Remember years ago (OK, many years ago, like the 1970’s, I’m old!) when computers first started to surface as potential products for the home?
People scratched their heads. “Why would I need a computer at home?!,” they asked. “I mean, c’mon, will we all really need to calculate moon rocket trajectories or 30,000 places of Pi in our living rooms?” They didn’t see the need, the potential, the everyday practical uses of such a thing. It wasn’t obvious. It really wasn’t.
The first home computers were built for the home hobbyist, the nerd, with all sorts of switches and dials, costing tons of dough, serious lapses in personal hygiene, and countless love lives. Home computers slowly evolved into something for the semi-nerd, then just the nerdish, then many normal people (ohhh…the Macintosh) and finally, now, everyone has one (at least one). Anyway, we all know how this story unfolded, so no need to retrace the entire history of the personal computer in this article.
Don’t you think robotics will have a similar evolution, eventually being ubiquitous devices found in every home? I do.
But I don’t understand why it’s taking so long!
Let’s review where we are now with these mechanical marvels. In industry, robotics have reached true ubiquity. Robots build our cars, they move things around in warehouses. They sand, dip, spray, dry, and lubricate parts. Factories are full of them. Gleaming gadgets of endless programmed servitude, spinning figures of predetermined poetic mechanical motion, tireless whirling dervishes that flip things, weld things, paint things, dust things, rotate stuff around, and plop perfectly milled and polished Spider Valve subassemblies in a 10 micrometer tolerance location for yet another robot to later pick up a fraction of a second later in a kind of robotic ballet of Rotovector Metagear assembly. They are truly beautiful, in a graceful, mathematical, precise moving parts kind of way.
But for the home, what do we have? We have Frisbees that vacuum floors. And for those undaunted by the prospect of lost limb lawsuits (LLL’s), there’s a robot that mows your lawn and hopefully not your neighbor’s pet rabbit. But that’s…about it, for the home market right now. Not exactly The Jetsons. (Jane, don’t worry, there’s no Crazy Thing you have to stop at the moment.) Not to say the thinking vacuums aren’t cool. They are. And they’re a great start. But what’s next for the home? Where’s the spit and polish?
Maybe we’re still kinda sorta in the head-scratching, “I don’t get it!” stage of Robot Evolution/Revolution.
One question that comes to mind for me is: will robots for the home be more of the general-purpose genre, or will they be specialty robots? And if they’re more general-purpose in nature, will they tend to be humanoid/humanoid-ish in shape – the supporting theory of this configuration preponderance being that, if human-like-shaped, a general purpose robot will be able to do more of the things a human does, using things humans already use (and already own), like brooms, hammers, oil pans, and snow shovels. And them being general-purpose will automatically imply one more bonus feature for us mere mortal humans: you’ll only have to buy one robot for all your robotting needs.
I wonder how far we are from seriously decent balancing, hearing, and vision technology. Maybe that’s what’s holding this back. You don’t want to come home to your new RoboMaid 3000 squirming around like a turtle on its back on broken coffee table glass with a vacuum cleaner in her claw futilely aimed in the air, as the pot roast it put in the oven 3-1/2 freakin’ hours ago continues hardening to one tenth its original size in the Viking blast furnace as she tells you over and over in calm soothing robot tones (that you paid extra for on robocalm.com) over and over that “something is burning”. Thanks, RM3K, and so much for putting two and two together, Ms. quad math co-processor with NeuroNet™ upgrade Model MC-squared.
All the usual dark robots-taking-over cautionary tale stuff notwithstanding, I still want a robot, probably a general-purpose humanoid-ish kind (somewhere between C3PO and R2D2), one that plays chess (and lets me win, but is convincing that she is not letting me win). Job One: clean my biohazard room, a.k.a. bathroom. I mean the whole thing, starting with the toilet sparkling like the Hope Diamond, and finishing with all my cologne bottles being clean and in a row, and my toothpaste tube optimally squeezed from the bottom up and stashed away in my medicine cabinet. Why not? Robots, I’m told, don’t (correction: won’t) mind doing this stuff!
But what’s gonna light the fire here? When are we gonna see this Robot Revolution we’ve been promised? I say it’s time!
We all want our beds made (don’t we?) with mints on our pillows and the sheet corners turned down like we’re staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We all want the dishes put away, our sinks cleaned, our houses painted, our rooms painted – no, wallpapered (though for some robot models, this particular activity will certainly void their warranty), our dogs groomed, our fish fed, carpets vacuumed, floors swept, oil changed, shoes put away, undies folded, plants watered, pianos tuned, cars driven sober, rooms added on, and heliports installed on our roofs.
Frankly, I’m sick of doing this stuff, and I’m really sick of the fact that I don’t own a robot that can. This is 2008! Do you have any idea how futuristic “2008” sounded in the 1960’s when the talking (and thinking!) robot from Lost In Space was rolling around in the 1990’s saving the Robinsons from low-budget intergalactic animatronic seaweed monsters while calculating the odds to like six decimal places exactly which way Dr. Smith would do something to ruin their chances of getting back to Earth this time?
