Robots continue to excel in human endeavors - are we not safe on the links?
(Robotic putting comes into its own)
As part of PwC’s thought leadership series on disruptive advanced manufacturing technologies, we recently gathered some PwC leaders at our 300 Madison Avenue headquarters for a discussion on where robots are now and where they’re going.
We also invited another esteemed guest to the table—a cobot (collaborative robot).
The task? A golf-putting competition. Turns out that the cobot delivered on cue with enviable, PGA-tour-level mechanics. Click the picture below to check out the putting competition and decide for yourself whether robots have finally come of age—not only on the factory floor, but in places we haven’t even dreamed.
In Frederik Pohl's 1954 short story The Midas Plague, human beings were no longer able to keep up with the consumption requirements of the modern consumer economy. So, consumption robots took up the slack; in this case, by using up its owner's golf clubs and related apparel:
There was the butler robot, hard at work, his copper face expressionless. Dressed in Morey's own sports knickers and golfing shoes, the robot solemnly hit a ball against the wall, picked it up and teed it, hit it again, over and again, with Morey's own clubs...
RoboShiko! Sumo Exercises Still Good For Robots
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.' - Roger Zelazny, 1966.
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RoboShiko! Sumo Exercises Still Good For Robots
'... the expressionless face before me was therefore that of the golem-wrestler, Rolem, a creature that could be set for five times the strength of a human being.'