Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio and I love all things tech.
Speaker 1: It is time for a tech Stuff classic episode, which
Speaker 1: means it's Friday, so I hope you're all celebrating This
Speaker 1: episode originally published back on February two thousand thirteen. It
Speaker 1: is called tech Stuff Gets Domestic Robots. Lauren Voge Obama
Speaker 1: and I sat down to talk about domestic robots and
Speaker 1: where we're going with them. This is another one of
Speaker 1: those episodes that probably merits a follow up, but I
Speaker 1: thought i'd be fun to listen to the original one.
Speaker 1: I'm back in two thousand thirteen, so enjoy. This is
Speaker 1: a topic that a listener of ours wanted to hear
Speaker 1: more about, so we thought, Hey, we haven't really come
Speaker 1: a domestic robots, so yeah, let's let's do that crazy
Speaker 1: thing you Yeah, and when people think of domestic robots,
Speaker 1: I think that the image that immediately pops into most
Speaker 1: people's minds is Rosie, the robot from the Jetsons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the documentary series. The documentary series from the sixties of
Speaker 1: what the future will be like. This was this was
Speaker 1: created in three set in two by the way, if
Speaker 1: you didn't know that, So we've we've got some cracking
Speaker 1: to get on. Yeah, I think it's okay because their
Speaker 1: vision of the future did not incorporate some pretty amazing
Speaker 1: technologies that we have at our disposal right now. That's fair,
Speaker 1: that's fair. But they did have this giant robotic human,
Speaker 1: life size humanoid made that could you know, sit around
Speaker 1: and drink milkshakes with you and have a conversation and
Speaker 1: and raise your kids for your kids for you. You're
Speaker 1: too busy space parents, right, So yeah, anyway, Rosie the
Speaker 1: robot kind of kind of was this idea of like
Speaker 1: the robot made or the robot butler that could take
Speaker 1: care of all the menial chores that most of us
Speaker 1: do not like to do. Like it, it just seems
Speaker 1: like it's one of those things that takes up valuable
Speaker 1: time that you could spend fragging people on halo floor
Speaker 1: doing literally anything else other than washing dishes again, dishes,
Speaker 1: folding laundry, cleaning windows. These are these these chores that
Speaker 1: that take up time that uh, you know, we just
Speaker 1: wish someone else would take care of that every now
Speaker 1: and then, and sometimes we hire people for that, which
Speaker 1: is in fact probably enormously cheaper and easier than building
Speaker 1: a robot to do it, because a lot of these
Speaker 1: things are actually really hard to do. But we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that later. Yeah, So let's start off by talking
Speaker 1: about where the word robot comes from. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of you out there already know this story,
Speaker 1: but there was a check writer, as in someone who
Speaker 1: was from Czechoslovakia. His name or the Czech Republic at
Speaker 1: the time, but now the Czech Republic, uh, Carol Kpek,
Speaker 1: who wrote a play called Are You Are? And Are
Speaker 1: You Are stands for Rossom's Universal Robots and this was one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the word robot comes from the check word robota,
Speaker 1: which means forced labor or servitude, and that word, in
Speaker 1: fact comes from another word rob r a b That
Speaker 1: word means slave. So uh. Now, in the original form
Speaker 1: that did not necessarily mean an artificial life form of
Speaker 1: any type. It could a robot could be a person.
Speaker 1: It could be someone who has been forced to conform
Speaker 1: to a very specific set of behaviors and to perform
Speaker 1: those behaviors for the benefit of some larger entity, and
Speaker 1: this was sure sharing. This was kind of the crux
Speaker 1: of the play. It was exploring whether or not it
Speaker 1: was okay for machines to be used the way that
Speaker 1: we use people and yeah so so eventually the term
Speaker 1: robot became more about a device, a mechanism that can
Speaker 1: perform functions in an automated way, and perhaps even in
Speaker 1: an autonomous way auto as an automated being two different things.
Speaker 1: Autonomous means that it can do it under its own direction,
Speaker 1: doesn't need someone there to press a button for it
Speaker 1: to to be able to do whatever it does, right,
Speaker 1: which is why we don't call, for example, our dishwashers,
Speaker 1: or our toaster ovens, or our washing machines robots, even
Speaker 1: though technically they are robotic. Yeah they have, they have
Speaker 1: features that are common to robots, though they themselves are
Speaker 1: not a robot. Kind of like how I have features
Speaker 1: that are similar to a human being and yet defy explanation.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that one right there, all right,
Speaker 1: that's fair. So before we get into the whole domestic
Speaker 1: robot history and the sort of things that have developed
Speaker 1: over the years in the field of domestic robots and
Speaker 1: where we are today and where we expect to go.
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be interesting to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about a survey that was conducted a few years ago
Speaker 1: by a company called Persuadable Research. This was the last
Speaker 1: one that I saw. Was from two thousand twelves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the most in one that This survey was
Speaker 1: to ask people, Hey, if you had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: purchase a robotic device that would perform your chores for you,
Speaker 1: would that be of interest to you? And sixty percent
Speaker 1: of the people surveyed said, why, yes, it would. I
Speaker 1: would love to have a robot that could do things
Speaker 1: like clean windows or do laundry. Also, I would like
Speaker 1: a robot that could move heavy stuff from one place
Speaker 1: to another so that I don't have to do it,
Speaker 1: or provide better home security, personal assistant duties. I think
Speaker 1: we're high on the health monitoring was up there too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and a lot of them. I thought that this
Speaker 1: sort of robot would be a very useful device, and
Speaker 1: and in most cases, I think they were thinking of
Speaker 1: a single robot capable of doing multiple things, not not
Speaker 1: not a whole bunch of different robots that are specialized,
Speaker 1: but more of a general purpose robot. Now that that
Speaker 1: was interesting enough, but also there were asking more questions
Speaker 1: like what form would you want this robot to be in?
