Robot plants are not new to BotJunkie, but creepy ones are. Not that this robot plant is intended to be creepy, but like everything in the Uncanny Valley, it just sort of ends up that way. Or maybe it’s just me.

Each of the plant’s 169 artificial leaves is controlled by a piece of shape memory wire. When cameras mounted above the plant see your hand move over it, it signals the plant to shimmy its leaves in the same area in response to a ‘virtual wind.’

Plant (that’s what it’s called, “Plant”) was designed by Akira Nakayasu, and will be on display at Ars Electronica 2010. Pic of Plant sans leaves, after the jump.

VIA [ Designboom ] and [ Gizmowatch ]

A robot stole my job back in 2008, and things are just getting worse, according to this infographic from Focus magazine. It’s a long graphic, so check out the full thing after the break.

Click to embiggenify.

Although I on principle don’t approve of the alarmist anti-robot language (even casually, unless it’s really funny), it’s a lot of interesting info… The big question, though, is whether it’s a bad thing or a good thing. Obviously, having a job and then not having a job because your boss bought a robot instead is a bad thing. But robots are designed to take over tasks that are dull, dirty, and dangerous, so hypothetically, the humans that are being replaced would be able to move on to more interesting tasks. Unfortunately, this is probably not the way it’s going to work, and it’s inevitable that a significant percentage of humans are just going to be made obsolete by robots that can perform repetitive tasks far faster and more precisely and don’t need breaks or air conditioning or pensions or health insurance or even lights.

I’m not saying that we should all go out and OMG PANIC because our jobs are at risk, but at the same time, it’s not something that would be nice to be surprised by. Maybe, if you get a chance, put a little bit of thought into this question: what is it that you do that a robot or computer program couldn’t?

[ Focus ] VIA [ Neatorama ]

The Robots podcast had a great interview this week with Raymond Oung from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.

"The idea behind this project is to design a set of vehicles equipped with a single propeller and wheels that can drive around in search for fellow modules with whom to dock. Single modules are not stable but once assembled, the flight array is able to take-off and achieve coordinated flight. Modules then detach in-air, fall to the floor and repeat their search for other propellers.

The main challenge in this system is to come up with a distributed controller that can allow modules to work together to achieve coordinated flight. Because of its endless number of configurations, the distributed flight array is the perfect research and pedagogical testbed to study control theory for complex systems."