In Ira Levin’s 1972 The Stepford Wives, a group of husbands conspire to replace their wives with robot duuplicates. The leader of this conspiracy is Dale Coba, a former Disney engineer.
In a case of life imitating art, last week Disney filed a patent: Soft Body Robot For Physical Interaction With Humans:
The robot design combines passive and active compliance to enhance safety during human and robot interactions. While passive compliance can be realized using deformable materials, active compliance uses sensor data to react to both expected and unexpected contacts between the robot and its environment (e.g., with an interacting human or their property). A soft robot that senses contact, as described herein, integrates these passive and active approaches to ensure human safety during physical interaction.
Are you ready?
Francis James Franklin (Alina Meridon) 