23 April 2009
Spirit and Opportunity in the Robot Hall of Fame
Posted by melissa
On Tuesday, day 1884 of the Mars Exploration Rover mission, Spirit and Opportunity were inducted into Carnegie Mellon’s Robot Hall of Fame . Who else made the cut? Everyone’s favorite Austrian-accented T-800.
So it’s settled: Spirit and Opportunity are officially as badass as the Terminator.
The fact that they were inducted with along with the floor-cleaning Roomba, however, makes the honor slightly less cool (I mean, that robot really sucks).
Now now!! All this robotic prejudice!! Recall that unlike MER and T-800, Roombas are the most widely available and used robots out there. They brought robotics into the home — for real, instead of just in the research setting or in science fiction. They have also inspired some fascinating research in Human-Robot Interaction too. Not flashy, but they got it where it counts and deserve to be honoured for it. 🙂