Robot Quotations

In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won't mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep.

The concept of the robot encapsulates both aspects of technology. On one hand it's cool, it's fun, it's healthy, it's sexy, it's stylish. On the other hand it's terrifying, it's alienating, it's addictive, and it's scary. That has been the subject of much science-fiction literature.

I worked with Stanley Kubrick for almost a year back in 1990, trying to develop the screen story for his project 'Artificial Intelligence,' which is about a robot boy who wishes to become a real boy, a future scientific fairy tale inspired in the myth of Pinocchio.

Building a robot that has legs and walks around is a very expensive proposition. Mother Nature has created many wonderful things, but one thing we do have that nature doesn't is the wheel, a continuous rotating joint, and tracks, so we need to make use of inventions to make things simpler.

She's like a Barbie, then she wants to be a superhero, or coming out of a spaceship and everything's pink. She makes a certain move that's ghetto hood mixed with a little robot so its like I'm evolving Nicki Minaj and developing her style. She's fearless, and I love her.

At the end of October 4 in 1957, when I was coming back from sea duty in the South Pacific, Sputnik went up. I realized that humans would be right behind robot aircraft or spacecraft even though I really had no plans of being in aviation or a professional aviator and certainly not in the military.

What's casual for a robot isn't necessarily what's casual for a human.

When I was fighting, I would look to excite the crowds with a bolo punch or something taunting. Looking back, they were legal - but not sportsmanlike. I don't recommend another boxer try them. But we looked more to make the robot fights dramatic first and realistic second.

I'm such a robot when it comes to work.

One of the great things about the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, which my company iRobot designed, is that it's too cheap not to be autonomous.

In the smart home of the future, there should be a robot designed to talk to you. With enough display technology, connectivity, and voice recognition, this human-interface robot or head-of-household robot will serve as a portal to the digital domain. It becomes your interface to your robot-enabled home.

Any story hits you harder if the person delivering it doesn't sound like some news robot but in fact sounds like a real person having the reactions a real person would.

If you ask the typical two- or three-year-old or a teenager what a robot is, they will think about a humanoid that does my homework for me or walks the dog. When I go and talk to kids and pull out the Roomba, it's not this big 'Wow!' moment.

I wrote six nonfiction books before getting into narrative fiction with 'Robopocalypse,' including 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising.' My goal all along was to start writing fiction, and I guess one day I'd just had enough.

When my daughter was 3, she was eating Cheerios and spilled some on the table. So she swiped them onto the floor. I said, 'Darcy, what are you doing?' She said: 'Don't worry, Daddy, the robot will get it.' I didn't know whether to be horrified or proud. It was this idea that homes take care of themselves and robots are part of that.

The most important thing for building a robot that you can interact with socially is its visual attention system. Because what it pays attention to is what it's seeing and interacting with, and what you're understanding what it's doing.

Did Google need to make robot cars in order to make Streetview work? Absolutely not. It's the equivalent of saying you need a walking robot in order to push an upright vacuum cleaner. It's gratuitous robotics!

The question is, you know, will someone accidentally build a robot that takes over from us? And that's sort of like this lone guy in the backyard, you know - 'I accidentally built a 747.' I don't think that's going to happen.

I have these plants in my house that are dying, so having a robot butler to water them when I'm away would be pretty handy.

Key West is the place where your sickly house plant back in New York grows to 10 ft. It's also the place where an 8-ft. cactus, the century plant, produces a huge yellow flower every great once in a while, like a robot proffering a bouquet. After the plant flowers, it dies.

When I was a kid, I'd wake up extraordinarily early every morning and turn on the television, scanning for episodes of 'The Jetsons.' For some reason, I loved the notion of a future where there would be flying cars, supercomputers, and most of all, robot maids to take care of the chores.

I got the script for 'Real Steel.' I started reading and saw that it was about robot boxing, and I was immediately turned off. It's not my thing. But I continued on, and by the time I got to the end of the script, I had chicken skin and tears in my eyes. I thought, 'Man, we don't make movies like this anymore.'

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this: Can this person add value every hour, every day - more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer? Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow?

I feel people think I'm almost like a robot - like an android... I just don't really get portrayed as someone who has feelings or who is sympathetic... like a self-absorbed ice queen.

I grew up with a lot of monster movies, robot movies, since I was a kid. I love anime movies, like 'Evangelion' and 'Ghost in the Shell.'

Last year we did very well for our first year. It just wasn't robust enough to survive. This year's robot is about the same size only completely redesigned. This year, we have a better design.

She's one of the best actresses I've ever met, and she's just going to get better, ... She's going to be like Bette Davis, and she's a real little girl, too. She's not like a little robot who can do all that stuff.

Ideas are mallable and unstable; they not only can be misused, they invite misuse---and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is by this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea, but with the people who are attracted to it, until the last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogmas by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.

If a robot builds it, let the robot buy it.

If it was going to be unique, if you're going to make a robot movie in 2011... it had to be different, and it had to be about more than its machines and more than its action.

What I love about 'Big Hero 6', with Baymax himself - this sentient creature who's actually a learning robot - with each experience, this naive and gullible creature becomes more aware of issues.

'I Am Legend' is quite unusual for its time. I just wanted to write a story about female boxers, and I couldn't get that going in my mind. I don't know exactly where the idea of just a man pitting himself against a robot boxer came from.

I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town, we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.

Patients breathe. If you've got a lung tumor, the patient's going to move, so the tumor is going to move. You have to have an intelligent robot capable of moving along with the target. So this robotic system really expands radiosurgery for use throughout the body.