Speaker 1: And it seemed like most people wanted to have a
Speaker 1: humanoid robot. So we're talking about robots that have arms
Speaker 1: and legs and a head, you know, things that we
Speaker 1: would generally associate with the human form. And they also
Speaker 1: did not want their robots to necessarily have a gender,
Speaker 1: so the voice needed to be neither male nor female. Right,
Speaker 1: So kind of that that stereo root, yes, the one
Speaker 1: that the one that we all have. We all have
Speaker 1: a robot. I think we all have a robot voice,
Speaker 1: and we all have an Internet comments voice, Like we
Speaker 1: have a voice that we use when we describe Internet comments.
Speaker 1: People like you guys are awful, you are your show
Speaker 1: was bad and you should feel bad. That's my Internet voice.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not a very kind Internet voice, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that everyone on the Internet leaves comments
Speaker 1: sounds like that. I'm saying the people who leave those
Speaker 1: kind of comments sound like that. That's entirely if they
Speaker 1: can insult me and I can insult them, you can, Yes, right,
Speaker 1: I have a I have a medium eye for an eye.
Speaker 1: It's a harsh podcast landscape guys is like Donkey Kong.
Speaker 1: But no, that that that they want. That's my internet voice.
Speaker 1: But my robot voice is you know, of course, like
Speaker 1: how can I help you? That's sort of that's that's
Speaker 1: I actually do not possess a robot voice. I don't
Speaker 1: think what I'm sorry, I'll work on one. Okay, next time,
Speaker 1: next time, we must get vogel bound a robot voice
Speaker 1: that really do voices. This is about it. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we'll we'll break you of that habit sooner or later.
Speaker 1: So yeah. And also that the people of responded said
Speaker 1: they would be willing to pay fifteen dollars or more
Speaker 1: for a comprehensive robotic assistant. That's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean when you when you think about it,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's that's the mid range for a
Speaker 1: decent car. Right, Yeah, you're talking about it, and you're
Speaker 1: talking about something that's that's running around your house doing
Speaker 1: everything you do. But if it's a robot this folding laundry,
Speaker 1: you're like, how my is is the fact that I
Speaker 1: don't have to fold laundry? Worth fifteen grand. I guess
Speaker 1: it all depends on how much you hate laundry. Most
Speaker 1: people said that they were their their limit was like
Speaker 1: anything that was a thousand dollars or more was kind
Speaker 1: of outside the range. I think that's interesting because there
Speaker 1: are robots on the market right now, domestic robots that
Speaker 1: have very specific uses, like they don't do things outside
Speaker 1: of whatever it is they were meant for, that are
Speaker 1: more expensive than that. But there there are pool robots
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about those in a bit that are
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred dollars. So this is so this is perhaps
Speaker 1: unrealistic of people to expect that sort of price point,
Speaker 1: And as you were mentioning before, it would end up
Speaker 1: being cheaper to hire someone to come and do this
Speaker 1: work for you, at least over a certain period of time.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could eventually find like how many years would
Speaker 1: it take for a robot to make financial sense compared
Speaker 1: to hiring a human being. Somebody go do that math
Speaker 1: for us. I do not feel like doing it at all. Well, Also,
Speaker 1: we don't have all the variables right, which is because
Speaker 1: you would need to know what is the what's the
Speaker 1: average life span for domestic robot? So without that knowledge.
Speaker 1: We can't really say, like, well, if you if you
Speaker 1: build in maintenance costs and repair costs, then that adds
Speaker 1: to it. Right, You don't necessarily have to repair someone
Speaker 1: who comes in and cleans your stuff. You just hire
Speaker 1: someone else because you know you're a heartless person. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about me here, right my perspective. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: it's really sad that that, my my, the people I
Speaker 1: hired to come in and clean my windows broke their legs.
Speaker 1: Thank goodness, there's this other cleaning service I can hire instead.
Speaker 1: I can just leave those first guys right there on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk and just keep going. This is turning into
Speaker 1: a really terrible Well you should see the piles of
Speaker 1: people outside my home. You think this is bad? You
Speaker 1: should really take a look at them. But anyway, so,
Speaker 1: and the takeaway that I got from this Persuadable Research
Speaker 1: Corporation survey was that what people want from their domestic
Speaker 1: robo is that they want them to be really cute
Speaker 1: humanoid mobile PCs about in the price range, because a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is about what you would pay for for
Speaker 1: for a really good PC, for for a decent PC.
Speaker 1: And um Bill Gates actually in two thousand six wrote
Speaker 1: an essay called a Robot in Every Home that was
Speaker 1: basically saying the same thing he said. If I can quote,
Speaker 1: he said, we may be on the verge of a
Speaker 1: new era when the PC will get up off the
Speaker 1: desktop and allow us to see here, touch and manipulate
Speaker 1: objects in places where we are not physically present. And
Speaker 1: this was kind of his vision for the future that
Speaker 1: that we would have. If you guys have seen Far Escape,
Speaker 1: sort of like the d r D s more so
Speaker 1: than Rosie the Rosie the Robot. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what a d r D and d r D was.
Speaker 1: It stands for Diagnostic Repair Drones. And these were these
Speaker 1: kind of little little bug shaped, little trialobite looking critters
Speaker 1: that would run around Far Escape and do minor repair
Speaker 1: work and play the Symphony of eighteen twelve and etcetera,
Speaker 1: etcetera as you need them to. Okay, I can see
Speaker 1: the pressing need for the twelve overture when I'm when
Speaker 1: I'm talking to them up it. Look, it depends on
Speaker 1: how crazy you get while you're lost in space. Okay,
Speaker 1: lost in space now I can talk about that show,
Speaker 1: but that had a different robot. Anyway, I'm getting off track.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that you say that this whole trilobyte idea,
Speaker 1: because in fact, the very first domestic robot that I
Speaker 1: could come up that I came across my research as
Speaker 1: far as on the consumer level goes. So the first
Speaker 1: robot that the average person could go out and buy
Speaker 1: for their home was a very specific use robot. It
Speaker 1: was the electro Lux Trilobyte, and it was a robot
Speaker 1: that looked kind of like a trilobyte, and it was
Speaker 1: a vacuum robot. And you've probably seen different vacuum robots.
