Almost Human: Making Robots Think

Science News,  April 21, 2007  

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ALMOST HUMAN: Making Robots Think

LEE GUTKIND

At Carnegie Mellon University, enthusiastic engineers and software designers are creating robots that may someday aid or even replace people in various capacities. Gutkind spent 6 years observing these researchers and their creations, which include devices as seeming frivolous as robot dogs scooting around in the RoboCup soccer competition and as serious as machines in a Defense Department program to create driverless vehicles. Gutkind, editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction, also accompanied the roboticists to one of the most barren places on Earth, Chile's Atacama Desert. In this Marslike environment, a Carnegie Mellon team put the robot Zoe through its paces for NASA. The machine or one like it may someday search for life on the Red Planet and elsewhere. W.W. Norton, 2006, 284 p., hardcover, $25.95.

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