I don't...
give a shit about this.
Japanese scientists have cracked one of robotics' untouched areas: they have unveiled a mechanical bum that not only look realistic - apparently - but tense, twitch and respond to touch in the same way a real rear would. Shiri Arse technica The Shiri - which means buttocks in Japanese - "represents emotions with visual and …
I honestly can not think of a single *useful* application for this invention.
Besides making something that ppl would like to post on their facebook page to have fun with, i'm wondering what the use is.
The team behind this obviously have talents in a wide variety of fields, couldn't they spend their time,money, brainpower and effort doing more useful research?
..sigh..
... was going to be another story about the US military robotic mule. Serves me right for having a vaguely clean mind!
In Michael Bywater's Lost Worlds, he mentions his friend Stephen Fry's observation: That while a a pianola moves the keys by itself, it makes no attempt to replicate the impact of young Mozart's buttocks upon the piano stool.
[Sorry, that was the only prior fart that came to mind, other than last weeks Reg article about robo-hookers]
It's not NSFW but if one of our hard-drinking , terminally laddish and relentlessly hetero brokers[*] had been standing behind me when I opened it, life would not have been worth living for the next week or so.
[*] decent guys actually but not entirely subtle