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This is hilarious to watch.
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In the movie Terminator, and in the current television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the world is invaded by robots from the future. These robots can change shape and appearance as necessary. And if you are lucky enough to "kill" one of these robots, even if you dissolve them in acid, then they find a way to pull themselves together and reassemble themselves.
The Modular Robotics Lab (ModLab), at the University of Pennsylvania is doing research on "modular robots" that have similar properties. The robots consist of small modules that can fit together in different ways, and change configuration as necessary. They're sometimes even able to repair themselves.
One of the projects is a robot that can reassemble itself after an explosion.
The following video shows the robot reassembling itself after being kicked to pieces:
If you saw the the 2004 movie I, Robot, then you may recall that intelligent robots were living side by side with human beings. That was a movie, but the technology will soon become quite real.
At some point, probably some time in the late 2020s, computers will be intelligent enough so that they'll be responsible for their own research and development as necessary to invent new, more powerful versions of themselves (although time travel as in Terminator will still be impossible).
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At this point, known as the Singularity, computers will quickly become so much more intelligent than humans that they'll displace humans as the major "species" on earth. Whether the human race will survive long after 2030 is not known, and is impossible to predict.
The development of a robot that can reassemble itself after an
explosion, or other catastrophic event, is just one more step on the
road to the Singularity.
(1-Sep-2008)
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