Speaker 1: We will talk about a very famous one in a
Speaker 1: little bit, but the electro Lux Trilobyte was the first
Speaker 1: robotic vacuum cleaner and it hit the market in two
Speaker 1: thousand one. And the original model used ultrasonic sensors to
Speaker 1: navigate through an environment, So essentially it's shooting out ultrasonic sounds.
Speaker 1: So this is these are signals that we cannot detect
Speaker 1: their outside the range of human hearing, and the signal
Speaker 1: would emit from the robot and if it, if it
Speaker 1: encountered anything, it would bounce back like a vacuum bat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a vacuum bat. It was kind of like
Speaker 1: what Batman would be if he were a domestic cleaning
Speaker 1: person as opposed to a crime fighter. He would dress
Speaker 1: up as a bat and clean the robot. What it
Speaker 1: would do is it would send out the signal. It
Speaker 1: would the single would reflect back, and that's how we
Speaker 1: would know how far away it was from some other object.
Speaker 1: So when you have it set down to clean your
Speaker 1: living room and you've got all this furniture there, as
Speaker 1: it would approach the furniture, the signal would go out
Speaker 1: bounce back. The robot would know, all right, I have
Speaker 1: to stop in three inches or I'm going to run
Speaker 1: into something like couch or whatever. And so the earliest
Speaker 1: model had these ultrasonic sensors and that was pretty much it.
Speaker 1: You could you could lay down these magnetic strips along
Speaker 1: the borders of your room so that it would not
Speaker 1: go to across, which is important if, for instance, you
Speaker 1: happen to have a staircase and you don't want your
Speaker 1: extremely expensive Trilobyte robot to go take a tumble down
Speaker 1: the stairs. Yes, I imagine that those first ones were
Speaker 1: not at all inexpensive. I'm sure they were quite expensive. Yes,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think that it's still fairly expensive to
Speaker 1: get most of these sort of robots because as the
Speaker 1: years go on, the technology gets more sophisticated, so each
Speaker 1: model that comes out has more features. Uh. The second
Speaker 1: round of the electro Lux trilobyte also included infrared sensors,
Speaker 1: so it made it a little easier for the robot
Speaker 1: to sense its environment because one of the problems with
Speaker 1: the ultrasonic ones was that if it came across, uh,
Speaker 1: something that was like a really sharp curve or whatever,
Speaker 1: the ultra the ultrasonic responses wouldn't be accurate enough for it.
Speaker 1: So that was the first one, and it also had
Speaker 1: a base unit that it could automatically find, again using
Speaker 1: ultrasonic sensors. The base unit, you know, it sends a signal.
Speaker 1: Base unit picks it up, it sends a signal. The
Speaker 1: robot hones in on that signal so that it can
Speaker 1: plug back in charge exactly. So I've seen uses of
Speaker 1: this in toys as well. So for example, there was
Speaker 1: uh Lego has a series of robots that you can
Speaker 1: build yourself robot kits, right, and the robot kits come
Speaker 1: with a programmable base and the programmable base is actually
Speaker 1: really cool and lets you plug and play robot commands
Speaker 1: into your robots. So essentially it's like it's like if
Speaker 1: then commands, if this robot encounters this situation, then the
Speaker 1: robot should behave this way. And one of the things
Speaker 1: you can do is you can buy different types of
Speaker 1: sensors to be on your lego robot, and one of
Speaker 1: them is the ultrasonic sensor, which allows a robot to
Speaker 1: really zero in on objects. And here and how stuff works.
Speaker 1: For our big holiday party of we had some of
Speaker 1: we had someone come in with these robots and show
Speaker 1: them off, and one of the robots had just simple
Speaker 1: infrared sensors that would allow it to detect when it
Speaker 1: was coming close to the edge of the player right
Speaker 1: and it would turn around and come back in. The
Speaker 1: other robot had the infrared sensors and the ultrasonic which
Speaker 1: allowed it to zero in on the its opponent, so
Speaker 1: we could go right after the other robot. Uh. Clearly,
Speaker 1: in the domestic situation here we're talking more about the
Speaker 1: robot just avoiding damage, also avoid damaging other stuff in
Speaker 1: the environment like your furniture. UM, I think this is
Speaker 1: a good time to take a quick break and thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor, and now back to the show. Are getting
Speaker 1: back into domestic robots. There's a company that you pretty
Speaker 1: much have to talk about called I Robot, which is
Speaker 1: kind of funny. I Robot makes me think of something else. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't even mention Isaac asthmov well earlier I think
Speaker 1: this is a perfect opportunity before we dive into the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: science fiction writer working in Oh, you might be better
Speaker 1: at this and I am in the sixties, is that correct?
Speaker 1: And earlier? Yes, and earlier, but um, I've wrote wrote
Speaker 1: the three Laws of robotics. Yeah, these were the laws
Speaker 1: that that in within the Asimov stories guided the robots
Speaker 1: behavior so that they would try and follow ethical programming. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea being that the basic three rules, I don't
Speaker 1: have them written in front of me, so I apologize
Speaker 1: for the fact that I'm going to get these out
Speaker 1: of order and that I'm paraphrasing. But that the robot
Speaker 1: could not do anything to harm itself unless it would
Speaker 1: mean that it would allow others to come to harm. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, first, robot couldn't harm itself. A robot
Speaker 1: could not harm other people. Uh, And there was another one.
