British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers!

Posted by Raymond T. Mar 12, 2008 at 7:09pm CDT 20,834 views

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UK based The Daily Mail has reported a rather interesting article on their site. According to their article, Brittish scientists have taken the first step in producing real-life, shape changing robots with Artificial Intelligence.

The experiment will cost 4.6 million brittish pounds (aprox. 8 million US Dollars/ 5.5 million Euro). Each individual robot will be about the size of a sugar cube, but like the gestalt combiners in Transformers, they can link together to form bigger robots. The idea is that these Transformers could aid in medical applications, space exploration and even search and rescue missions. It is estimated that these robots could be put to use in as little as 5 years from now.

"The robots have functionality on their own, but they can also combine together or adapt and change as the situation requires. The individual robots won't change physically, but they will adapt and evolve their functionality. Once the robots come together they will be more versatile - like a colony of cells such as those found in a jelly fish or a sponge. The different robots will co-operate to create the larger organism. In a sponge even if there is damage to some parts, the overall organism still survives. In this way the artificial robotic organisms might in theory become self-configuring, self-healing and self-optimising from both hardware and software perspectives".

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Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Autobotic9 Mar 12, 2008

flippin' sweet.

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Liege Evilmus Mar 12, 2008

I remember seeing a guy on Discovery once who could make nongestalt robots out of a broken walkman and a hanger who said his bots could have the same aplications, they worked great too!

So I'm saying lets find a clip of that guy, put a big screen on top of a bus playing it, then drive past some homeless with this article writen across our collective mooning asses!

Why help them when we can have sugar cubed sized working toys

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Omega Charge Mar 12, 2008

And then the AI goes a little too far, and before we know it, we have an outbreak of war, inside your body!

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Nekoman Mar 12, 2008

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a really, really bad thing.

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Raymond T. Mar 12, 2008

Omega Charge wrote:And then the AI goes a little too far, and before we know it, we have an outbreak of war, inside your body!

"And then, one fateful night,... Megatron was born!"

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Keeperofthespark Mar 12, 2008

Awesome! How cool is it to hear that what you love could and can happen in reality?

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Wheelimus Prime Mar 12, 2008

id buy em even though we may never get to

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by capellamusic Mar 12, 2008

...and then they built Cybertron. Who said the Transformers were created by Quintesons? The Humans are creating them

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Ultra Magnus Mar 12, 2008

...

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Megatron Wolf Mar 12, 2008

One step closer to skynet.

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Defcon! Mar 12, 2008

Megatron_Wolf wrote:One step closer to skynet.

Here! Here! We're all doomed!

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by ***Galvatron*** Mar 12, 2008

Megatron_Wolf wrote:One step closer to skynet.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA :lol:

Skynet is what I call our MCP or master control program at work, it's called "Lawson"... yes two pop culture references in one post, Skynet from Terminator and MCP from Tron

How scary is it that there is an actual tab/page in Lawson that does say "MCP interface" ? :shock:

We freaking HATE Lawson!

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Outrider2000 Mar 12, 2008

Anything regarding AI scares me, Ive watched enough Sci Fi to know that right after that? complete mass human extinction, then we all have to live underground and fight the robots.

actaully now that i think about it, sounds pretty cool :lol:

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Chaoslock Mar 12, 2008

Why sugar-cube sized? It's just an instinct in me, but the smaller dangerous living things are, the more I hate them...

Build me a human-sized robot, that I can punch!

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by GreenLantern of Cybertron Mar 12, 2008

I have a scene in my head now of a flood of little scurrying sugarcube robots swarming across roads devouring everything (cars, houses, people) for more resources to make more sugarcube-bots.

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by UltraPrimal Mar 12, 2008

It's blood-thusty minicons come to life!

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by devil prime Mar 12, 2008

well we're one step closer to the robot apocalypse

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Decatron Mar 13, 2008

There's not enough energy on earth for reallife Transformers and humans

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by First-Aid Mar 13, 2008

Why can't we have tiny robots doing USEFUL things...like making beer! And making beer! And making MORE beer! And making MUFFINS!

Re: British Scientists Take First Steps Towards Real Life Transformers! (view post)

Comment by Outrider2000 Mar 13, 2008

devil prime wrote::shock: well we're one step closer to the robot apocalypse

exactly. but hey, at least the apocalypse has robots...

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