Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Robots With Knives 3, Irregularly Shaped Meat 0
Robot HAMDAS-R has an unusual skill with a blade, particularly when matched against irregularly shaped pieces of meat. This food-processing robot cuts right to the bone. HAMDAS-R won top prize in the Small Business and Venture category at the Fourth Robot Awards held at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Technology.
(HAMDAS-R video from Mayekawa Electric)
"Until now, ham-boning has required the talents of skilled workers, due to the variations in meat form and bone size."HAMDAS-R has made it possible to automate the processing of irregularly shaped, soft foods like meat. Until now the use of robots for food processing hasn't progressed very much and its hard to mechanize tasks that rely on human hands.
"Thinking about irregularly shaped, soft items, most kinds of food come into this category, including fish and vegetables. We'd like to build up our know-how regarding how to automate their processing, so we can construct a general-purpose system for handling irregularly shaped, soft items."
The HAMDAS-R robot seems to be a significant advance on other meat-slicing robots, such as the Kebab Robot Hyperslicer. However, its vision skills might not be up to the standard set by the Knife-Wielding Robot With X-Ray Vision now in use in meat-processing plants in New Zealand.
Obviously, there's no reason to panic that robots are gaining skill with knives and deboning irregularly shaped pieces of meat. However, I can't help but think of examples like the robotic systems that protected the city of Lemnos in The Man in the Maze, a 1969 novel by Robert Silverberg. The city was surrounded by traps that were run by the city itself. At first visitors tried to find a way through with probes:
At the begining of the fourth minute the probe skirted bright rillwork like interlocking teeth, and sidestepped an umbrella-shaped piledriver that descended with crushing force. Eighty seconds later it stepped around a tiltblock that opened into a yawning abyss, deftly eluded a quintet of tetrahedral blades that sheared upward out of the pavement...
Update: See also the robotic abattoir from Anne McCafffrey's 1996 novel Freedom's Landing (thanks, Ashley!). End update.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/7/2010)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 3 )
Related News Stories - (" Robotics ")
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.' - Rog Philips, 1950.
Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'
Blue Collar AI Goes To Work To Mine Its Own Crypto
Blue collar bot.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
AI Operates An Excavator
'So far as I could see, the thing was without a directing Martian at all.'
US Army IBEX Exoskeleton Walks Troops Out Of Danger
'The suit stands up and starts walking, gripping me round the calves and waist, taking the bulk of my weight off my throbbing feet.'
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
