- and something deep within the human psyche recoils from the resulting sense of dislocation, however slightly.
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Friday, July 03, 2009
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2 comments:
For a robot intended to work underwater, the whiskers could be multi-functional, @ also serve to propulse the machine, like a paramecium is propulsed by its cilia. It could also work with small robots in land I guess, modelled as millipedes or caterpillars.
@Red Pill Junkie
Good thoughts. I betcha you're right.
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