Bender Gets Made
 

Feel free to move this; since it's about robotics I wasn't sure where to put it.

Just saw this story and immediately thought of a real-life Bender mouthing off at the barman for running out of booze to power him up.

http://www.newscientist.com/article....ine-news_rss20

In seriousness, while it may be cool have machines work this way, I think it will be a while before robots use this type of power source. However, it does point to a manner of propulsion that more vaguely resembles "natural" systems, whereby the fuel would need to be channeled deep into the synthetic muscle to generate power (the equivalent of blood), and the heat carefully removed via similar channels filled with coolant.

What unusual applications can you think of for such technology?

We can make a robot Santa! :biggrin:

Ahem....

"He knows when you are sleeping
He knows when you're on the can
He'll hunt you down and blast your
ass from here to Paskistan
Ohhhhh....
You'd better not breathe
You'd better not move
You're better off dead
I am telling you dude
Santa Claus is gunning you down!"

Very cool story though!

So cool it's almost worth reading.

"Your mistletoe is no match for my TOW missile!"

Still, this is somewhat interesting, though a bit light in term of details. I wonder what's the actual reaction time and efficiency for those.

Yeah, they don't mention the speed at which the things cycle, which is pretty damn important, since they can already produce polymer-based (plastic basically) muscles that can react to an electrical stimulus and contract/expand every 30th of a second. Also consider that methanol needs to be stored somewhere safely, and as far as I know, catalysts aren't amazingly stable or long-lived, although any chemistry boffins here are welcome to enlighten me.

I perform over 20 megachecks per second!

Personally, I think that electroactive polymers are the way to go. Some types of these polymers can remain contracted almost indefinitely without drawing power, (Although they have a significant actuation voltage.) and they have much highler levels of achieveable stress and force than any natural muscle.

That's awesome. Quick! Someone make a real life Bender!

Already done:

http://theoinquirer.com/futurama.jpg

WHOO!!

Pretty cool story. Soon, Japanese cyborgs will run by alcohol also.

I always knew that Futurama was a harbinger of things to come; I still remember one of its opening taglines: "You Can't Prove it Won't Happen."

My one disappointment? The reporter, the people who did this, and especially the guy they interviewed, had clearly never heard of Bender and what he stands for. He didn't get so much as a mention!

But does he eat the bottle after drinking the beer?

ANd burp out fire and flush one-eyed monsters down toilets.

I just noticed that there happens to be an article on this stuff in the latest issue of Science. I haven't read it yet, but if anyone is interested in the actual technical details of the whole thing, well, you know where to look.

If we really made a real-life Bender, I would shit my pants. Ha! MUST OWN ONE.

That's amazing. Bender is nothing short of the coolest robot evar.

I think Futurama proves that some such as Hedonism bot or the mafia bot are far cooler. Has anyone sent this to Cohen and his minions? They still love to hear these sorts of stories to claim having come up with the idea first. You might even make it into their audio commentary. :D