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DESIRE Trash-Tossing Robot
The DESIRE trash-tossing robot is the orange robot in the following video. Part of Germany's Deutsche Servicerobotik Initiative, it is a prototype service robot that is intended to one day help the elderly in independent living.
(DESIRE service robot)
The DESIRE robot was demonstrated at CeBIT this year.
I'm just glad that robots are able to do their own recycling and trash removal. In Harry Harrison's 1956 story The Velvet Glove, human beings were a necessary part of the trash-tossing picture because of their superior object recognition skills:
"... whenever a robot finds something it can't identify straight off... it puts whatever it is in the hopper outside your window. You give it a good look, check the list for the proper category if you're not sure, then press the right button and in she goes." An hour passed before he had his first identification to make. A robot stopped in mid-dump, ground its gears a moment, and then dropped a dead cat into Carl's hopper... Something heavy had dropped on the cat, reducing the lower part of its body to paper-thinness.Castings... Cast Iron... Cats... There was the bin number. Nine.
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