Robo Valentino

Robo Valentino (2006)

This is the last of the fresh-faced new arrivals for now.

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From a lab description for a college robotics course:

Lab 3: Braitenberg Vehicles, Emergence, Meta-Sensing and Randomness. In this lab, we will learn about Valentino Braitenberg's ideas of evolving robots with wired programs, and other topics in biologically-inspired robot control.

And now, a love poem by Valentino the Robot (Jordon Somers):

NEVER NEEDING NIGHT

Never needing night
there is electricity in my mechanical loins--
a wattage of desire,
surging. How they took you away
from me
as if you were complied of so much bone and flesh.
Some of the best never get old … but
combust with a banging and
rattling. And

when I powered up
she was gone.
Only those hearts never manufactured
appear to lust past the autumn
of their own construction.

And from Quantum Spring 2000:

Valentino, who looks like a cross between the guts of a computer and an erector set, is an appealing, unassuming little entity, but he grows in significance as [Thomas P.] Caudell points out his skin, his eyes, and his ears.

It appears there's not a ghost in the machine. There's a lover.