The WalkerS2 is a humanoid robot that can charge its battery without human assistance. It can walk for two hours or stand for four hours on a single charge. The battery fully recharges in 90 minutes, and the robot autonomously switches batteries to avoid downtime.
Most of the time when someone says, "That's not creepy at all," they mean that it's creepy. I see this robot doing this essential task and it's really not creepy at all. Self-charging should be the first thing on a roboticist's mind when designing a robot. Little robot vacuum cleaners go home to the charger and jack in, and have done for years. My toothbrush charges itself by my just putting it down where it goes.*
ReplyDelete*In Stargate Universe, explorers have gated/teleported to maroon themselves in a million-year-old self-driving alien starship seeding worlds with stargates /whole galaxies away from Earth/. In examining the ship and learning to survive they're pleased to discover that when they put any battery powered devices on a table and come back and come back for them later they're charged. The alien tech analyzed our tech and did what it recognized was desired. I remember, when I saw that, thinking, /Of course./
And there was a Doctor Who episode from one of the later years where alien people on another planet, who have super-advanced technology including faster-than-light ships and self-building cities (!), have trouble communicating in a plot-critical situation because a character forgot to plug in her phone-thing. The Doctor's companion, a human from our time on Earth, says incredulously, "You still have to charge batteries?!"