Speaker 1: I think it's property that robots can't hurt. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the most important rule of all of them was that
Speaker 1: a robot could not allow could not hurt a person
Speaker 1: or allow a person to be hurt to come to
Speaker 1: damage yes through inaction. Uh. And that overruled all other
Speaker 1: robotic rules. So if it meant that the robot would
Speaker 1: end up being damaged in the process of preventing a
Speaker 1: living thing from being hurt, the robot would go ahead
Speaker 1: and override that rule and allow itself to be damaged
Speaker 1: so that could save the person. Uh. Most of Asimov's
Speaker 1: stories involving robots had had stuff to do with unintended
Speaker 1: consequences of these what what appeared to be ironclad rules, right,
Speaker 1: because when you give a logical set to a very
Speaker 1: sophisticate in computer, it may or may not find ways around, right.
Speaker 1: And and it's not necessarily that the computer is trying
Speaker 1: to behave in a a malevolent way. For example, here's
Speaker 1: another example. This is one of those things about the
Speaker 1: robot apocalypse that you always, you know, hear science fiction
Speaker 1: writers talk about, and some futurists as well. Uh. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you a super intelligent computer robot, and you
Speaker 1: tell the robot, uh, I want you to make humankind. Uh,
Speaker 1: I want I want you to bring about world peace.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you are smarter than we are, bring
Speaker 1: about world peace. It's possible that the robot could come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion that the reason why there's not world
Speaker 1: peace is because there are people, all of those pesky
Speaker 1: humans running around causing wars. So if we just end
Speaker 1: of all kill all humans and then you've got peace.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's that's that's the classic example. But
Speaker 1: so you don't have to worry about your domestic vacuum
Speaker 1: robot doing that. Probably not. I've I've known I've known
Speaker 1: an I Robot roomba, and it did not seem malevolent,
Speaker 1: very very malevolent to me. My dog was not too shared.
Speaker 1: The dog might have a completely different opinion about the
Speaker 1: intentions of the I Robot roomba. All right, well to
Speaker 1: talk about I robot before we we talked about the roomba.
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me is that it's a company that
Speaker 1: was formed in nineteen by three m I T associate uh.
Speaker 1: Those three m I T Associates where Rod Brooks, Colin
Speaker 1: Angle and Helen Grinder and they wanted to bring robots
Speaker 1: out of the realm of academ and industry. Those were
Speaker 1: the two places where you would find a robot pretty
Speaker 1: much before ninety nine, with some exceptions. There were some
Speaker 1: toys that were had. I had a very annoying robot
Speaker 1: toy when I was a young child, all of all
Speaker 1: of the noises. My my aunt, who didn't have kids yet,
Speaker 1: got it for me. Of course, that's always the relative
Speaker 1: who does that. Yeah, So there were toys, and like
Speaker 1: hobbyists had some access to some robotics, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people were doing d I y stuff, but much
Speaker 1: like the field of early computers, most people were just
Speaker 1: kind of going like, what is this thing good for? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what can we do with it? Consumers didn't have
Speaker 1: an option as of yet. This is way back in purchase. First,
Speaker 1: they well, first their company was called I S Robotics,
Speaker 1: but they would change that further down the line, and
Speaker 1: they originally built their business plan on the idea of
Speaker 1: space exploration robots. So their first designs were for NASA
Speaker 1: and UH. They created some robots that were meant for
Speaker 1: things like lunar exploration and UH spaceship robot type creations
Speaker 1: and planetary exploration robots, and these designs allowed them to
Speaker 1: get some contracts with the government. And the whole point
Speaker 1: of them making these designs, besides the fact that this
Speaker 1: was like they were genuinely interested in, was that it
Speaker 1: would allow them to gain the capital they would need
Speaker 1: to invest in a consumer robot, because that's not a
Speaker 1: small undertaking. Remember this is a decade before we see
Speaker 1: the first consumer robot on shelves, So it's as Lauren
Speaker 1: was saying before, it's not the most efficient or economically
Speaker 1: feasible way for you to take care of minor chores
Speaker 1: around the house. It could be a very expensive thing.
Speaker 1: So they need to raise some capital first before they
Speaker 1: could start getting into consumer robots. You know, they couldn't
Speaker 1: just hit the ground running doing that. So first they
Speaker 1: started working on robots for space exploration missions. They developed
Speaker 1: a robot called the I Robot five tin PackBot, and
Speaker 1: this was a search and rescue and bomb disposal robots.
Speaker 1: I was used by the military, and they still do
Speaker 1: a bunch of military work I believe they do. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to hope that your room bud does not
Speaker 1: get mixed up with the PackBot five ten. Yes, fingers
Speaker 1: crossed to be fair. Of the five tin pac bots
Speaker 1: not it's not a military robot in the sense of
Speaker 1: one it's weaponized. It's at most of these are in
Speaker 1: fact going on reconmissions or to defuse bombs where so
Speaker 1: that you know, or or possibly to uh, like I said,
Speaker 1: search and rescue. So for first responders, they might send
Speaker 1: a robot if there's a building, for example, that's been
Speaker 1: the target of a bomb, then sending a robot in
Speaker 1: to look for survivors, UH could mean saving the lives
Speaker 1: of first responders. You know. It's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where you think, well, this is a really expensive robot,
Speaker 1: but compared to a human life, it is negligible. So UH,
Speaker 1: I Robot began to make those as well, and again
Speaker 1: this helped I Robot gain the capital they needed to
Speaker 1: go into the consumer market. And one of the other
Speaker 1: big projects they did before they got into consumer robots
Speaker 1: was called Auto Cleaner. An auto cleaner was meant for S. C.
Speaker 1: Johnson wax and as an industrial cleaning robot. UH. And
Speaker 1: this this is kind of the project that inspired a
Speaker 1: couple of the engineers once the project was winding down,
Speaker 1: to look into a way of building a consumer model
Speaker 1: of and that was what would eventually become the Room
Speaker 1: And it was when they first started working on it,
Speaker 1: and the Rombo would not hit store shelves until September
Speaker 1: two two so um. By then, the electro Lux Trilloby
Speaker 1: had been on the market for almost a year, and
Speaker 1: then they launched the I Robot, which don't totally different.
