Man Attempts to Build Scarlett Johansson Robot - Goes Horribly Wrong

[easyt65]

Ricky Ma has dreamed of designing a humanoid since he was little after becoming obsessed with robots and animation. After years he had finally acquired the 3-D Printer and other equipment needed to build his life-like model of Scarlett Johansson. Ma reportedly loaded the program from the files located on his desk, began the process, then went home for the evening, expecting to find 'Scarlett Johansson' waiting for him when he got in the next morning. Something, however, had gone TERRIBLY wrong.

Ma had expected to see THIS:

What Ma found waiting on him instead was THIS:




As it turns out, one of Ma's colleagues had replaced the computerized schematics for Johansson with those of Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately Ma was not informed of this April Fool's Day prank before he could gouge his own eyes out and throw himself out of his 32nd floor office window.

Man builds scarily lifelike 'Scarlett Johansson' robot from scratch

(Happy April Fool's Day, all. )

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd's job atta dry cleanery got replaced by a robot dat wrings farts outta shirt-tails...

Humans Seek New Skills as Robots 'Eat' Millions of Manufacturing Jobs
August 31, 2016 — Millions of workers in the U.S. alone are expected to face growing competition as computerized autonomous vehicles start to perform taxi and truck driving jobs.

While the takeover of trucking by computerized robots is considered inevitable, how soon it will happen is a matter of debate. Some say it will take years to fully develop. Others predict it will happen much sooner. Massive, autonomous mining trucks move giant loads of earth and ore in Australia and elsewhere. The trucks are able to handle the very limited traffic seen in the mine, but the chaos of the open road will be a bigger challenge. The head of engineering for the American Trucking Association, Ted Scott, says it will take time to work out regulations, testing and public acceptance. “With the technology that is there, we can take the driver out of the vehicle. We aren’t gonna do that for a long time."

More automation, fewer people on the production line.​

Volvo and Uber have announced a plan to test self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, and Ford recently announced a joint research effort with a Chinese company to push self-driving vehicle technology forward. Audi and others are testing robot drivers in ever more complex environments, including Audi's race up a large American mountain and big city traffic. A former official of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Chan Leiu, says these tests may speed things up: "We are not that far from the ultimate vision of a completely self-driving car." Leiu says autonomous vehicles literally put people’s lives in the hands of robots. But that may be a good thing because he says 94 percent of accidents are caused by people who are tired, drunk, texting, or making other mistakes. This could save tens of thousands of lives, according to Notre Dame professor Tim Carone. "There's a journey to get there, but the journey ends with (an) order of magnitude decrease in (the) number of accidents, number (of) fatalities, number of injuries."

Human workers

Truck drivers, such as 16-year road veteran Rogelio Rada, think it will be quite a while before robots take their jobs. “Robots can only do so much...there’s issues I believe that only a person can handle.“ His colleague, Barry Waters, thinks it will be "probably 20-30 years down the road." Trucking employs as much as one percent of the U.S. population. The potential for changes in the industry follow decades of mostly declining human employment in U.S. manufacturing. The trend is evident in the auto industry, which sold a record number of vehicles in 2015, but did so with far fewer workers than it once employed. Early in the age of autos, it took throngs of workers to build cars like the Model-T. Historic film shows waves of workers spilling out of factories at the end of their shift, where they did much of the work by hand with muscle power.

Competitive pressures forced manufacturers of all kinds to seek ever more efficient, less labor-intensive and cheaper ways to make products. Current video shows far fewer people on the factory floor as powerful robots weld, paint and preform other tasks, often with greater precision than their human predecessors. That is bad news for millions of workers like Holly Stover who was laid off after years of work for steel firms. “I hope I'll end up working a good, a decent job, making a decent living.” With help from an employment counselor, Stover is exploring new kinds of work and considering school to update skills. Georgetown University workforce expert Anthony Carnavale says more industrial robots means fewer humans have high-paying jobs on production lines. "Probably 75 percent of the job loss is technology-based. Robots, machines in general, are substituting for people.”

New opportunities

See also:

Cattle Herding Robot Takes Over a Dog’s Job
August 31, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Dogs, helicopters and cowboys on horses herd cattle, and now a robot can help with the roundup.

Called SwagBot, the ungainly looking prototype has four metal legs with rubber wheels, topped with a rectangular silver box containing a battery pack. SwagBot is named after the “swagman,” an Australian term meaning someone who travels from farm to farm for work. But this one is electric. The robot, with its waterproof chassis, was tried out on the rough terrain of an Australian cattle station, making it over logs and ditches and through swamps. The cattle ran in front of the robot as it advanced. The scientists at the University of Sydney who developed SwagBot hope cattle, sheep and other animals will figure out what the robot wants them to do. “There have been robots used on cattle stations but they have just been your fixed-axis robotic systems,” said Salah Sukkarieh, a robotics professor who led the project. This is “an omni-directional robot that can move in any direction,” so it’s “more agile.”

The SwagBot, ready to herd some cattle.​

The vast Australian cattle stations are often difficult to access. Located in remote dry areas where the vegetation is sparse, a large amount of land is needed to support the livestock. “We are talking about very large properties,” said Sukkarieh. “Four thousand hectares up to 40,000 hectares for a standard average cattle farm.” And that’s where the remotely controlled, all-wheel drive machine comes in handy. It can zip along up to 20 kilometers per hour on flat land. It can even tow heavy trailers. SwagBot is still a work in progress.

Right now it uses a camera to see the animals, but the researchers are planning to put sensors on it, so instead of relying on periodic checkups from humans, the farmers can monitor the condition of their cattle electronically... especially animals that might be sick or injured, explained Sukkarieh, by determining their body temperature or the way they walk. There also are plans to enable SwagBot to monitor pasture conditions to find out where the grass is most plentiful for the cattle to eat. And, perhaps in areas where crops are being grown, even pulling weeds. The scientists hope SwagBot will be available to the farmers within three years, which means the cattle dog could be replaced by a cattle robot.

Cattle Herding Robot Takes Over a Dog’s Job