Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful album to browse and contemplate
Review: Fifty years ago at the beginning of modern computers scientists predicted that within a few years robots would do the housekeeping and then we would start to try and figure out intelligence tasks such as playing the game of chess. Today we realize that "Simple" tasks such as playing with a ball are much more difficult for artificial machines than many "intelligent" tasks such as playing a game of Chess. I believe that any attempt to produce a genuine artificial intelligence must first address the motor control aspects of our intelligence and therefore I was thrilled to see this book, which explore and glorify the robotics and the motor control research. In one look you are amazed by the modern technology, but then you look again and see that these robots are still struggling to achieve the very basic skills that every child can easily muster. Then you realize that this album really glorify the biological creatures that these robots strive to imitate. We have a long way to go before we reach the prediction of "robo sapience" which is defined in this book as "A hybrid species of human and robot with intelligence vastly superior to that of purely biological mankind". Nevertheless technology did make amazing leaps in the past and it might do it again in the future. I am looking forward to browse this book again at the end of the century with a semi artificial body and mind.Indeed you don't have to agree with the authors' perspective, as suggested by another reviewer, and indeed, as the authors admit, it is not complete. Still it is a beautiful presentation of the robotics research of our days with magnificent pictures and a fascinating futuristic concept that is encapsulated by its title. Let me conclude with the words of Sir Arthur C. Clarke from the back cover of the book: "This is one of the most mind-stretching-and frightening-book I've ever read. It's also a tour de force of photography: the images reveal a whole new order of creation about to come into existence. No one who has any interest in the future can afford to miss it."
Rating: 
Summary: National Geographic Approach to Robotics: Pros and Cons
Review: Having eagerly awaited the publication of this book, there is some initial disappointment -- in spite of the highly colorful, somewhat novel photojournalist's approach to the subject of robotics and machine intelligence. And graphically, it's like the National Geographic of robotics, and in this regard it is very welcome -- it provides a visual portal into a field that is traditionally represented primarily in text. In this regard authors Menzel and D'Aluisio have done the field a great service. But the disappointment comes in running into a recurring misassessment of the basic drive of robotics and more generally the field of machine intelligence. Mr. Menzel has a peculiar affinity for the adjective "bleak", in discussing our postbiological future. It is true, many roboticists and intelligence researchers are championing a posthuman future, and some would place such a scenario in the not-too-distant future. And Mr. Menzel seems puzzled at the fact that such interviewees as Kevin Warwick and Hans Moravec would consciously contribute to the onset of this bleak human future. But the adjective belongs to Menzel, not to Warwick or Moravec. The researchers actually in the field (unlike Menzel, a mere photojournalist) recognize this future as another step on the long evolutionary ladder that human beings have fervently climbed for many thousands of years; and where biological evolution may have the appearance of going stagnant, the imminent age of machines offers the next step: a merger between man and machine. For personalities like Warwick and Moravec, the coming times are exciting, and that is why they are able to "hurtle full steam ahead in their research while predicting a bleak future for mankind because of it." (Menzel, 32) They are able to hurtle forward in such a way because Menzel is fundamentally wrong in his assessment that the future is bleak, in the minds of these researchers. The kind of reasoning at work in Menzel's analysis would have analogously imagined the biological, intelligent human future as a bleak prospect for our primate precursors. The fact that humans will no longer exist in the same form is reason for celebration in the hearts of the robotics proponents and intelligence researchers. The fact that we will disappear in this process is a sign of our continued evolution, and surely no reason for a photojournalist's anthropocentric sensibilities to feel threatened. After all, we're talking about populating the entirety of the universe with our own offspring. You and I are going the way of the wooly mammoth either way, so why fret about what our offspring look like? I should qualify my review, however, by stating that I just received the book and have not completed my reading of it. And again, it is visually quite pleasing and my initial inclination would be to recommend it in spite of my specific criticism. If it is approached strictly as a National Geographic-style take on the subject matter, it is actually quite fulfilling. I'd just recommend looking to Moravec, Kurzweil, and Warwick for the theoretical take.
Rating:
Summary: Bargain for those who love 'bots
Review: I bought this book for the pictures, and I'm not disappointed. The grainy pictures viewed in hard-to-find magazines, or worse, published only on the web, don't do justice to the amazing creations of robotics experimenters. My only (admittedly frivolous) complaint is that it's not true coffee-table-book sized. Packed with original content, Robo sapiens beats every other glossy general audience robot book I've ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: Suggestion for San Diego
Review: I've read further than the San Diego reader and it seems, far more accurately than he; page 32 is not written by Menzel. As a responsible reader I'll reserve final judgement on the work until I finish reading it, although so far it's quite impressive.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible fears and high hopes
Review: In Karel Capeks 1920 play "R.U.R." a factory populates the world with worker robots, meant to relieve humans from the hardships of work. But unfortunately the robots end up revolting against their masters, finally wiping out the human race.