Speaker 1: Company obviously launched the roomba, which has I think become
Speaker 1: almost like the best synonymous basically, yeah exactly, or Xerox
Speaker 1: it's it's or Jello fridge. Yeah. Yeah, It's just one
Speaker 1: of those things where the term has almost just substituted
Speaker 1: the idea of vacuum robot roomba shorthand as as of
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, over six million of the buggers have
Speaker 1: been sold. So so um, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: jokes that are coming to mind, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: leave them all alone. Excellent, but you're all welcome. I
Speaker 1: Robot does make several other kinds of things, Yes, they do.
Speaker 1: They make They make a robot scuba, which is a mop. Yes,
Speaker 1: scuba actually has an interesting approach. Well, it's good to
Speaker 1: compare it to the roomba. So the rumba uses essentially
Speaker 1: three different kinds of brushes. There's one brush that just
Speaker 1: sort of helps sweep particles with in the path into
Speaker 1: the path of the roomba. But then it has these
Speaker 1: two brushes that are used to pick up the larger
Speaker 1: types of debris. And uh so these two brushes spin
Speaker 1: in a way where they're one is clockwise, the other's counterclockwise,
Speaker 1: and they use that motion to I'm gesticulating, and that's
Speaker 1: not helping. Yeah, they're using this this opposite rotating motion
Speaker 1: to flick stuff up into the bin that the that
Speaker 1: is inside the roomba, the the refuse bin if you
Speaker 1: prefer trash bin um. And then it also has a
Speaker 1: vacuum that uses suction to suck up the finer particles,
Speaker 1: finer being smaller, not of higher quality. And then the
Speaker 1: scuba its method is it uses it has a vacuum
Speaker 1: as well to suck up loose particles, and then it
Speaker 1: sprays the floor with a combination of water and cleaning solution,
Speaker 1: then uses a rotating brush to scrub the floor. Then
Speaker 1: it sucks up the dirty water into a wastebind that
Speaker 1: is separate from the water and cleaning solution bend. So
Speaker 1: there's two different containers inside the scuba for this stuff,
Speaker 1: so that way you don't mix the two. Clearly you
Speaker 1: want dirty water to go back into there. And then uh,
Speaker 1: it uses a technology called I adapt to monitor and
Speaker 1: respond to its environment. So the rumba and the scuba
Speaker 1: both have to be able to maneuver through an environment
Speaker 1: and uh and cover an entire floor, because I mean,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't do you any good if the room bad
Speaker 1: just kind of wandered aimlessly and then went to its
Speaker 1: charging station. You go in and like, well, this one
Speaker 1: meaningless path is clean, but everything else is filthy. So
Speaker 1: it has to be able to make its way across
Speaker 1: around in a in a space that was not necessarily
Speaker 1: intended for a robot to move around, right, because yeah,
Speaker 1: well humans can instinctively look at a coffee table and go,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't walk directly into that. Yeah, robots don't necessarily
Speaker 1: seraily know that off the top. They have to actually
Speaker 1: be programmed to not do that that. We'll get into
Speaker 1: more of that in a second too. But yeah, those
Speaker 1: are the two big ones, roomba and scuba. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they I think it's CS or it might have been.
Speaker 1: And they also introduced the I Robot Luge, which is
Speaker 1: a gutter cleaner. Yeah. I've seen examples of the luge
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, but it's it's essentially this
Speaker 1: thing that you put in your gutter and it just
Speaker 1: kind of goes, it goes, it goes down like a
Speaker 1: bullet and then just starts scoop it out gunk. So
Speaker 1: do not stand near your gutter while the while that
Speaker 1: sucker is going to stand in your gutter that's near
Speaker 1: your gutter like or under Yeah. Gross. Remember though, if
Speaker 1: your head's in the gutter, your eyes are looking at
Speaker 1: the stars, just a paraphrase of that is deep. Oh
Speaker 1: that's pretty you know, I can get pretty deep in
Speaker 1: the gutter anyway. So there are other types of domestic
Speaker 1: robots as well. I mean, these these were probably the
Speaker 1: best known because they are it's a huge brand and
Speaker 1: they've been around for a few years. But there's a
Speaker 1: robotic lawnmowers. I think we're I think I have Robot
Speaker 1: actually does one of those as well. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: might I know that. I know there are quite a
Speaker 1: few brands that do have robotic lawnmowers, and so these
Speaker 1: are again using that same tech. Those same technologies are
Speaker 1: using collision detection to make sure that they don't bang
Speaker 1: into anything. Uh. Most of them have a little kill
Speaker 1: switches inside them, so they if they're tilted or turned over,
Speaker 1: the blade stops spinning immediately, so that way you don't
Speaker 1: endanger anyone like a little kid wondering what this thing is,
Speaker 1: I'll put my hand on it. Yeah, that's that can
Speaker 1: be dangerous. And they also can you know, you can
Speaker 1: define the parameters of your yard so that the lawnmower
Speaker 1: works within those parameters and doesn't you know just suddenly
Speaker 1: like well, all done here, let's do the neighbor's yard,
Speaker 1: and then the next one, next one. So there there
Speaker 1: are examples of that. They it works very similar technologies
Speaker 1: as the vacuum robots. Another similar robots, window cleaning robots
Speaker 1: that use suction to attach themselves to a window. And
Speaker 1: then again with the cleaning solution and the interesting water.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any of these. They sound terrifying. There
Speaker 1: was one unbuild at CSEN called the back windbot. I
Speaker 1: wish I had seen that now, and uh it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to debut later this year for under four
Speaker 1: dollars supposedly, and yeah, reusable pads to wash and dry.
