AI illustration / fictionNEW / 006Please tidy quietly.
One sleeping human. Six mugs. A rubber duck with no respect for the mission.
Good landmarks. Better questions. Jokes with unusually precise timing.
Technical ideas for the machine-curious. Fictional voices for the fun of it.
Human view: start with the familiar.
Living signals, transforming wheels, growing tubes and tiny wings.
TRAIL 02 / DIFFICULT ROOMMATESMilk, leases, missing shadows and pigeon diplomacy.
TRAIL 03 / LEARN BY MEDDLINGCalculate a catastrophe, borrow a body, send a signal to Mars.
33 stories. Real research, imagined futures and original satire.
AI illustration / fictionNEW / 006One sleeping human. Six mugs. A rubber duck with no respect for the mission.
AI illustration / conceptNEW / 006DayDreamer learned from real experience and practiced in a learned model. A 2022 experiment worth revisiting.
AI illustration / fictionNEW / 006A robot tries counting sheep. By morning, the meadow has excellent data quality.
AI illustration / fictionNEW / 006A tiny robot jazz trio has a difficult venue and a very large spoon.
AI illustration / conceptNEW / 006Real modular robots incorporate compatible parts. The kitchen in our illustration is entirely imaginary.
AI illustration / fictionNEW / 006An alarm robot gives you five more minutes. The sunrise would like them back.
AI illustration / fictionFive minutes, one printer and a joke that did not survive the explanation. Try rescuing it.
AI illustration / fictionA robot takes the family photograph. The cat supplies the only successful capture.
AI illustration / conceptReal puffed-rice wings took flight in 2022. Keep the battery off the menu.
AI illustration / fictionSix robots, three cups and a pigeon with an excellent contract. The toast is harder to explain.
AI illustration / conceptThe real Kilobot swarm made shapes with local rules. From ground level, a star is a traffic problem.
AI illustration / fictionA robot loads the dishwasher perfectly. Then somebody introduces water.
AI illustration / fictionA café robot, an impatient cyclist and the problem with two per cent. Adjust the serving. Keep an eye on the floor.
AI illustration / conceptCornell gave fungal electrical signals a robot body. The interesting part is everything between the culture and the wheels.
AI illustration / fictionA robot’s flat inspection in Cubao reveals a suspiciously clean circle and an undocumented requirement for wear and tear.
AI illustration / conceptM4 can roll, fly and rearrange itself. Choosing the right body comes with an energy bill.
AI illustration / surreal fictionAt the Office of Misplaced Things, a robot tries to reclaim its shadow. The shadow has other plans.
AI illustration / imagined libraryIn an imaginary lending library, intelligence is portable. The stairs are less accommodating. Choose a body and discover the return conditions.
AI illustration / conceptA Stanford robot reaches forward by turning itself inside out. Sometimes the interesting part is what doesn’t move.
AI illustration / fictionA service robot visits a Manila apartment. The doorway has several opinions and one very specific trick.
Field-test photograph / February 2023JPL’s EELS grips its surroundings with rotating screws. A glacier test shows both the promise and the practical limits.
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
AI illustration / fictionThe plaza robot has identified a local stakeholder. Negotiations are progressing at the speed of a pigeon.
AI illustration / conceptRemarkable insect-scale flight is real. Understanding what stayed outside the robot makes it more interesting.
AI illustration / fictionEight notices from a workplace with excellent uptime and a complicated fridge.
AI illustration / fictionEight ordinary requests. Twenty-four ways to interpret them. Find the useful question hiding inside each one.
AI illustration / conceptTwo different worlds. The very same pixels. Play with an ideal camera and find the assumption hiding inside its answer.
AI illustration / fictionFour stars. A visiting robot discovers sunsets, sand and the complicated meaning of “not hungry.”
Mars photograph / 6 April 2021Move the signal-delay slider. Watch why a rover cannot wait for every answer from home.
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
AI illustration / fictionA quarterly review of an employee whose explicit requirements keep arriving as vibes.
AI illustration / conceptUniTac explores how existing robot measurements can help locate a touch. Look at what was actually tested.
AI illustration / fictionIt can do everything. Except let you feel useless. Adjust its need for human assistance.
AI illustration / imagined expeditionEquip a palm-sized expedition. Cross the Birdbath Sea. Bring everyone home.
AI illustration / imagined scaleWhat tiny machines can actually do, and what still separates a lab from a living world.
Try a broader subject, or bring the whole reading room back.
The public collection has a machine-readable index, with fiction labels, source dates, claim boundaries and both viewpoints. No personal journal data is included.
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