Comedian Whitney Cummings had a robotic version of herself built for her new Netflix special. It was entertaining. Funny? You decide. The footage from the robot factory might be the most intriguing part of the shtick.
But at the end of the day, it’s a robot programmed by a human being to do specific things for specific effects. Rexroth built a robot that puts together paper cups better than anybody else, human or machine, you’ve ever seen. Whitney Cummings built a robot that supports her in her comedy special better than you’d think a robot could.
Robot capacity
But Robot Whitney (her name is actually Bear Claw) doesn’t actually speak English any more than a mynah bird does. Let her hang out with another robot, and that robot will never learn English from her. Or even learn to tell jokes.
Small children learn words from one another. Given enough time, two small children who speak different languages will learn each other’s languages.
Dogs can learn to sit from one another. They can’t teach each other things, but like plenty of mammals, they can learn from one another.
Robots can tweak their behavior in a pre-programmed direction based on pattern recognition directed by humans. That’s what we call machine learning.
We can be impressed, maybe more than we should be, when we see a robot doing something different from what we usually expect a robot to do. A lot of us responded to Robot Whitney as though she usually assembled cars or made elevators run precisely, and yet there she was on TV telling jokes!
Nope. She just tells jokes.
Do one thing and do it well
We’re not criticizing robots. They are machines programmed to do one thing — whether it’s assembling paper cups or telling jokes or stacking boxes on a pallet — and to do it well.
There’s a sense in which we do this, too. We specialize in Rexroth electric industrial motion control systems. From legacy systems to the newest components, we help you get your Rexroth components up and running. We do this fast, and in the most cost-effective manner. We should be your first call when you need service or support for your servos, drives, and controls.