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  • Studying the creation of life. A scientist adjusts equipment during a re-run of the Miller-Urey experiment into the origin of life. A flask containing a mixture of water, hydrogen, methane and ammonia has an electric field applied across it. A ultra-violet laser is used to illuminate the mixture and to stimulate an electrical discharge in the mixture. This experiment, devised first by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in 1952, produces a mixture of 'pre-biotic' chemicals such as amino acids. It is suggested that the roots of life on Earth rest in prehistoric, global versions of this process. Photographed at the NASA Ames Research Center, California. MODEL RELEASED 1992.
    USA_SCI_LIG_44_xs.jpg
  • Mermaid sand sculpture on the beach at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. MODEL RELEASED.
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  • Mermaid sand sculpture on the beach at Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. MODEL RELEASED.
    USA_030617_005_x.jpg
  • Nano / Micro Technology: Eric Drexler. Portrait of US nanotechnologist and author Eric Drexler. Drexler developed the concept of nanotechnology in his books The Engines of Creation and Nanosystems. Model Released [2002]
    USA_SCI_NANO_01_xs.jpg
  • In the East Bay suburb of Walnut Creek, near San Francisco, Will Wright and family collectively in their garage preparing their creation for "Robot Wars"(daughter Cassidy 11, nephew Patrick 14, and Will). Later that week, in a battle pit ringed by six-foot sheets of bulletproof glass and a sellout crowd, radio-controlled gladiators battle their robots to the mechanical death. Will Wright developed the Sims software games.
    Usa_rs_713_xs.jpg
  • Harold Cohen, former director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), is the author of the celebrated AARON program, an ongoing research effort in autonomous machine (art making) intelligence. Cohen is seen looking at his creation, a robot "artist" that painted the picture in the background. California, USA
    Usa_rs_700_120_xs.jpg
  • According to Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University, advanced manufacturing techniques will enable the creation of machines that will far surpass the dexterity of conventional mechanical manipulators and even human hands. Equipped with molecule-sized "nano-fingers," these devices will be able to create any physical structure, atom by atom. Pittsburgh, PA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 33.
    USA_rs_330_qxxs.jpg
  • Leaning over the glass-topped workbench in the spare bedroom of his Los Alamos, NM condominium, where he builds most of his robot creatures, Mark Tilden shines a flashlight on what will become the head of Nito 1.0. Many of the components scattered over his desk are simple, cheap, and (by contemporary standards) primitive; many are ripped from junked tape decks, cameras, and VCRs. Nito will be Tilden's most ambitious creation yet. (The name stands for "Neural Implementation of a Torso Organism.") When complete, he says, this easily built machine should interact in a simianlike fashion in its world. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 121..
    USA_rs_212_qxxs.jpg
  • Researchers adjust the mechanism of WE-3RIII, Waseda University's head robot, after it accidentally whiplashed into its own wires. In a situation all too familiar to robotics researchers, Atsuo Takanishi ( hand on right) is trying to make his creation work. His research team's robot, WE-3RIII (Waseda Eye Number 3 Refined Version III) can follow a light with its digital-camera eyes, moving its head if needed. In the laboratory the robot worked perfectly, its movements almost disconcertingly lifelike. But while being installed at a robot exhibit in Tokyo, WE-3RIII inexplicably and violently threw back its head, tearing apart its own wiring. Now Takanishi and one of his students (hand on left) are puzzling over the problem and will solve it only in the early hours of the morning before the exhibit opened. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 233.
    Japan_JAP_rs_59_qxxs.jpg
  • Nano / Micro Technology: Eric Drexler. Portrait of US nanotechnologist and author Eric Drexler. He is seated in front of a computer simulation of a diamondoid molecular bearing model of a robot he designed. This nanotechnology robot is so tiny it is made up of a precise number of atoms (orange and grey spheres). Although still on the frontiers of science, a robot like this may one day assemble molecules one-by-one, eat up pollutants, function as computers the size of a virus, or patrol the human body in search of cancer tumors. Eric Drexler developed the concept of nanotechnology in his books The Engines of Creation and Nanosystems. Model Released [1996]
    USA_SCI_NANO_03_120_xs.jpg
  • David Barrett, who constructed the original RoboTuna at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, looks down at his creation, which now is displayed in an exhibit case at the Hart Nautical Museum at MIT, Cambridge, MA.
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  • Roboticist Rodney Brooks of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory shares a slinky moment with his creation, Cog (short for cognitive), the robot he has been developing since 1993. Brooks is less concerned with making it mobile than with creating a system that will let the robot reliably tell the difference between static and social objects; for instance a rock and a person. In the resolution of such apparently simple distinctions, Brooks suggests, is a key to understanding at least one type of human learning. Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 62-63.
    USA_rs_5A_120_qxxs.jpg
  • Sweet Lips the robot guide takes visitors through the Hall of North American Wildlife, near the Dinosaur Hall in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA. Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Illah R. Nourbakhsh's creation draws children like a pied piper by speaking and playing informational videos on its screen. It navigates autonomously, using a locator system that detects colored squares mounted high on the wall. A color camera and scores of sonar, infrared, and touch sensors prevent Sweet Lips from crashing into museum displays or museum visitors. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 220-221.
    USA_rs_104_qxxs.jpg
  • In a situation all too familiar to robotics researchers, Atsuo Takanishi (on right) is trying to make his creation work. His research team's robot, WE-3RIII (Waseda Eye Number 3 Refined Version III) can follow a light with its digital-camera eyes, moving its head if needed. In the laboratory the robot worked perfectly, its movements almost disconcertingly lifelike. But while being installed at a robot exhibit in Tokyo, WE-3RIII inexplicably and violently threw back its head, tearing apart its own wiring. Now Takanishi and one of his students are puzzling over the problem and will solve it only in the early hours of the morning before the exhibit opened. Japan.From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 40-41..
    Japan_JAP_rs_12_qxxs.jpg
  • Rodney Brooks of MIT (with the latest incarnation of Cog, his humanoid robot) believes it likely that robots can achieve humanlike intelligence and consciousness. But when that happens, he says, it will be unethical to have them work for us; we shouldn't treat our creations as our slaves. I think we're a long way from having to face it, but the landscape is going to be so unimaginable that it's hard to say sensible things." MIT, Cambridge, MA. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 25.
    USA_rs_457_qxxs.jpg
  • In a years-long quest, students at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan are constantly tweaking the programming of WABIAN R-II in the hope of making the heavy, two-meter-tall machine walk as easily as a human being. WABIAN sways from side to side as it walks, but its builders are not discouraged by its imperfections: walking in a straight line, which humans can do without thinking, in fact requires coordinated movements of such fantastic complexity that researchers are pleased if their creations can walk at all. Indeed, researchers built the robot partly to help themselves understand the physics of locomotion. It took decades of work to bring WABIAN to its present state: its first ancestor was built in 1972. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 14.
    Japan_JAP_rs_229_qxxs.jpg
  • Looming out of the shadows in the Humanoid Research Lab of Tokyo's Waseda University, WABIAN-RII is capable of walking and even dancing. WABIAN sways from side to side as it walks, but its builders are not discouraged by its imperfections: walking in a straight line, which humans can do without thinking, in fact requires coordinated movements of such fantastic complexity that researchers are pleased if their creations can walk at all. Indeed, researchers built the robot partly to help themselves understand the physics of locomotion. It took decades of work to bring WABIAN to its present state: its first ancestor was built in 1972. Japan. From the book Robo sapiens: Evolution of a New Species, page 36.
    Japan_JAP_rs_230_qxxs.jpg

Peter Menzel Photography

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