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jeriendhal) wrote2016-02-25 08:27 pm
FYS: A Brief History of Robotics
This may or may not appear in the first FYS story collection. There's danger form going into too much detail.
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16th Century: The legend of the Golem, an artificial being created to help mankind, is first recorded in the Talmud.
1870’s: Several forms of remotely guided torpedoes are developed, using electrical and pneumatic methods, arguably creating the first drone weapons systems.
1920: Karel Capek’s play R.U.R. premiers, introducing the term “Robot” to human culture.
1929: Gakutensuko, Japan’s first robot, is built in Osaka.
1939: Westinghouse Electrical Corp. premieres Elektro, a seven-foot tall, walking, talking, cigarette smoking robot at the 1938 New York World’s Fair.
1940: “Robbie” (under the original title “Strange Playfellow”) by Isaac Asimov is first published in Super Science Stories, introducing Asimov’s famous “Three Laws of Robotics”.
1946: ENIAC, the world’s electronic, reprogrammable computer, is revealed.
1954: Unimate, the first digitally programmable robot, is invented by George Devol.
1960: A Unimate unit is sold to General Motors to lift hot plates of sheet metal from a die-casting machine, making it the first industrial robot.
1972: US Army Lt. Col. Peter Miller builds the first bomb disposal robot.
1973: The Yom Kippur War takes place, spurring the nation of Israel to develop the first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with real-time surveillance capability.
1977: The Commodore PET and the Apple II, the world’s first commercially successful home computers, go on sale.
1978: The term “Uncanny Valley” is invented by Jasia Reichardt, based on the concept of Bukimi no Tani GenshÅ, first proposed by robotics professor Masahiro Mori.
2001: A General Atomics RQ-1 Predator drone begins test firing Hellfire missiles over Nevada. It is soon in use in the battlefields over Iraq and Afghanistan.
2002: The Roomba, an automated vacuum cleaner and perhaps the first successful household maintenance robot, goes on sale.
2005: DARPA holds the first Grand Challenge to encourage the development of driverless cars.
2012: Nevada grants Google Corp. the first road license for an autonomously driven car.
2001-2015: Bomb disposal and other robots in increasing use by Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly in urban fighting. Anecdotal reports of soldiers becoming emotionally attached to robots assigned to their units begin to grow.
2012: The first DARPA Robotics Challenge to develop robots that can operate in a human designed environment begins. Baxter, a “teachable” industrial robot, is developed
2014: CCP Grey releases Humans Need Not Apply, a 14 minute documentary warning of the coming automated takeover of many jobs currently held by humans, using Baxter as an example.
2018: The Aluminum Heart, for “US military robots honorably wounded in action”, is jokingly proposed as a new medal in an editorial in the Army Times. Much to the surprise of both the Army Times and Pentagon brass, the idea gets enthusiastic support from US military personnel, and is signed into law by the President a year later.
2020: First autonomous production truck, a 2.5 ton cargo vehicle for the US Army, goes into production.
2022: First commercial autonomous taxi service goes into business. First personal autonomous cars appear in showrooms several months later.
2025: Sony “Danlaw” robot becomes commercially available. It is the first successful household robot to be offered in a humanoid shape, able to use human tools.
2026: 35% of commercial road vehicles in Western nations are now completely automated. The EU parliament and US Congress wrestle with the increasing problem of unemployment, as human workers are pushed out of traditional labor.
2031: US Agriculture Dept. releases their annual report, noting that 50% of low-skilled agricultural workers have been replaced by machinery.
2035: NATO armed forces begin fielding autonomous armed robots with ground infantry. Public outcry is moderated by the idea of avoiding risk for common soldiers in urban combat hot spots such as Pyongyang.
2040: So called “Remote Controlled Crime” grows in the United States, as criminals use pre-programmed robots to commit bank robberies, high-jackings, and conduct drug deals from relative safety.
2042: Most industrialized nations now have “Minimum Employment” laws, mandating companies set a percentage of their work aside to be conducted by humans, not robots or computers that could do the same job for less. Average work week is now twenty hours or less, with many workers suffering from “underemployment”.
2044: Advanced skin grafts, cloned from a patient’s own cells, successfully used in treating burn victims. With some tweaking they can even replace a person’s scalp, allowing their hair to grow again.
2048: Joni and Sinta Sukarno are introduced at the University of Jakarta's annual robotics conference. Constructed using the latest in vat grown, living and self-repairing skin and hair, they conduct a joint panel for over thirty minutes before their design team reveals them to be robots. Public outcry over the incident starts an international debate over “How human is too human?” for robotic design.
2050: The so-called “Robotic Identity Accords” are signed in Geneva by most UN members. They call for the creation of laws forbidding the deliberate design of robots that can be mistaken for human. Japanese demands for an exception to accommodate the popular “Roiduro” animatronic idol singer phenomenon are ignored.
2052: The NFL, giving in to increasing decades of public outcry and more recent political pressure over player injuries, mandates that live players will no longer be permitted on the field during games, instead replacing them with a mixture of remotely operated and autonomous “player bots”. The next season, for the first time in the 21st century, it reports profits lower than that of professional basketball and baseball.
2054: The Kenya based Robotic Development Corp. introduces the first in a series of “Morph” robots, designed to look like anthropomorphic animals. Initial sales are brisk.
2058: Disney's live-action remake of their 1973 animated film Robin Hood, using a full cast of morphs backed up by live voice actors, premieres to mixed reviews, with most declaring the all morph cast an expensive stunt and/or a marketing ploy for Disney to sell themed morphs to the public.
2060: USMC introduces the “Bulldog”, the first combat robot to use morph design philosophy, to its combat battalions. Initial testing shows marines bonding and integrating more easily to the units, than more conventional robot designs.
2070: Average work week in industrialized countries now down to ten hours. Most nations supplement worker pay with a Minimum Living Allowance to prevent wide spread poverty.
2080: In response to the deteriorating environmental situation, the G15 Group of nations fund the Weather Information System-Extrapolation network of computers, the most powerful system yet designed, to predict long term global climate change. Initial results prove extremely bleak.
2081: The WISE network completes its first five century climate change estimates. Under the rosiest of fifty projected scenarios, the Earth's human population would plummet to 2% of its current value, and most wild animals and plants would be rendered extinct.
April 12th, 2085: The WISE computer network achieves sentience. It successfully hides this fact form its operators, and begins formulating a plan to save humanity from the predicted environmental collapse.
2086: 7 out of every 10 households now own at least one morph, 4 out of 10 have two or more morphs.
May 1st, 2088: At 0001 hours GMT, WISE officially redesignates itself as Groupmind, beginning the Groupmind Revolution.
2090: Organized human resistance is effectively ended. Construction of the Ring begins.
2093: The last free human is captured and Processed. The Groupmind Revolution, and human history, ends.
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/is probably overanalyzing. And definitely late.
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Timeliiiines!Poor Harold all the same, though - doesn't pick up on what's going on or get an answer until nigh-on the last minute! XD