Who killed the robot dog?

George Jason did it Don’t want his family to adopt a dog.The patriarch of the futuristic family in the 1960s comics The Jasons, The apartment living in the era of cars and sky city is incompatible with animals that need regular walks and grooming, so he bought an electronic dog named “Lectronimo”, which does not need to be fed, and even attacks thieves. In the match between Astro (basically the future Scooby-Doo) and the robot dog,’Lectronimo performed all the classic dog tasks, but with zero personality. This machine eventually turned into a lot of ridiculous equipment, making the Jasons and the audience laugh. Robots are not a threat, they are stupid.

Jay Telotte, professor emeritus of the School of Literature, Media and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that this is what we imagined robot dogs and general animals for most of the 20th century.Disney 1927 cartoons “Mechanical Cow” Imagine a robotic cow with wheels, holding a broom, sliding its tail, and delivering milk to an animal friend.The worst-case scenario is that your mechanical farm may get out of control, just like a cartoon in the 1930s “Technical Racket” But even so, robot animals pose no real threat to their biological counterparts. “In fact, many of the’animals’ images in movies and television over the years have appeared in cartoon and comic narratives,” Trotter said. “The laughter they produce usually assures us that they are not really dangerous. “The same is true for most of the countless robot dogs in popular culture over the years, from Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, to the robot dog series named K9 in “Doctor Who”.

However, our nearly 100-year relationship with the robot dog ended in a dystopian way.It seems that every month Boston Dynamics releases another dance video of their robot SPOT. The media’s response is first awe, then fear, and finally a nightly horror editorial about our future. Cruel rules Robot overlord.Although Boston Dynamics clearly prohibits turning their dogs into weapons, Ghost Robotics’ SPUR is currently being tested at various air bases (with various cute potential weapon attachments), and the Chinese company Xiaomi hopes to make it cheaper and in some way Ways to weaken SPOT are more terrible Saibo DogAll of this means that the once robotic dog-an interesting, high-tech future symbol full of incredible, social, artificial life-is dead. How did we get here? Who killed the robot dog?

Our quadrupeds The offspring of the mechanical life, usually called the robot dog, is called an automaton in history. One of the earliest examples of such autonomous machines is “Defecation duck,” was created by the French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739 nearly 300 years ago. This mechanical duck-it seems to eat a little grain, stops, and then quickly excretes the digested grain on the other end-and Many other automata eras are “philosophical experiments, trying to discern which aspects of living beings can be copied in machines, to what extent, and to what extent this copying might reveal their natural themes,” wrote Stanford University History Jessica Reskin.

Of course, the duck that defecates is an extremely strange and serious fraud, pre-loaded with feces-like substances. However, the preoccupation of determining which aspects of life were purely mechanical was a priority for the major intellectuals at the time, and even inspired the use of soft, lightweight materials (such as leather) when constructing another biological model: the artificial hand, which was previously made of metal. . Even today, biologists build robotic models of their animal objects to better understand how they move. Like many of its mechanical brothers, most of the robot dog’s life is the practice of recreating beloved pets, perhaps even subconsciously, to understand which aspects of living things are only mechanical and which aspects are organic. The appearance and behavior of a robot dog must be enough to resemble a dog, but what makes a dog a dog?

American manufacturing company Westinghouse Electric introduced Sparko, possibly the first electric dog, at the New York World’s Fair in 1940. This 65-pound metal dog is the companion of the company’s electric man Elektro. (the term robot It didn’t become popular until around the middle of the 20th century. ) The most interesting thing about these two propaganda robots is that they seem to be autonomous: the light stimulus triggers their sequence of actions. In fact, it is so effective that Sparko’s sensors apparently affect the lights of passing vehicles, causing it Accelerate into oncoming trafficAs part of the activities to help sell washing machines, Sparko and Elektro represent the engineering strength of Westinghouse Electric, but they are also one of the first attempts to turn science fiction into reality and laid the foundation for an imagined future full of robots. The idea that robots can also be interesting partners throughout the 20th century.

When AIBO-the typical robotic dog created by Sony-first appeared in the early 2000s, it was its artificial intelligence that made it extraordinary. Second-generation advertising AIBO promises “intelligent entertainment” that imitates free will and personality. AIBO’s learning ability makes each dog at least a little unique, easier to be considered special, and easier to be loved. It is their AI that makes them like dogs: naughty, curious, and occasionally disobedient. When I was 10 years old, I walked into FAO Schwarz in New York in 2001 and looked at the pink ball on the AIBO head on the display. Something in these small works tore my heartstrings-even though I and the machine There is a rift that cannot be bridged, but I still want to try to understand it, to understand it. I want to love a robot dog.