One of the recurring themes in Isaac Asimov’s short stories about robots is that human beings, for the most part, pretty much hated robots with any level of human intelligence – which was dubbed the “Frankenstein Complex.”
In Isaac Asimov short story “That Thou Art Mindful of Him”, two robots that were designed to think more intuitively were given the task of coming up with a way acclimating humans to robots in order to diminish the “Frankenstein Complex” so that robots could be sold on Earth. Their solution? Build animal robots with signficiantly less intelligence in order to acclimate people to them.
Of course, the future didn’t turn out the way most science fiction authors expected, but it’s nonetheless true that Asimov’s ideas have been pretty influential to roboticists. Asimov actually coined the term ‘robotics’… So it’s always cool to see some of those ideas in practice. In particular, the company Festo has recently unveiled its latest invention – a robot bird that beautifully mimics avian flight.
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