Are all our robots going to wind up being soldiers?Wired News reports that, “with the exception of military and space applications, the United States is falling behind Europe and Asia in robotics research, according to an international study.“
Unlike many other developed countries, the United States lacks a coordinated strategy to cultivate robotics development… Robotics research funding has been dropping in the United States for at least the last decade, with [the National Science Foundation’s] funding now at less than $10 million per year.
In contrast, he said Japan’s government will spend nearly $100 million in 2005. And over the next three years, Europe plans to spend nearly $100 million on a new program called Advanced Robotics. South Korea, meanwhile, spends $80 million on robotics research annually.
THERE’S MORE: If you’ve got a ‘bot that can dig up moon dirt, NASA has a quarter-million bucks for you.
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U.S. Lags in Civilian Bots
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Coordinated strategy? National Science Foundation spending? International study?? Huh. Maybe civilian robotics technology development should be privately funded, like most other technological development. First of all, government funding would drive out private funding. Second, a lack of Gov’t funding doesn’t automatically translate into “falling behind”, unless of course what we are falling behind is cushy phoney-baloney government jobs.
I don’t think scientists working on research grants would say they have cushy phoney-baloney jobs. Also its probably more difficult to privately fund research that won’t immediately bring practical results. There is a huge benefit to allowing smart people to do open ended research without some sort of product in mind — especially as the trend across the industry is to limit research to product development (see: Bell Labs, IBM, Xerox, GE, etc…)
Bots are mainly for use in space. Space invests in human exploration because they get paid more and there are more jobs. We are going to the moon to build a human base for, like, 500 billion or something when we could build bots to terra form Mars in about a year and run around like we’re on earth: its too cheap.
Anyone who sends bots to mars for terra forming will probably win, but, then again, I think everybody’s ‘bots’ crashed or disappeared with the exception of the US Mars landers.
i thought we had a thing about Mars. I guess Bush changed his mind for the moon.