Korea to introduce household bots to watch the kids, clean and order pizza

South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communications hopes to introduce a series of internet-connected household robots this October. The bots, according to the Ministry, will be able to perform such household tasks as cleaning, monitoring homes, reading to children, and ordering pizza via the Internet. The Korean government also plans to roll out robocops that can pursue suspects, and multi-legged or wheeled combat bots within the next five years. The bots will receive most of their commands via a wireless Internet connection, keeping costs down to as little as $1,000, and allowing a malevolent AI or evil scientist to completely take over the nation's network of robots at will.

[Mandarin @ Jan 17th 2006 1:42PM]

What about Pleasurebots???

[alex @ Jan 17th 2006 1:46PM]

Of course this goes without saying,



I for one welcome our Korean-made, soon-to-be robotic overlords or malevolent AI or evil scientist, whicheva comes first.

[dave @ Jan 17th 2006 1:49PM]

Wow - what have this world come to.



We are now handing over our parental duties to Robocop!



let's hope not. What's next, Roboman in court trying to adopted your kid because you had no time to care of them.

[Dustin Tarditi @ Jan 17th 2006 1:50PM]

Wait until the vacuum bot gets hacked...

[GeeksAreSexy @ Jan 17th 2006 1:51PM]

Ouch, that's creepy stuff.. I wouldn't feel very comfortable in a society using robots to do everything.. I guess I'll have to adapt myself, this is something that is kindda inevitable unfortunatly.

[How To Be Poor @ Jan 17th 2006 1:59PM]

Is PleasureBot the device made out of a trash can on an SNL skit?

[William @ Jan 17th 2006 2:01PM]

I guess Korean's haven't heard about Skynet.

[CH @ Jan 17th 2006 2:09PM]

PizzaBot needs to be able to handle beer runs.

[The Schizo @ Jan 17th 2006 2:26PM]

PleasureBots have 2 sources, that I know of...



-the crap movie "A.I." that should have been named Pinoccio



-an episode of "Futurama" where Fry discovered that robots can do everything a girlfriend is needed to do.



I need a robot that can file papers and receipts, then do my taxes in april. I support this step towards Skynet 100%.

[G Money @ Jan 17th 2006 2:27PM]

Is John Connor leading the R&D team over there?

[Michael @ Jan 17th 2006 2:33PM]

How will the convenience store kid handle trying to ask the PizzaBot (aka BeerBot) for their proof of age to buy?

Like the bot is buying it to drink for itself?

[MySpace @ Jan 17th 2006 2:44PM]

Muahh-ha-ha!

PizzaBot1.1 will be hacked to grab the beers too...

[Mark @ Jan 17th 2006 2:56PM]

Maybe the Koreans can use these robots to monitor their scientists to make sure they don't fabricate...

[Jvijil @ Jan 17th 2006 4:07PM]

Sound like the Robot era has finally started.

[Parker @ Jan 17th 2006 5:47PM]

So when are we going to discuss Asimov's tough political questions for the age of robots? Will we treat androids as sentient beings with civil rights, or as subservient slavebots?

I didn't think I would see the day we would actually be asking these questions, but it seems that we should probably have some well-defined answers (and laws) ready BEFORE we get dependent on these machines. Better now than later, when it's *really* critical like in all the stories. It's 2006. The time for discussion is today.

[Tom @ Jan 17th 2006 6:44PM]

Their CPU is a neural net processor... a learning computer.

[Toba @ Jan 17th 2006 7:03PM]

All, i have to say is "SHIBA" this is going to be crazy for all of u who know what that means.

[Reytacular @ Jan 17th 2006 7:11PM]

I wanna see some Metal Gears!!! Like the ones in MGS4.

[Echo_ @ Jan 17th 2006 7:37PM]

its fw800 sorry for you macbookpro guys












jk :p

[hobgoblin @ Jan 18th 2006 5:38AM]

wireless internet huh?
time to break out that kit of wlan security tools i guess ;) anyone for a hijack-the-combat-bot challenge?

[Frankenstein Black @ Jan 18th 2006 3:12PM]

(#15) I think the minute it can be proven that they are (1) Self-aware (i.e. who or what am I? what is my purpose?), (2) Understand emotion (but not necessarily be emotional) and (3) can self replicate (i.e. duplicate or create copies/offspring�s), that will be the time to discuss some type of rights. If we don�t do that we will be F�d.

PS we will make the mistake of making them bigger, stronger and smarter than us. To be �complete�, all that will be left is their evolution to the 3 stages above. Once this is achieved it will be curtains for humanity. Damn Battlestar Galactica is a good show ;-p...

[Alexqd3 @ Jan 18th 2006 3:23PM]

What if someone hacks these thing via internet to hurt the children? this is crazy what is this world coming to!!!!!!!!

[steve-o @ Jan 18th 2006 4:50PM]

I've read from somewhere that NK is training a special platoon/brigade (dunno how big) of soldiers to learn ins and outs of C (not C++), Linux and Windows (is C building blocks of these OS's?). These guys will (or are) then be deployed to different countries and secretely tap into governments and industries of any country. Hacking into these robots will be easier than trying to hack pentagon. If the robots become as abundant in homes and battlefield as they say here, the war will be over before it starts. This is really scary falks.

[jlee5050 @ Jan 18th 2006 8:34PM]

This is like an early april fool's joke correct?

[cc om @ Apr 3rd 2006 11:39AM]

If a robot is a slave because its dependent, then so is my toaster (it's not free to act without me doing something to let it). Then again, if my toaster's a slave, then so am I (I'm not free to act without having an environment that lets me). So maybe we should think of slavery as the denial of the freedom to act in your own best interest. Then we have to ask 'do robots have interests'? If a robot preserves itself under normal circumstances, then I think it has an interest in preserving itself. So we need to make the robots as much dependent upon us as we are on them (it's fine if we're slaves of each other). Since all of our achievements are becoming computable, right now I can't think of any more sophisticated scenario than the one in the Matrix (robots farming humans). If anyone can think of a better dependence relation, I'd be very interested;