The Science Museum in London opened a robotics exhibition.
London Science Museum opens a robotics exhibition. As we know, robotics is an old concept in technology, but very few people know that the concept dated back five hundred years ago. Thus, the London Science Museum decided to offer visitors a glimpse of the technology’s evolution by displaying products in the field of robotics.
Many people associate the concept of robotics with metallic boxes which are able to move, some kind of futuristic characters of Science-Fiction movies. They imagine some humanoid robots, bipedal mechanical devices which, in their imagination, try to mimic certain celebrities.
Nevertheless, the Science Museum in London with its “Robots” exhibition decided to reveal that these technological wonders were first developed hundreds of years ago. When the topic of robotics is reached, many tend to look to the future, without knowing that this field of technology dates back 500 years ago. Curator Ben Russell has charted down the evolution and history of such human-made mechanical creatures.
He started from the simplest robotic contraption to more advanced robots which are closer to those part of our imagination. Russell explained that being in front of a mechanical creature has always been a bit unsettling for people. It awakens somehow a sense of anxiety when coming face to face with something so unnatural.
He also pointed out that many of the old robots were utilized to express faith. That may seem like a weird observation, proving the co-existence of science and religion even in those days. To show this connection between two different fields, one of the old automatons displayed in the exhibition is a mechanical monk who was developed in the 1560s. The robotic monk can walk, move its lips and lift a rosary and its crucifix, beating its chest as if repenting something.
During the exhibition, the museum displayed a robotic baby with its umbilical cord. A famous robot, the T-800 used when filming “Terminator: Salvation” was also displayed to represent people’s biggest fear when thinking about a dystopian future in which machines would rule the world. The London Science Museum exhibited robots which mimic actions like dancing, walking, and singing.
Russell claimed that when we look back and analyze robots’ evolution, we cannot classify them as scary, terrible things. We seem them as devices which do what people tell them to.
Image source: wikipedia
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