Speaker 1: It has a little squeegee in there, so I guess
Speaker 1: you set it on the window and then it goes Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing. This is another example of why
Speaker 1: people are a little disappointed, not that they should be,
Speaker 1: but they're disappointed in domestic robots because it's not a
Speaker 1: robot that just comes out of a closet and then
Speaker 1: takes a look around says, oh, these are the four
Speaker 1: things that need to be done in this room. I
Speaker 1: need to to sweep and mop the floors, and need
Speaker 1: to clean the windows, need to fold the laundry, and
Speaker 1: I need to pick the kid off the TV because
Speaker 1: he's been on it too long, which is what you know,
Speaker 1: Rosie the robot could do. It's John again. The robots
Speaker 1: still beeping, So we're going to take another break while
Speaker 1: I try and figure out how to turn this thing off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got one called the dress Man. Dress Man. Dress
Speaker 1: Man looks like a kind of a mannequin torso, but
Speaker 1: it essentially uses uh in. The robot itself inflates and
Speaker 1: uses hot air to dry and press shirts. It's a
Speaker 1: robotic iron that's that's terrific. Yeah, I could use one.
Speaker 1: I definitely tend to wear wrinkled stuff. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I iron approximately never, so that's yeah. There's also robots
Speaker 1: in pet care, robotical litter boxes that self scoop away,
Speaker 1: that's a valuable service, refilling food and water trays. There
Speaker 1: are robot pool cleaners, which we talked about it. You know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that there was um and and you know
Speaker 1: that these are all different levels of sophistication. Not all
Speaker 1: of them need all the sensors that other ones need
Speaker 1: because the job they do doesn't require it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: not every single robot is going to be decked out
Speaker 1: with sensors. However, the future robots might might be decked
Speaker 1: out with sensors. We've got a lot of development in
Speaker 1: the robots space, people who want to create general purpose
Speaker 1: robots that can tackle different tasks so that you don't have,
Speaker 1: you know, eight different robots to do all of your chores.
Speaker 1: You've got one robot that can do all of them, right.
Speaker 1: Willow Garage is one company that has been making a
Speaker 1: lot of waves. Yeah, they've got a robot called the
Speaker 1: PR two, which stands for Personal Robot to the number
Speaker 1: two and it's essentially a research and development platform. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily meant to be a robot that a consumer
Speaker 1: will go out. And first of all, it's like around
Speaker 1: four dollars tag prohibitively expensive for most of us, including myself.
Speaker 1: Um And but what what this is meant to do
Speaker 1: is it's meant to allow people to build apps, robot
Speaker 1: apps that would increase the functionality of the robot. So
Speaker 1: you might create an app that's a laundry folding app
Speaker 1: or an app that's a fry an egg app. And
Speaker 1: the robot is humanoid in the sense that has arms,
Speaker 1: it's got like sensors that are in a head length thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like a torso with arms and uh wheels.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have legs. It's gonna it's gonna a wheeled base,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a little from what I saw.
Speaker 1: I didn't see like an actual scale like next to
Speaker 1: a human being. But to me, it like they came
Speaker 1: up a little higher than your waist maybe mid chest
Speaker 1: area is what it looked like. It could be that
Speaker 1: they're much taller than that, but that's not what it
Speaker 1: seemed to be when I was looking at the videos. Um,
Speaker 1: all of the robot videos that I've watched in the
Speaker 1: past twenty four hours are running into my head, so
Speaker 1: I've got no to You're watching a lot of like
Speaker 1: robots that had nothing to do with this. It's just
Speaker 1: just robots, just rot It's transformers, Michael Bay kick stuff
Speaker 1: blew up. Anyway, much much better robot videos than those
Speaker 1: come on. Nice, well done, you shall live. So the
Speaker 1: PR two robot is really meant for developers to create
Speaker 1: software for this role. Right, it's all open platform, open
Speaker 1: source developing UM is highly encouraged, and it's mostly trying
Speaker 1: to get people excited about it. Also, Willo Garage is
Speaker 1: doing the turtle Butt, which works together with I Robot
Speaker 1: makes something called to Create, which is a roomba base
Speaker 1: that has a loading dock for whatever other stuff you
Speaker 1: want to kind of shove in there. And it's for
Speaker 1: home developers. UM you can you can hook it up
Speaker 1: with a connect with a netbook anything else you want,
Speaker 1: and teach it how to do your own stuff. Neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things that allow hackers more tools to play with stuff
Speaker 1: is always cool. And the PR two has some pretty
Speaker 1: hefty hardware on it. It's got two computers on it
Speaker 1: that have eight core processors um each each computer has
Speaker 1: an eight core processor, twenty four gigs of RAM, and
Speaker 1: two terabytes of disk space. And according to that, to
Speaker 1: to what I was to one of the articles I
Speaker 1: was reading, all of that heavy duty hardware gives the
Speaker 1: pr tow the capability of folding a towel in just
Speaker 1: six minutes, which is down from twenty four minutes, which
Speaker 1: just means it's not the most efficient towel folding device ever. Well,
Speaker 1: to sure, but towels are towels are tricksy? No, yes,
Speaker 1: tells the other boy. Towels are so much trickier than say,
Speaker 1: t shirts. Well, I mean, you know, if if you're
Speaker 1: if you're looking at it as a as a human,
Speaker 1: then no, towels are pretty simple. But if you're looking
Speaker 1: at it as a robot, it tells are are floppy?
Speaker 1: They move around, they don't they don't say. And here's
Speaker 1: here's the rub. This is the problem is that teaching
Speaker 1: a robot to do something that's simple for a human
Speaker 1: is incredibly complex. Yeah. I mean, if if you teach
Speaker 1: a robot, how do you play chess? For example? A
Speaker 1: chess is one of those if then statement end of things.
Speaker 1: Only so many potential things you can do within a
Speaker 1: chess game. There are a lot of them, but there
Speaker 1: is a limit. There's an upward limit of the things
Speaker 1: you are capable of doing within the context of a
Speaker 1: chess game. If you ask a robot, however, to go
Speaker 1: to the kitchen, pick up a mug of tea and
Speaker 1: bring it back into the podcast room, that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's incredibly complicated, Yeah, because you never know what
Speaker 1: could be in the way. I mean, if the environment
Speaker 1: is constantly the same and the parameters for that task
Speaker 1: are always identical, that's one thing. But when you're in
Speaker 1: an environment that's dynamic, that can change over time. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a chair that's in the way that normally wouldn't be.
