If you’ve gotten the Jan ’06 issue of Wired, you’ve seen that our favorite creepy robot, Albert Hubo, made the cover. The cover story is the “50 Best Bots Ever.” It’s a disappointing piece of fluff that’s got little to do with informing people on real world progress in real world robotics. First off, there are 15 fictional robots in the list. What is the criteria here? Most popular? Ceratinly not. Commander Data and the B9 from Lost in Space are not here. Most influential in real-world robotics? That doesn’t appear to be the case either. Cool factor? Well, there’s no Bender from Futurama or Rosie from the Jetsons.
More significantly, there’s no mention of BEAM robotics anywhere, no Robosapien, no Kismet, no COG, no DaVinci cart, no MyRealBaby, no Furbie, no Mecho-Gecko, no HelpMate, no swarm bots, no battlebots, no Heathkit Hero. In the grand scheme of robot evolution, aren’t all of these more important than Astroboy and Gort from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”?