Like most red-blooded geeks, I've always wanted a robot.
I'm not sure what I would actually do with a mechanical man if I had one - it's not like I have tons of manual labour that needs doing or anything - but I still want a robot like promised in Star Trek, Star Wars and other science fiction movies that don't have "Star" in the title.
We've been dreaming about mechanized servants forever, and yet the closest any of us can get to having a real robot in our homes today is some vacuum cleaner thing that looks like a bathroom scale run amok.
Sure, scientists have been working on prototypes for human-like robots to perform reception or information booth-type tasks, but so far the results have been more creepy than realistic. The most recent automatons I've seen still move in unsettling jerky ways, and their mouths never quite synch up with the audio coming out.
It's sad but we still haven't really come that far from what you see at an old Disney theme ride in developing a mechanical person that doesn't look like a big puppet.
Still, some progress is being made on the ol' robot front.
This past week the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unveiled a headless, robotic four-legged "cheetah" that set new land speed records.
When I first read the story, I couldn't help wondering why someone would want to invent a robot cheetah.
Is there perhaps a problem somewhere with too many mechanical gazelles?
Are we missing automated animals for a Disney Noah's Ark ride?
Nope, DARPA officials said the project was part of efforts to develop robots designed to "more effectively assist war fighters across a greater range of missions."
So, they're essentially making scary cheetah robots that can run really fast and - to quote DARPA - "zigzag to chase and evade" on the battlefield.
OK, I don't know about anyone else, but if I'm in a war and I hear that the other side has record-breaking fast cheetah robots that hunt you down well, I'm waving a little white flag right then and there.
Weren't those things in the future world of the Terminator movies?
I'm totally going to have nightmares tonight.
But that has always been the way with technology.
Things usually get developed for the army, war and the battlefield first, before being adapted for civilian life.
The Internet is a perfect example of a technology originally created for military use that made a huge impact on everyone's life when it was adapted to the civilian world.
So, for now all the money in robotics is being pumped into military development for things like the hunter-killer cheetah, prison guard and riot control robots, and other automatons designed to go into dangerous situations and kill people thoughtlessly.
However, in time these designs and developments will trickle into the mainstream and I may eventually realize my dream of having my very own home robot.
In the meantime, maybe I should start figuring out what I would make it do.
Perhaps it'll walk my robot cheetah.
