Walls of Fame, Walks of Fame, Halls of Fame: these are our shrines to the greatest. They span a variety of topics and often enlist subject area experts—no comment on the Baseball Writers Association of America—to determine who and what is worthy of induction.
Now, one important hall realizes we need to be involved in that process.
The Robot Hall of Fame may only be eight years old, but it made the progressive decision to enlist the general public for its 2012 selections. “The technology and art of robotics are advancing at an increasingly rapid rate and so the Robot Hall of Fame also must evolve,” said Shirley Saldamarco via press release (she’s the RHOF director and a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center). “As more students, workers, and consumers become accustomed to robots, it seems like a natural step to give the public a voice in selecting inductees.”
OK, so it sounds like a weird marketing gimmick at first. Here’s our young Hall of Fame, come help us choose! But the credentials of the Robot Hall of Fame couldn’t be better. The world’s largest robotics research and education organization, The Robotics Institute, is part of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. This year’s nominees were determined by “a group of 107 robotics experts, industry leaders, and aficionados,” and past judges included late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke and Anthony Daniels (better known as C-3PO). Even the physical hall—started in 2009, including robots they can actually get—is part of the university’s roboworld exhibit. That happens to be the largest permanent robot exhibition in the world.
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