Somehow, it seems that this theme has never left us. From the Robosaurus machine that prowls a parking lot of a Las Vegas casiono, showing off its ability to breathe fire and crush cars in its mighty claws, to Arnold Schwarzeneggers Terminators - robots are in western culture associated with a sense of doom. Never mind that humans false teeth, titanium hips, artificial eyes - are already making us beginning to resemble our machines, turning us halfways into cyborgs even today. No, Robots still feel kind of eery.
Roboticist Hugo de Garis puts its out in the open with his
"moral obligation" to raise the alarm of the fruits of his research (into artificial intelligent beings).
As it is stated in the book "The terrible fear, and great hope, is that we may lose some of our humanity. With good luck we might lose some of the powerty, fear and desperation that has always been the human lot. With bad luck we might lose ourselves"
Looking at the bright side - robots could be engineered to be moral. Robots could be saints. So I guess there is still hope.
Great book. Awesome pictures. -Simon
Rating:
Summary: Terrible fears and high hopes
Review: In Karel Capeks 1920 play "R.U.R." a factory populates the world with worker robots, meant to relieve humans from the hardships of work. But unfortunately the robots end up revolting against their masters, finally wiping out the human race.
Somehow, it seems that this theme has never left us. From the Robosaurus machine that prowls a parking lot of a Las Vegas casiono, showing off its ability to breathe fire and crush cars in its mighty claws, to Arnold Schwarzeneggers Terminators - robots are in western culture associated with a sense of doom. Never mind that humans false teeth, titanium hips, artificial eyes - are already making us beginning to resemble our machines, turning us halfways into cyborgs even today. No, Robots still feel kind of eery.
Roboticist Hugo de Garis puts its out in the open with his
"moral obligation" to raise the alarm of the fruits of his research (into artificial intelligent beings).
As it is stated in the book "The terrible fear, and great hope, is that we may lose some of our humanity. With good luck we might lose some of the powerty, fear and desperation that has always been the human lot. With bad luck we might lose ourselves"
Looking at the bright side - robots could be engineered to be moral. Robots could be saints. So I guess there is still hope. Great book. Awesome pictures. -Simon
Rating:
Summary: should restore peoples' wonder in robotics
Review: In the 1980s everyone was excited about AI and robotics. Then people turned away because the reality didn't live up to the hype. These photographs will restore folks' wonder at the achievements in this field.
Rating:
Summary: should restore peoples' wonder in robotics
Review: In the 1980s everyone was excited about AI and robotics. Then people turned away because the reality didn't live up to the hype. These photographs will restore folks' wonder at the achievements in this field.
Rating:
Summary: The robots are coming...
Review: In view of the news last week that Kevin Warwick, one of the roboticists talked about in this book, had a chip imbedded permanently under his skin, this book takes on a profound significance. The book includes interviews with some of the major researchers in robotics and artificial intelligence, and has many beautiful photographs. In addition to the news of Warwick's operation, other news of exciting advances in robotics have been reported in the technicial journals and in the news media in recent months. And with the advent of robot toys and a Hollywood movie about artificial intelligence, it seems that robotics has taken us by storm. These developments are indeed exciting, for those working in the field of artificial intelligence, and those that are not, and even though there is perhaps a long way to go before we are priveleged to be among autonomous thinking machines working and playing among us, we are witnessing a good beginning. Indeed we are very lucky to be in a time when the dreams of the researchers in artificial intelligence are finally beginning to be realized, even at a modest level. This book is, thankfully, optimistic in its appraisal of robotics, and as the name of it implies, it has a somewhat different viewpoint on its future. Robots, it contends, will not necessarily be separate independent entities possessing superior intelligence and physical capabilities. By taking on chips underneath their skin, by using hearing aids, by employing heart defibrillators, by reverse engineering the human brain, and by immersing other devices in their bodies, humans will (slowly?) evolve into a superposition of the biological and mechanical. The robots.... ......will be us......
Rating:
Summary: Excellent "gotta have" book on robots!
Review: It appears a great deal of effort was put into compiling this work. It provides an excellent overview (although brief) on current robotics and trends. Although, as an "expert" I previously knew most of the contents prior to reading this book, I find that it is both a great reference for the roboticist and great fascinator for the general lay person. This is a book that definitely belongs on the professional/professor's shelf and in the doctor's office! A must see for students entering the field of robotics as well.
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