Robotics is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. Delving into the world of robotic bodies and artificial intelligence, one is amazed at how creepy this area of u200bu200bscience can be. CHIP has put together a selection of robots that can scare you with just their appearance.
BigDog: forest monster
The development of this machine has been going on since the end of the 2000s, and it is financed by the US Defense Research Agency. Actually, Boston Dynamics’ BigDog robot is a transporter capable of carrying heavy loads over rough terrain, which definitely has its uses in the military.
But in promotional videos, which are usually filmed in the forest, the car looks like a skeletal haze moving on four bones. Or as a creepy (and very fast!) beast, in which only the lower half of the body is visible. What if the top one is simply invisible, but is already ready to gobble you up?
Kongsberg: underwater kite
Another zoomorphic monster was invented by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Maritime together with the oil concern Statoil. This robot is designed to inspect underwater oil pipelines, but it can also have many other useful applications – for example, in archeology, mapping and other scientific fields.
Another thing is that the car looks like an old pirate’s nightmare – an underwater snake with a glowing “eye” – a searchlight. The robot is huge, silent and nimble, like an eel (the design allows it to squeeze into hard-to-reach places and explore surfaces with an accuracy of a centimeter). This is all, of course, useful, but why do you immediately imagine how this creature wrapped around you and strangles you?
Robot FEDOR
The FEDOR robot, also known as the Skybot F-850, was developed by the domestic NPO Android Technology back in 2014. In 2018, this anthropomorphic character began to maintain “his” accounts in social networks, and on August 22, 2019 he was launched into space. His actions were not always successful, but this is only a prototype – Roscosmos does not give up on the idea of developing such robots, making them smarter and more capable.
It would seem that there is nothing terrible in a harmless android, which (in theory) will serve for good purposes: work in outer space and on board the ISS, and later – to control spacecraft. But doesn’t that sound like the beginning of a horror movie? Mankind creates a humanoid robot, launches it into space, saws hundreds of memes about its slowness and does not notice how, in a couple of years, this mutated C3PO creates its own star fleet and enslaves the galaxy. Of course, these are all jokes, but in every joke there is Fedor’s share.
Motormouth KTR-5: talking mouth
In fact, the Motormouth Robot KTR-5 is an invention created solely for good purposes. This is a robot simulator for the hearing impaired and people with an absolute hearing impairment, which teaches them to read lips. To do this, the robot makes different sounds and shows how the human facial muscles move.
But a mouth with a nose, hanging in the air separately from the whole body and making some kind of groans with a mechanical voice – these are pure inhabitants of a haunted house! It seems that the nasal mouth will now come unstuck from its stand and begin to fly around the room, yelling in the ear of everyone present.
CB2: child with wires in the back
This robot was created in Japan for scientific purposes. The CB2 robot mimics the movements, perceptions and thinking of a two-year-old child. It was designed to better understand how children perceive the world around them and learn to live in it.
True, instead of a cute rosy-cheeked doll, artificial intelligence was hidden in a gray-skinned 120-centimeter creature with bulging eyes and wires growing from somewhere in the back of the neck (everyone remembered The Matrix and shuddered). Given the movements of the two-year-old – awkward and haphazard – the robot looks like the unfortunate result of some kind of inhuman experiments on children. See for yourself.
Mesmer 2.0: smiling skeleton
Prototypes of humanoid robots generally look creepy when the artificial skin is removed from them. If Motormouth is a mouth and nose without a person, then Mesmer 2.0 is a very smiling skeleton without skin and limbs. But with lively eyes (with iris and red streaks) and real false teeth.
This is a prototype of another social robot from Engineered Art, which has already become famous for creating a robot with a holographic face that reacts to the facial expressions of the person who communicates with it. Mesmer 2.0 also has its own creepy mechanical facial expressions, he shakes his head and moves his jaws – just some kind of predatory smile of death. See for yourself, but consider that we have warned you.
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