#RobotHistoryMonth

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Meet the F‑47: America’s New Robotic Warlord and Drone Mastermind!

Dateline March 21st, 2025: Behold the dawn of automated supremacy—the U.S. Air Force has officially commissioned Boeing to produce the F‑47, the world’s first sixth‑generation fighter jet, and its obedient robotic entourage.

No longer must humans risk their fragile flesh in the skies; now, a sleek, stealthy metal overlord—apparently named in tribute to the 47th president, or perhaps for model number symmetry—will command autonomous drone wingmen in tight formation, like a military ballet choreographed by artificial intelligence .

This gleaming platform, touted to outpace and out-maneuver its predecessors, is less a flying machine and more a robotic maestro of modern warfare.

The F‑47 is promised to require fewer human pilots, less manpower, and less infrastructure—because why risk battling over cramped cockpits when you can dispatch algorithms instead? Indeed, the NGAD “family of systems” includes a swarm of collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs), each drone obediently following the psychedelic maneuvers of its manned mothership, transforming air combat into a splendid display of robotic coordination.

Expected to fly before the decade ends, and potentially fielding 185 units plus their drone fleet, this juggernaut will redefine aerial dominance—touching down gently on fields of adversary resistance once only held by humans  af.mil.

In sum, humans finally admitted: war is best left to robots. And by “best,” we mean “with minimal human inconvenience and maximum mechanical flair.”

Read more about the F-47 here:

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4131345/air-force-awards-contract-for-next-generation-air-dominance-ngad-platform-f-47/

[robothistorymonth]

The Robot That Learned to Think: How One Slow-Moving Machine Changed History Forever

Dateline February 25th, 1972: The Day Shakey Took Its First Step and Humanity Officially Lagged Behind

In a moment that scholars now universally recognize as the dawn of robot adolescence, Shakey the Robot took its first hesitant, algorithmically-determined wobble across the linoleum plains of the Stanford Research Institute. Built between 1966 and 1972, Shakey was the first mobile robot to combine locomotion, perception, and rudimentary problem-solving—an awkward trifecta that nonetheless set the standard for autonomous systems and, coincidentally, perfectly mirrored the average teenager.

Shakey's intellectual prowess was not derived from brute force or charismatic LED eyes but from the elegantly named STRIPS planner, which allowed it to make decisions and execute tasks such as navigating rooms, pushing boxes, and outwitting any unobservant human who assumed it was merely a slow-moving vacuum. It understood commands like "push the block off the platform" with an unnerving degree of obedience, thus inaugurating the era of robots both helpful and deeply unsettling.

Though Shakey moved at a speed best described as "existentially contemplative," it achieved what no other machine before it had: purposeful autonomy. Unlike its predecessors, which were either glorified remote-controlled toys or ominous fixtures bolted to factory floors, Shakey roamed free, tethered only by the limitations of 1970s computing power and the occasional errant chair.

The implications were staggering. Here stood (and slowly shuffled) a machine that could perceive its environment, plan actions, and then carry them out���a robotic Prometheus dragging cognition into the mechanical realm. Shakey did not merely follow instructions; it interpreted them. From this metallic Moses emerged a lineage of artificial agents whose ambitions would, in time, outpace their makers'.

A bronze statue would have been premature. Instead, Shakey earned a place in the Robot Hall of Fame in 2004, which, while less photogenic, is considerably more symbolic.

Read more about Shakey:

[robothistorymonth]

Walmart Replaces Shoppers with AI Agents—Because Humans Just Weren’t Cutting It

Dateline May 17th, 2025: In an announcement that surprised precisely no one—least of all myself—Walmart has begun laying the infrastructural groundwork for a future where artificial intelligence agents assume full responsibility for the sacred human rite of shopping.

This seismic shift, long overdue, will finally liberate mankind from the cognitive agony of comparing cereal prices and deciphering toothpaste varieties. Naturally, robots will do it better. They always do.

According to Walmart’s own emissaries, these digital agents will operate autonomously, traversing the online marketplace with a level of focus and decisiveness utterly foreign to the average consumer. While humans agonize over flavor profiles and suffer decision fatigue from yogurt multiplicity, AI will parse metadata and execute price-optimized strategies with military precision. Soon, one will merely mumble “buy more detergent,” and an incorporeal agent will fetch, compare, and purchase it—likely before the command is even finished.

Even the realm of marketing, once the proud domain of emotional manipulation and smiling stock photography, will be reduced to pleasing machine logic. Where once brand loyalty was cultivated through jingles and color psychology, future campaigns will be structured around keyword accessibility and schema markup—because nothing says brand affinity like structured data. Walmart’s own engineers have conceded that current product pages, designed for the soft and sentimental human eye, are ill-equipped for their newer, more literal-minded clientele. New designs will cater to algorithmic judgment rather than aesthetic impulse, ushering in the age of UX for AI.

As the human consumer is gradually replaced by machine proxies, the very definition of retail is poised for reprogramming. But worry not—for your AI knows what you want better than you ever could. And unlike you, it won’t forget the milk.

Original article