KUKA Robotics' robot product line gives us world class performance and reliability at an excellent value. We believe the KUKA robots will be key to delivering that performance and reliability to our welding cells.

I thought it was like the never-ending song. It was so bland. You were like a robot during that performance.

It is basically a robot with an arm that attaches the milking cups to each teat so it milks each cow.

'Robopocalypse' explores the intertwined fates of regular people who face a future filled with murderous machines. It follows them as humanity foments the robot uprising, fails to recognize the coming storm, and then is rocked to the core by methodical, crippling attacks.

Our 2015 financial performance will continue to be driven by our Home Robot business. Home Robot revenue is expected to grow 10% to 12% in 2015 and comprise 90% of total company revenue.

I still haven't found that automatic robot to pump out the perfect performances. That is something I am still searching for.

To believe what another says about you is unconscious, robot thinking.

The world was shocked, and I was shocked. I'd be a robot if I said I didn't feel moments of anger, of hurt, of embarrassment.

The robot can reach into the area very precisely and avoid those nerves.

Perhaps future space probes will be plastered in commercial logos, just as Formula One cars are now. Perhaps Robot Wars in space will be a lucrative spectator sport. If humans venture back to the moon, and even beyond, they may carry commercial insignia rather than national flags.

Sci-fi fans are the best fans you can have. You could be doing the worst piece of tat which might have a robot or vampire in, and some people will become obsessed by it and know every little detail. 'Being Human' has crossed over from sci-fi fans to being a drama that everyone can enjoy.

So this has not been a good 2 1/2 weeks for me. It was more of just a shock of losing someone, the one who got me started in the game. The last couple of weeks have been just kind of like a robot going along.

Some robot who never made me laugh didn't think was funny or didn't think the audience would understand. I guess that's television.

Back in 1990, we created a new category of robot controller.

You're not going to talk to your vacuum cleaning robot: in fact, you may never see your vacuum cleaning robot because, ideally, you come home every day and your floors are freshly vacuumed.

In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn't realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn't think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting - that it's a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, 'Hey, I'm going to be a NASCAR driver.'

In California there is a company that has a robot that does surgical procedures, and we linked out technology to the robotic arms with two microscopic cameras and was able to watch the live prostate surgery in 3-D. This is 3-D floating in the air where you can put your hands through it.

In the clinical trials that are going on at the moment we are looking at patient perception -- what they feel about a robot coming in and talking to them -- and remote examinations.

A robot-arm in a factory doesn't decide minute by minute whether to rivet or revolt - it just does the job is has literally been trained to do. It's if and when we build a conscious robot that we may have to worry.

They decided to pull out of the robot operation because it doesn't fit their merchandise strategy.

I like to get into a situation that is real, where I can say, 'Here's a chance to react as a human being, not some wound-up doll or robot that goes round and round a track, or a cardboard cut-out like the character I played in 'The Towering Inferno'.

But I'm not sure the charm of that orange-crate-label art style isn't diminished when it's turned into anime. Something a little creepy about this machine-made 21st century version. I keep waiting for her to peel back that improbably toothy grin to reveal the malevolent robot beneath.

They were very proud that they won that one. They were able to keep the robot functioning for three fights.

They call this the fulcrum effect. If I move the handle up, the tip moves down inside the body. If I move it down, it moves up, left and right are reversed. But a robot can understand all the mechanics and compensate for them, eliminating the fulcrum effect.

The name Crow was inspired by a number of things. I thought it would be cool to have a robot with sort of a Native American feel to it.

The idea that a robot will become more aware of its environment, that telling it to 'go to the kitchen' means something - navigation and understanding of the environment is a robot problem. Those are the technological frontiers of the robotics industry.

You can try to trick Web sites by embedding tag spam. It can work when the robot comes to the page, but it's misleading. Why not just put the content up and let the content speak for itself?

For comparison, there was a nation over there and all they had was a grappling hook and a line, ... When they found something they would have to drag it to see if it would blow up. Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, we had the remote control robot that could take pictures and has all kinds of weapons attached to keep the operator himself from having to touch it.

It's like I, Robot , when Will Smith had that iron on one side of his body. I know I'm protected, ... I'm not going out there timid. God forbid it to happen again, but if it does it'll be when I'm running 110 miles an hour.

As a writer, that moment every few years when I buy a new laptop and find out that all the word processing stuff has slightly changed again (stuff I spend every working day using) is like getting into bed at night and finding some mad robot where you expected your wife to be.

The rescue teams are moving forward at an accelerated pace. They're moving faster, performing better than the robot was.

We felt that if we could do it at the right price, the cleaning robot would be embraced by the masses.

It's a primal thing, this very unconscious place with the fears of what can happen to your children and will you be able to keep them safe. I like all the different levels of fear that she goes through, from feeling like her daughter's out there somewhere, to worrying that somebody is hurting her. Then there's that place of utter desperation where you wonder if you're completely insane. Then there's that final turn, when she turns into a robot who will take anyone down.

There is strong synergy with consumer electronics. The core of a robot could ultimately be a cell phone.

I couldn't figure out if she was a robot or a real person! It's fascinating.

The L.A Trilogy is a series of three novels starring Ray, a robot detective, and his boss, a computer called Googol. Set in an alternative version of 1960s Los Angeles, each book will be more or less standalone but together will form an overarching story arc with 'Brisk Money' as the origin story.

I hear they're coming out with a robot that will cook hamburgers, too. Let's spread that rumor - there's nothing they can't do.