Designers Take Robots Out of Human Hands
By ANNE EISENBERG
February 28, 2002
Those battling robots on television may look fierce and formidable, but they are simply the digital successors to the Wizard of Oz, with humans pulling the levers — or joysticks — behind the scenes. It's a lot trickier to create robots that can cope with complicated jobs on their own.
Researchers are working to create just such independent robots, endowing them with enough intelligence and versatility to be, in the jargon of the field, autonomous — able to work out complex problems by computer without help from their creators.
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