James Cameron Tribute Fortnight

Cameron's (and Rodriguez’) new movie is Alita: Battle Angel is slogging its way through mixed reviews and relatively low box office receipts needed to recoup its $550M investment. Well, they can’t all be Terminators or Avatars. Cameron is one of the few directors and producers that treat robots seriously (maybe because they’ll be back), either as main characters or for adding a sense of the future. And what diversity he shows in robotics: there’s cyborgs, drones, underwater robots, exoskeletons, teleoperation, and full-moral-agent-level-of-autonomy robots. In honor of the great man, this fortnight is devoted to letting Cameron’s body of work teach us about cyborgs, exoskeletons, drones, underwater robots, and killer robots. We will start the week with cyborgs, using Alita: Battle Angel (Read the review here) as the teachable moment and end with a slideshow on What James Cameron Can Teach Us About Real Robots. In the meantime, put on your mental ROV and prepare to dive deep into robotics.