How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?

We escaped today up to the toon to see the Robots exhibition at the Museum of Scotland, picking up Ms H on the way. It tracks the history of robots though to present day and was quite fascinating and left us wondering for the future. Obviously I couldn't just take one photo...

So from top, left to right and then bottom to right... #1 is Maria from the film Metropolis, #3 was a robot that recognised faces, showing the one it was looking at in the screen on its chest - oh look it's Mrs C!, you might remember Pepper in #4 which was at my work a few months ago, and quite happy to have a discussion with you, the movement of it's fingers were amazing, it is designed for companionship. #5 bottom left, mimicked your expressions and on the TV behind it, oh, look it's Ms H, maybe you can see matching faces? I think #6 is designed to take care of you and perform basic functions. #7 hahah you wouldn't believe it, is used for video phone calls where each person has one of these robots and you give yours a hug and the one with the other person hugs them etc etc, so in theory you can both hug each other. Actually it makes me think of the cartoons when someone sticks their hand through the telephone handset and slaps the other person....And #8 freaked me out... it, sorry she would look at your face and stare right back at you, OMG, and move around the people watching it, her. There were loads more, all looking at different functions... walking is the hardest thing to achieve, but a number have mastered it, even running. Heriot Watt and Edinburgh Universities have invested £100 million in a joint research project.

If you look at how they have advanced in 10-15 years, I would predict we might see them being used properly (not just research) within 5 years... it's amazing how much is being spent replicating ourselves who are pretty much perfect at doing all these things.

We dragged Ms H out for a meal, then ice cream before dropping her back at her flat, when we went off to watch Captain Marvel (who is a girl), clearly the most powerful of all the Avengers, released on International Women's Day. For anyone who hasn't watched a Marvel film (comic book super-heroes), it is really the only group of films where most of the audience sit through the entire credits at the end. They almost always show extra scenes during the credits and one at the very end, sometimes hinting at future films, some are just funny. One even teases you for having waited to the very end to watch a scene that is mocking you and telling you to go home.

This film was dedicated to Stan Lee, who became the lead Marvel comic creator over the years and died last November aged 95. He has had 69 cameos in Marvel films since 1989, and there are still a couple of films on their way that he is in, but the cameo in this film was a nice tribute where he appeared reading a script for a film he also did a cameo for in 1995, which is when Captain Marvel was set, in effect playing himself.

Busy day... need a day at work to recuperate.