Jennifer scores gold as a hockey-playing robot

Robots have been programmed to perform many tasks, and I would dare say if a robot ever gets to the way David acts in the movie Prometheus, it would be pretty hard to look at a human the same way again – is he/she a robot, or not? Well, one thing’s for sure, such technology, if possible, is still a long way off. We are still stuck with robots like Jennifer that plays hockey, and is named after Olympic gold medallist Jennifer Botterill. Good thing this robot also picked up some gold – although not at the Olympics, but rather, at an international robotics competition that was held last month.

According to team member Chris Iverach-Brereton, a second-year master’s student in computer science, “No one, to our knowledge, has looked at a humanoid, hockey-playing robot. The competition was basically to push the boundaries of what these robots can do… of what hasn’t been done before. We were thrilled that it paid off as well as it did. But there’s still a lot of work we can do to get her to skate better, play hockey better.” You go, girl! Wait a minute, robots are supposed to be asexual, so what other terms of encouragement can I give?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Robot