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"Cyberpunk worked when the Internet was in its hand-wound crystal radio phase, when you had to be a sort of hobbyist to do e-mail, and it all had a very steep learning curve. Those days are over."
- William Gibson
 |
| Self-Charging Robot | ||
| A robot that is able to autonomously find an electrical outlet and plug itself in to recharge. |
| Amanda glared at the little object on wheels - it was about the size of a rollerskate and it seemed to be considering what to do next. It turned its photoelectric scanners this way and that, waving its jointed grappling arms about. Then it appeared to make up its mind, and trundled over to a wall socket in the baseboard, plugged itself in and proceeded to recharge itself. |
| Technovelgy from Callahan and the Wheelies,
by Stephen Barr. Published by Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1960 Additional resources -
|
The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner can now perform this feat, just fifty short years later.
Also, compare to the charging arm robot from Masters of Chance (1941) by William Morrison and to the Autonomously Recharging UAV from Roger Zelazny's 1980 novel Changeling.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Callahan and the Wheelies
More Ideas
and Technology by Stephen Barr
Tech news articles related to Callahan and the Wheelies
Tech news articles related to works by Stephen Barr
Self-Charging Robot-related
news articles:
- Human Teaches Robot Ping Pong, Then Challenges It
- Marvin Intel's Self-Charging Robot
- 'Wheelie' Robotic Server
- Self-Charging Nao Robot Video
- Linux Robot Masters Automatic Charging
- Tesla Robotaxis Will Automatically Recharge Themselves
- Tesla Will Have Metal Gear Snake Autocoupler, Musk Confirms
| Mori3 Autonomous Shapeshifting Robot |
| Tesla Seeks 'Tesla Robotaxi' And 'Robobus' Trademarks Ignoring Prior Art |
| Scary Grid Safety Robots |
| Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout! |
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'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