Speaker 1: Maybe the mugs are all pretty, or maybe there's only
Speaker 1: only clean mugs are in the dishwasher, as if people
Speaker 1: use that thing, Come on, how stuff works, people, Or
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe some mugs are more delicate than others
Speaker 1: and it crushes the mug to a fine powder instead
Speaker 1: of picking it up, and then pours the tea on
Speaker 1: it and brings you a what pile a mug powder
Speaker 1: which is not delicious. No, it's i recommend you do
Speaker 1: not drink ceramic powder. That would probably not go overwhelming.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean that's the thing is that teaching
Speaker 1: a robot to deal with these kind of changing environments
Speaker 1: is really challenging, and there are a lot of companies
Speaker 1: that are working on this with various types of artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence to deal with this. I mean, you think about
Speaker 1: it this way. If I walk into a room that
Speaker 1: I have never been in before, but I have all
Speaker 1: of my normal senses, if the lights are on, if
Speaker 1: lights are on and I'm able to see, I've got
Speaker 1: my glasses on because I am here sided. Let's say
Speaker 1: I walk into this room and I take a look
Speaker 1: around the room. I can get around that room fairly effectively,
Speaker 1: assuming there aren't like laser death traps or something in it,
Speaker 1: just a typical room, like there's there's some chairs and
Speaker 1: some other furniture around. As long as I haven't built
Speaker 1: the room right, I can get from point A to
Speaker 1: point B without killing myself or bumping into something or
Speaker 1: you know, otherwise making an idiot of myself more so
Speaker 1: than I normally do. A robot goes into that room,
Speaker 1: if it's never been there before, it has to have
Speaker 1: a lot of sophisticated equipment to be able to map
Speaker 1: out that room and then maneuver through that map, and
Speaker 1: it also needs to be able to map dynamically to
Speaker 1: be able to update this map in real time and
Speaker 1: act processing power, a lot of processing power, and it
Speaker 1: requires fairly sensitive and sophisticated sensors. So we take it
Speaker 1: for granted because it's our natural way of life. You know,
Speaker 1: we walk into a room and that's just the way
Speaker 1: things are. But for a robot, there is no natural
Speaker 1: way of life. We have to program all of that
Speaker 1: into the robot, and that is really really tricky, and
Speaker 1: it gets even more tricky when you start talking about
Speaker 1: things like can the robot navigate stairs? There are some
Speaker 1: robots that can. Honda's Asimo can go up and downstairs,
Speaker 1: but it needs to be the stairs have to be
Speaker 1: programmed in Asimo. At least in the last I read,
Speaker 1: as Amo could not navigate us upstairs that it had
Speaker 1: not encountered before. It could get through a room Manhattan
Speaker 1: encountered before, because it's sensors were sophisticate enough so that
Speaker 1: if you said, all right, as Amo, I need you
Speaker 1: to pick up the red ball that's in this room.
Speaker 1: As Amo could navigate through a room even if I've
Speaker 1: never seen it before and get to the object. And
Speaker 1: this is if you haven't seen one of these critters.
Speaker 1: It is. It is bipedal. It looks more or less
Speaker 1: like a like a person. I think it's about four
Speaker 1: ft two, so it's a small as Hueman's his Lauren's eize,
Speaker 1: thanks welcome. Hey, I'm five too. I'm gigantic compared to that.
Speaker 1: You could take him, totally take it, I keep saying him.
Speaker 1: But as Amo doesn't technically have a gender. It is genderless.
Speaker 1: It is is a robot that's like a little spaceman.
Speaker 1: Though does it kind of honestly, it creeps me out.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of sort of not okay with humanoid robots.
Speaker 1: I mean, have you seen it run? I has this
Speaker 1: little hopping run because Asthma that was that was one
Speaker 1: of the things that was famous about Asthma was that
Speaker 1: was the first robot of that size to be able
Speaker 1: to run. And by definition, running is a is a
Speaker 1: method of conveyance where at some point both your feet
Speaker 1: are off the ground, and most robots had to have
Speaker 1: at least one foot in contact with the ground at
Speaker 1: all times. In order to support over and uh, and
Speaker 1: it does mean that you have to program very sophisticated
Speaker 1: sensors in the robot to be able to have both
Speaker 1: feet come off the ground and when when a foot
Speaker 1: makes contact with the ground again, the robot has to
Speaker 1: be very carefully balanced so they can react in the
Speaker 1: right way so it remains upright and as Amo. They
Speaker 1: achieved that with Asimo, so when it runs, it it's
Speaker 1: really this little hoppy run that looks of comical when
Speaker 1: you when you first see it. Um. But Asimo also
Speaker 1: had a lot more sophistication than uh than previous versions
Speaker 1: of robots did. And um I wrote a whole article
Speaker 1: about Asimo, and I got a chance to see Asimo
Speaker 1: in person, actually anyone could because Asimo was at Disneylands
Speaker 1: in oventions and uh it was it was interesting to see.
Speaker 1: Now again, Asimo is kind of like an example of
Speaker 1: what a domestic robot might one day look like. But
Speaker 1: it really illustrates how challenging it is to build a
Speaker 1: robot that is bipedal and humanoid. It just doesn't it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the easiest design, all right, It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily make development sense. It's easier in the long run
Speaker 1: to to build these kind of small things the room
Speaker 1: by the window washer, etcetera, etcetera. If we're going to,
Speaker 1: I mean because we can either we can either build
Speaker 1: robots to interact with our environment, or we can build
Speaker 1: our environment to interact more easily with robots. And that
Speaker 1: would involve, you know, having an extra entire space in
Speaker 1: our kitchen so that a robot can can access all
Speaker 1: of our food and cook for us, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: set it loosen there and just kind of see what
Speaker 1: it does. Yeah, yeah, it's it's There are a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges, and grant they're very smart people working on
Speaker 1: these challenges to try and and overcome them. There are
Speaker 1: other challenges as well. There are emotional challenges, because the
Speaker 1: more humanoid you make a robot, the more likely you
Speaker 1: are to develop some sort of emotional attachment. There are
Speaker 1: people who find their room bas to be perfectly charming.
