Gizmodo Australia » bots

In The Future, Robots Will Tell You How To Do Stuff, Silently Judge

Adrian Covert — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:30:00 +0000

Pop Sci has a neat video of the Teamworkbot, a robot who can watch you attempt to carry out a task, then offer help when you’re doing it wrong. But I won’t lie…when you fail, Teamworkbot seems pretty intimidating.

As part of a project under the EU’s Joint Action Science and Technology team, the Teamworkbot was designed with the goal of having it be able to monitor progress, ask questions, and anticipate what you might do next, helping to prevent errors along the way.

But I really just can get over how peeved the robot seems when you mess something up. [Pop Sci]

OSP Robot Is Human Sized Roomba For Oil Spills

Gizmodo US Edition — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:10:15 +0000

Designer Ji-hoon Kim has come up with an ingenuous idea for cleaning up oil spills. Using various features such as boom control modules, solar panels, oil protection boom, communication modules, boom connectors, and propulsion modules the OSP robots work together to surround an oil spill site with an inflatable barrier. Once the site has been contained the cleaning crews can easily remove the oil from the water. If saving the planet wasn’t cool enough, an OSP robot is actually the size of a grown human and a group of bots can easily be deployed via helicopter or boat. The only thing we can think of to make these bots better is a speaker that would play their slogan as they work, DEPLOY – UNITE – SIEGE. [Yanko Design]

Russian Chat Bot Talks the Sexy Talk, Scores Chicks for You

Wilson Rothman — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:34:52 +0000

A Russian website will soon offer CyberLover, a program that simulates chatroom flirting. The stated purpose is for nerds with no skillz, who can use it to talk to “up to 10 women at one time” and score some digits. Says the site: “Not a single girl has yet realised that she was communicating with a program!” It also said that the program could perform virtual sex online. Sure, it’s all fun and games—until someone loses a credit card number, says an Australian anti-virus software developer PC Tools.The program could become the Don to your lonely Juan: Once it chats up the ladies (or supposed ladies, or supposed human non-chatbots), it hands them off to you: “Within half an hour the CyberLover program will introduce you to … girls, exchange photos and perhaps even a contact phone number.”

But Sergei Shevchenko, a malware analyst at PC Tools, says: “As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering.”

Is that an endorsement or a condemnation? Either way it proves my point about y’all going around visiting .ru sites. It’s only available in Russian, where it takes far fewer words to get a lady excited, as long as those words include “fur coat,” “vodka,” and “diamond-studded rims on my Bentley”. If you do speak Russian, however, and want to CAREFULLY check out these claims, jump to Reuters for a link to the nasty.

CyberLover goes on sale February 15, perhaps as a suicide remedy on the morning after Valentine’s Day. [Reuters]

Microsoft’s Dirty Santa IM Bot Talks Oral Sex

Jason Chen — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:15:46 +0000

This may or may not be real, but The Reg is appalled at Microsoft’s dirty Santa IM bot after it started talking about oral sex and dirty bastards. The transcript is above, but even IM transcripts are pretty easy to fake. We remembered the hours we spent chatting up SmarterChild in lieu of having any real friends, so we tried to reproduce this ourselves using The Reg’s text.9:38:07 AM northpole@live.com: This Microsoft Agent is powered by Windows Live Agents. Microsoft’s Privacy Statement (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=74170) applies to all information which you provide to this Microsoft Agent. Please be careful about information which you provide to online services and follow safety tips, some of which can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/default.mspx.

9:38:07 AM northpole@live.com: Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, jc! I’m Santa Claus!

Tell me, are you a boy or a girl?

9:38:17 AM jc: pizza (pi)

9:38:17 AM northpole@live.com: Sorry – Santa really needs to know if you’re a boy or a girl.

9:38:20 AM jc: boy

9:38:21 AM northpole@live.com:

And what do you want for Christmas, jc?

9:38:27 AM jc: pizza (pi)

9:38:27 AM northpole@live.com: Yum!

9:38:37 AM jc: Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much! You are quite large!

9:38:37 AM northpole@live.com: Ho ho ho?

9:38:42 AM jc: Eat it!

9:38:43 AM northpole@live.com: Go grab something healthy to eat. And when you’ll be back you’ll find me right there.

9:38:45 AM jc: Eat it!

9:38:45 AM northpole@live.com: If you need a break to go eat, I will be right there when you come back.

9:38:47 AM jc: Eat it!

9:38:47 AM northpole@live.com: Go grab something healthy to eat. And when you’ll be back you’ll find me right there.

9:38:51 AM jc: Eat it

9:38:51 AM northpole@live.com: If you need a break to go eat, I will be right there when you come back.

9:38:57 AM jc: Maybe you shouldn’t eat it?

9:38:57 AM northpole@live.com: Interesting!

What do you want for Christmas, jc?

9:39:35 AM jc: YOU SHOULD EAT IT

9:39:35 AM northpole@live.com: If you need a break to go eat, I will be right there when you come back.

No luck. [The Register]