It was being reported that a U.S. senator has cited three robotics projects as wasteful research that lack useful applications and has requested cancellation of funding for those projects. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma took aim at the National Science Foundation which is a premier source of funding for science and engineering in the US and raised questions about the agency’s management and its priorities.
In his report, Coburn criticized the NSF for squandering millions of dollars on wasteful projects including three that involve robots. “A dollar lost to mismanagement, fraud, inefficiency or a dumb project is a dollar that could have advanced scientific discovery,” the report says. Coburn wasn’t impressed over a report that said that the robot cost $1.5 million and took nearly 25 minutes to fold each towel!
The senator however did not give the scientific team a chance to respond. However one scientist quipped that Coburn has just sparked a robot uprising!
It will be funny to imagine hordes of robots descending on Washington, D.C.
Do you agree with Coburn?