Give the Robinson Cantankerous Clod (real name: Robot) longer arms and a toilet brush adapter and I’ll buy it. Besides, retro is still in, isn’t it? And those high voltage claws cook a perfect hot dog, I hear. Don’t taze me, Ro’!
Seriously, I’d pay big bucks for a good, hard-working (tireless!) robot. If this general-purpose robot does all these things – imagine the third party software market with programs that make your robot do things like: clean your pool while a filet of Canadian elk and Beemster Gouda lasagna he prepared (at 3 am, silently, while you slept; they roll 24/7!) bakes, timed to be ready when you get home to a newly robot-carpeted living room with a freshly tapped mini-keg of Heinekin on ice at the exact location your feet soon will be – it would be worth thousands of dollars. Maybe like as much as a frickin’ car. Think about it. If people plop down 6 G’s for a plasma TV to watch…TV, in the endless American pursuit of perpetually Sitting On A**, they’ll buy this robot.
I’d personally trade in the BMW for the CTA if I didn’t have to clean…anything. A compelling feature set-enough robot would sell like hotcakes. There’s money to be made. I just know it.
A robot in every bathroom. That’s my vision.
So what’s stopping it? I can’t be alone in this grand dream of the toilet brush-liberated apartment resident. Is it the lack of maturity of technology, and it’s just a matter of time before it is ready for prime time? Or is it the lack of pioneering spirit in technology companies, venture capitalists, and Wall Street pundits? Is it that robots would cost too much to build and too much to buy for the benefits currently feasible? Am I alone in volunteering I’d dish out thousands for a super-robot when no one else shares this sentiment? Or is it something else?
Don’t tell me it’s The Twilight Zone vision of machines gone mad, bad, and rad, taking over their human creators, evoking the “I’m Perfect, Are You?” ending of ELP’s Karnevil 9 (I’m old). C’mon! These robots are automatons that obey commands. Like computers, they just do what you tell them, and I think Rod Serling (I’m old) is a bit over-excited. When’s the last time your computer, when you weren’t home, used Quicken to open an offshore account, transferred all your money from your account into its account, then made all the proper phone calls and Internet travel purchases to have itself moved from your house to a house full of other renegade computers (a “flip flophouse”, ba-doom, ching / I’m old) in Switzerland, leaving behind a sinister recording on your voicemail about that being the last time you kick it when you lose at Mindsweeper? (I’m old.) These are machines. They have no soul, no self-determination.
Computers and robots don’t do evil things. People do. (Maybe using computers and robots, but that’s another story. Countless stories, to be more precise.)
Anyway, it’s probably a combination of all these things that’s gumming up the works in the realization of the Robotic Dream. When development costs, the price people will pay, technology needed to move your robot around your house without inadvertently remodeling it, and venture risk calculations and considerations all align, we’ll see our first generation of general-purpose human-like robots with throngs of people lining up to buy them. (And, soon after, the second generation ones with throngs of robots lining up to buy them. So sad and eerie, isn’t it?)
We’ll probably (hopefully) see some more special-purpose ones along the way. But what’s next after automagic vacuum cleaners? Some gizmo that picks clothes off the floor and dumps them in a hamper? Some cyber-servant that can negotiate the pizza boxes in your fridge, pull out a beer, pop it open, and bring it to you in a “Cy-Beer” foam coozie? Something that folds your socks and skivvies? But how much would anyone pay for any of these? It’s got to do some serious amount stuff I don’t like to do before I spend the big bucks. (Hmmm…I do like the beerbot idea.)
Maybe this is part of the problem: there are too few logical Baby Steps from the present-day auto-vac to the super-duper android-on-steroids. Perhaps it’s one of those Critical Mass things that doesn’t scale well from here to there, necessitating that things will have to emerge in plateaus, spurts, rather than a smooth continuum of amazing Robolutionary product releases. So maybe we’ll just have to wait for the whole enchilada at this point. (Though I’m sure there are some serious imaginations pondering great home robot ideas right now!)
I guess only time will tell where (and when – and if) this all goes. Maybe it will be 20 years from now that a robotically-guided brush meets lavatory porcelain for the first time. (I hope sooner – my bathroom can’t wait another 20 years.)
But for now, I’ll have to settle for my carpets automatically vacuumed. And my lawn mechanically cut (if I buy a house again – after I get my robot) and possibly covered with rabbit…uhhhh, fur.
And while I wait, I guess I can invest in companies that are engaging heavily in home robotics R&D. Excuse me as I look those companies up on the Internet.
But hey, where’d my computer go?!
“You have one message waiting.” BEEP.
Posted by DLgem 
Posted by Kevin Mitchell 
Posted by jackp 