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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Teleoperated Robot Surrogate | ||
| A robot that is entirely controlled remotely by a person who sees with the point of view of the robot. |
This very short story offers an early fictionalized account of a teleoperated robot. In use, the operator sees with the perspective of the robot's vision.
In the story, roboticist Dr. Alvin Peabody, who describes himself as "scrawny and fluffy-headed," seeks a date with another researcher in the field, Muriel Winthrop.
| My prize robot, tall, dashing would speak and act for me...
I turned to where, on my desk, I had set up my controls. To my ears I clamped receivers, upon my eyes I bound the gogglelike televisors that would coincide my viewpoint with that of the robot. A transmitter would place my voice upon those sculptured lips. My hands touched a great keyboard, whence, perfect through long practice, I could direct lifelike motion. My toe pressed a switch. At once, my vision-point changed. I seemed to sit on the bed's edge, gazing through the robot's pupils. I touched the keys, and rose to my - but that was an illusion, born of years of such experiments. I remained silent, but the robot rose. I moved it across the floor, closed its fingers around the doorknob, and set it out into the hall. My hearing, vision and awareness went along with that excellent imitation of a young Adonis... |
| Technovelgy from The Robot and the Lady,
by Manly Wade Wellman. Published by Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1938 Additional resources -
|
When he gets to the restaurant, he meets the beautiful Miss Winthrop, "tall and youthfully curved, filling [her] coat to snugness." However, after a few minutes of conversation, he finds that Miss Winthrop, too, has sent a robot!
She is disappointed with him, expecting a "refined, scholarly-looking gentleman of about forty, with spectacles." When he, in turn, learns that she is no tall ice princess, but rather "quite small," "red hair," and finally "nose turns up, with freckles" he can no longer contain himself. He offers to meet her at the restaurant in fifteen minutes - "make it ten," she breathed.
Ah, love at second sight.
Simple examples of this kind of robot already exist; see the PEBBLES teleconferencing robot for homebound school children and the InTouch medical rounding robot for doctors.
In case you don't think that robots could look enough like people to fool you (at least temporarily), take a look at Repliee Q1.
Compare also to the rolov from the 1953 story Roll out the Rolov! by Christopher Anvil. Compare to eccentric projection from The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr..
Compare also to the manufactured wife from A Wife Manufactured to Order (1895) by Alice W. Fuller, the
robotess from R.U.R. (1920) by Karel Capek, the
psychophonic nurse from The Psychophonic Nurse (1928) by David H. Keller, the
mechanical bride from The Mechanical Bride (1954) by Fritz Leiber, the
maid-robot from The Midas Plague (1954) by Frederik Pohl and the
Nanny from Nanny (1955) by Philip K. Dick.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Robot and the Lady
More Ideas
and Technology by Manly Wade Wellman
Tech news articles related to The Robot and the Lady
Tech news articles related to works by Manly Wade Wellman
Teleoperated Robot Surrogate-related
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- DARPA Avatar Program Coming, But Will Soldiers Want To?
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- Unusual Twist On Woman Dates Robot
- Inbiodroid Prometheus 2.0 Telepresence Avatar Robot
| SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits |
| Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots |
| What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots? |
| SpiRobs Soft Spiral Robotic Arm |
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'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
