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"In my mind I have gone all over the universe, which may make it less important for me to make piddling little trips... I did enjoy seeing Stonehenge. It looked exactly the way I thought it would look."
- Isaac Asimov
 |
| Ironing Robot | ||
| A robot that smooths the wrinkles out of clothing. |
Future Russians use natural plant fibers to recreate what their "прабабушки" (great-grandmothers) wore.
But, there was a problem. Unlike future clothing, the vintage clothing wrinkled and somehow needed to be smoothed. How could this be accomplished? Better call "Бытовых Автоматов" - Household Automata!
| New clothes had to be protected, periodically clean, wash and dry. Build special base washing and cleaning proved unsustainable, and offered to set up production plants portable washing machines. But after washing and drying clothes had to be smooth - free from fine lines and wrinkles ...
Here plant Household Automata and received an urgent task to develop and set up production units of BTR - "бытовые тканевые разглаживатели " (a household fabric smoother). |
| From Iron (утюг),
by Mikhail Mikheev. Published by Not Known in 1972 Additional resources -
|
Senior designer Rodia Semenova submits one design after another; the incredible progress of Russian science causes each to be labeled as insufficiently modern. First, the heating element is replaced by "microgenerators"; then, the microgenerators are discarded in favor of elements of colliding isotopes!
Eventually (*spoiler alert!) it appears that his tough old grandmother had the solution all along - and it was made of cast iron.
This story comes from a collection called "Cute Robots", good luck getting a copy of that, let alone a translation!
(Cute Robots by Mikhail Mikheev)
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'The car surged and lifted, clearing its top by a negligible margin.'
Science fiction authors are serious about sleep, too.
'I had explained," said Nessus, "that our civilisation was dying in its own waste heat.'
'Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? - any work a human being does around a house.'
SF writers have thought about this since the 19th century.
There's a lesson in this for neural net AI engineers everywhere.
