This newsletter is short, because I’ve been traveling. Coming up very soon: Pieces on robots and gender, robots and war, and the connection between the way we see robots at work and the way we see actors on stage. See you next week!
News This Week
That Musky Feeling: If anyone in robotics takes Elon Musk’s announcement of an upcoming humanoid robot seriously, please let me know. I’ll be surprised to meet them. To me the main interest in this announcement (an arresting visual, plus platitudes about what robots are for, and why some should be shaped like people) is that skepticism wasn’t confined to technical folks. Instead, we civilians seem to have caught on to the emptiness of “it will be here any day now” announcements from this source. For example, see Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal here. Or CNN’s Matt McFarland here, pointing out that Musk’s robot, at the moment, is “a guy in a suit.”
Afghan girls: Members of the Afghan girls robotics team, desperate to escape a regime that’s bent on denying women education and opportunity, are safe in Qatar, Kim Bellware reports in The Washington Post. If you want to contribute to these teen-agers’ further education, you can do so here.
Intel unplugs RealSense: Intel is “winding down” its RealSense line, which includes cameras and LiDAR sensors that many companies and researchers have used. Intel has created confusion about what exactly it’s doing and planning. Steve Crowe has the latest.
Tele-operators pass their driving test: This doesn’t seem like it ought to be news, but apparently no tele-operator of remote vehicles has ever taken a standard driving-school exam with such a vehicle — until this summer, when employees of the Estonian startup Cleveron passed such a test with the company’s tele-operated semi-autonomous vehicles.
Do Not Hold Your Breath Waiting for the Muskbot
I smell a musk rat.