Associate editor Sean Woods recently took home a MPASA Pica Award as Profile Writer of the Year. We’re very proud of him.

We’ve been asked many times to describe the editorial content of PM and explain why a potential reader or advertiser should find it compelling. Although we generally manage to come up with something neat and eloquent, we much prefer to hand over a copy of our latest issue and invite the questioner to “see for yourself”.

This isn’t a cop-out. It’s just that our magazine, while nominally a male-oriented title focused on science and technology, embraces so many subjects that it’s not always easy to categorise. Consider this issue: we feature articles on humanoid robots, casino surveillance systems, the science of avalanches, mud-driving techniques, rural connectivity, the secrets of body fat, blue-skinned avatars, pedalling across a ravine, an ocean-crossing rowboat and a DIY touchscreen netbook.

It’s not just a magazine, either. Our 360-degree view encompasses a vibrant Web site (www.popularmechanics.co.za), a hugely successful Web letter (“The Cutting Edge”) that reaches about 40 000 opt-in subscribers once a week, videos, competitions, supplements, shows, special events (our recent Inventors Conference was a big hit), and much more. Starting to get the idea?

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. Our cover story this month, “10 Tech Concepts for 2010”, showcases a rather unusual robot known as Cronos. Designed and built by Rob Knight for the Machine Consciousness Lab run by the universities of Bristol and Sussex, it’s an anthropomimetic machine (that is, it mimics the human form) of startling complexity, with a roughly human “skeleton” fashioned from thermoplastic polymer and actuators that function as muscles and tendons.

Project researcher Owen Holland, a professor of computer science at the University of Essex and an expert in biologically inspired robotics, reveals that many of the robot’s bones and joints were modelled using Gray’s Anatomy and medical texts as references. The muscles are connected to the bones by elastic tendons (actually, bungee and shock cords) to form a series-elastic combination. What makes Cronos different from other robots, says Holland, is that the positions and lines of pull of the muscles are similar to those of corresponding real muscles, and the tendons are positioned in biomimetically consistent ways.

Whoops. Does this mean robots will eventually be able to mimic our every move, steal our jobs and become our masters?

Holland, who has also made significant contributions in the fields of ant algorithms and machine consciousness, displays masterful restraint: “Some of the more volatile minds in our society have recently begun to fret about the possibility that humankind may become dependent on, and perhaps subservient to, the descendants of this first wave, and may even be replaced by them. We don’t think there’s any danger of that because with a very few exceptions... the only resemblance these robots have to real humans is external and superficial: they look like us, but their operational principles are so far removed from our own that there is little prospect that their incremental refinement will result in anything better than more of the same.”

For the record, Holland’s interests are not confined to skeletal robots. A decade ago, he worked with colleagues on the celebrated SlugBot project, developing a robotic predator capable of sustaining its energy levels by hunting and digesting slugs. Interestingly, GreenPeace thought the work was “ethically unsound”, asking: “Isn’t there enough work to do in integrating humans and technology to prepare us for the rapidly approaching singularity without the need to build autonomous machines with a carnivorous thirst for flesh?”

Clearly unfazed, Holland is currently developing an “ultraswarm” of miniature Bluetooth-connected helicopters that would behave like a flock of birds while performing what he terms “non-trivial task-related distributed computation across a wireless network”.

Non-trivial? We should hope so.

Email the editor:
aland@ramsaymedia.co.za