If you’ve liked watching Lt. Commander Data, the positronic-brained second officer, in the sci-fi series Star Trek, then you’d love to hear this.

The South Korean government plans to build two robot-themed parks close to Seoul, one in the bustling seaport of Incheon, and another in Masan by the year 2013.

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The megaproject, the first of its kind on the planet, is estimated to cost a whopping $1.6 billion, and will feature an array of robotic marvels allowing visitors to interact with tomorrow’s machines.

According to reports published on the web site Korea.net, the two cities are being developed as futuristic hubs, poised to become the country’s Silicon Valley of robotics.

Robotics is considered to be one of South Korea’s booming industries and it has grown by leaps and bounds over the past five years, recording a 40 percent jump since the year 2003, the site reported.

To ensure that the robotics sector continues to see such growth rates, recently, the government drew up what is known as the Robot Ethics Code, a code of ethics that will prevent android abuse by humans as well as the other way round.

It’s basically a how-to manual for both robot-makers and robot-users that tells them how to relate to robots.

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Given that the government aims to install a robot in every household by the year 2020, perhaps, that isn’ such a quixotic idea.

What’s more, in a recently-out book titled “Love and Sex with Robots“, a British Artificial Intelligence researcher David Levy, predicts that robots will advance to such phenomenal levels in the coming years that it’ll be possible for humans to even marry them by 2050.

(link)

Alakananda Mookerjee

Alakananda Mookerjee

I am a New York City-based freelance journalist. In the last several years, I have worked as a newspaper journalist in newsrooms across two continents—Asia and America. With quite a few years of experience in the print medium, I am now, very eager to have a taste of Web journalism. Which is why you find me here.