Robot Dreams

Korea is starting development of a collection of robots to do various public support functions:

By the 2010s, Korea is expecting to see robots assisting police and the military, patrolling the neighborhoods and going on recon missions on the battlefield.

They are taking a route which seems obviously as a first step into the common SciFi theme of remote controlled armies of robots. Instead of going the fully autonomous route, they are planning to do wireless control of the robots from a central AI system through their vast wireless network. This is one of the first thoughts I had when I was reading about the Lego NXT toy which has a wireless connection. How cool would it be to move the smart control aspects to your home PC.

© The LEGO GroupIt's always fun to see where robotics show up, and one of the most common places where I see the makings of robots are in toys. In this years CES Lego announced another robot toy in their MINDSTORMS™ series:

Building upon the success of the globally-renowned Robotics Invention System, the next generation of LEGO MINDSTORMS makes it quicker and easier for robot creators to build and program a working robot in just 30 minutes.

Although this is clearly a "grown-up" toy it won't be long before kids not only regularly play with such smart toys — But start expecting them everywhere to do everything. Wired has some details behind the toy. And LEGO sponsored NXT blog promises to keep filling us in the continued growth of this particular robot toy.