Robots – American Alliance of Museums

Envisioning the Accessible Future of Peer Review

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of my favorite parts of putting together the recent “future issue” of Museum was asking my colleagues at AAM to imagine how their work, and the programs they staff, such as accreditation and advocacy, might be different in the year …
Labor 3.0: Lights Out

By Elizabeth Merritt

What: automated “lights out” manufacturingWhy museums should care: disruptions to labor and increasing economic inequality impact our communities and our audiences, as well as museums’ own financial bottom line.Many …
Futurist Friday: Emotional Intelligence

By Elizabeth Merritt

For your Friday future-break, here is a lovely short film by Dennis Sungmin Kim, exploring a future in which artificial intelligence has been supplemented by “artificial emotion.” ei: emotional intelligence from Dennis Sungmin …
Futurist Friday: RoboKindness

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here are some facts on autism in the US, from the advocacy group Autism Speaks: Autism now affects 1 in 68 children and 1 in 42 boys Autism prevalence figures are growing Autism is the fastest-growing developmental disorder in the U.S. …
Futurist Friday: All Too Human

By Elizabeth Merritt

To add to your TV viewing list: Humans, a new eight part series on AMC. (You can watch all eight episodes online if you have an account with any one of a number of providers.) The show is set is set in a “present day …
Futurist Friday: Rise of the (Cute, Self-aware) Robots

By Elizabeth Merritt

Have you seen Ex Machina yet? I watched it on a flight back from London. Its depiction of artificial intelligence is way, way ahead of the actual state of the field, but this week we saw a hint, just a tiny bit of evidence, that we may be …
Monday Musing: Making it Personal with Telepresence

By Elizabeth Merritt

This video caught my attention this morning: a crowdfunding pitch for what is billed as “the world’s first social innovation telepresence experience.” This system, Omnipresenz, is designed to let you control a human …
Update on the 2014 Trends: Robots!!!!

By Elizabeth Merritt

Previous mid-year updates on social entrepreneurship, big data and the sharing economy were pretty text heavy. As a bit of relief from all that reading, I’m going to go with very short text this week, and give the bulk of the update via …
Futurist Friday: Lend Me an Extra…Limb?

By Elizabeth Merritt

One subset of robotics pertains to cyborgs: “cybernetic organisms” that have both organic and biomechanical parts. The artificial limbs that enabled Oscar Pistorius to leap from the Paralympics to able-bodied international …
Robots for Accessibility: Help Henry Spread the Word

By Elizabeth Merritt

AAM conference attendees were joined in Seattle by Henry Evans, accessibility advocate and founder of Robots for Humanity.Henry joined us via a Beam Pro telepresence robot (courtesy of Suitable Technologies). Because he is quadriplegic, …