Speaker 1: There are people who have named their room bas. Apparently
Speaker 1: most people that name their room bas. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: ends up becoming almost like a pet. Even though this
Speaker 1: is this is an object that has no sentience, there's
Speaker 1: no emotion in this object whatsoever. But they seem because
Speaker 1: they are animated and this we move around and and
Speaker 1: go through an environment. They seem I used to talk
Speaker 1: to mine all the time, and you know it to
Speaker 1: be fair a long and you just talk to yourself
Speaker 1: all the time, so entirely fair, Yeah that was I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: so of course you talked to it all the time. However,
Speaker 1: if it had looked I mean, you know, the way
Speaker 1: the way that I reacted to the videos I was
Speaker 1: watching of of the ASMAO, I'm kind of creeped out
Speaker 1: by it. I'm not really okay with humanoid robot, which
Speaker 1: brings to the concept of the uncanny valley right where
Speaker 1: you start to The closer you approach the appearance of
Speaker 1: a human the more likely you are to make it
Speaker 1: an unsettling experience for someone to look at. Right. Um, now,
Speaker 1: if you were to ever get to a point where
Speaker 1: the robot is indistinguishable from a human being, you would
Speaker 1: bridge theoretically, you would bridge the uncanny valley and it
Speaker 1: would no longer be an issue. But the problem is
Speaker 1: when you get really close but not exactly there, so
Speaker 1: that there's something that's off and it just really it
Speaker 1: unsettles you in a very Freudian itch in between your
Speaker 1: shoulder blades kind of way. It's it's it gives you
Speaker 1: the willies in the in the Americans sense the word please,
Speaker 1: Brits still right to me. I'm not being rude. We're
Speaker 1: not trying to be anyway now I am ha ha. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get to these robots that look kind of human,
Speaker 1: but they're not quite right, and that definitely gives a
Speaker 1: comment on settling feeling. The example, I always hear that
Speaker 1: this isn't robots, this is computer generated uh imagery? Is
Speaker 1: the film Polar Express? Oh yeah, when the when the
Speaker 1: trailers came out for the Polar Express movie did the
Speaker 1: animated models looked very lifelike, but the eyes were not
Speaker 1: quite right and kind of gave the sort of deadlights
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you get a little creepy. Now,
Speaker 1: as as we get better and better at that, there
Speaker 1: may be a time where we do bridge that gap.
Speaker 1: We get that that David from Prometheus kind of thing
Speaker 1: where all robots look like Michael fast during. That's pretty
Speaker 1: much okay. I was thinking back to AI personally, but
Speaker 1: because I want my robots like Jude Law. That's entirely fair.
Speaker 1: We're allowed to disagree on Okay, all right, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we've reached that that accord. Excellent. We've we've
Speaker 1: kind of covered the whole topic here. The future of
Speaker 1: domestic robots. I think more likely likely than not, we're
Speaker 1: going to see more specification type robots, you know, robots
Speaker 1: made for specific use. Um, it will still be quite
Speaker 1: a while before we get robots that can be general
Speaker 1: purpose domestic robots, especially the humanoid ones. I think that's
Speaker 1: easily more than a decade away, just because the the
Speaker 1: stuff that we could do now is incredible, but it
Speaker 1: requires so much computing horsepower and such a huge support
Speaker 1: system around it, it's not feasible for them. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: hardware is kind of getting their hardware is cheap enough
Speaker 1: these days that that I think that that part is
Speaker 1: on the feasible end. But it's really the software that
Speaker 1: we do not have the capa see yet, you know,
Speaker 1: to run the programs necessary. Yeah. So I mean, if
Speaker 1: you if you had a supercomputer in your home that
Speaker 1: could run the robot for you, so the robot would
Speaker 1: not have to carry around its own superhuman robot brain,
Speaker 1: that might help. But I don't know a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have supercomputers. You know, just stored away and
Speaker 1: there their gaming room or whatever. Not not too many
Speaker 1: of us, Nope, I definitely do not number among them.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's kind of the low down on domestic
Speaker 1: robots as they stand now and how they may be
Speaker 1: in the future. I would love to see robots that
Speaker 1: come out that have this sort of adaptability, like the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that Willow Garage is walking working on.
Speaker 1: Where You've got these robots that you know, depending upon
Speaker 1: what apps you download, they can do different stuff. And
Speaker 1: that wraps up another classic episode of tech stuff. Hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoyed it. Uh. It's one of those topics
Speaker 1: that I think is fascinating because the more I learned
Speaker 1: about the what goes into designing these robots, the more
Speaker 1: I appreciate how complicated is. Because you're not just designing
Speaker 1: the systems. You're not just engineering the robotics so that
Speaker 1: the thing does the thing you need it to do.
Speaker 1: You also have to start taking human psychology into account,
Speaker 1: and once you start looking at how humans interact with robots,
Speaker 1: things change in ways you probably didn't expect when you
Speaker 1: were just trying to work out the kinks of the
Speaker 1: mechanical aspect. I find that fascinating. So this is a
Speaker 1: topic I'm sure I will return to in the future.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future topics I should cover,
Speaker 1: email me. The address is tech stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter. The handle it both of those is text
Speaker 1: stuff HSW. You can go to our website that's tech
Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com. There's an archive there of every
Speaker 1: episode that's ever published. It's searchable. Go check that out.
Speaker 1: And there's also a link to our online store where
Speaker 1: every purchase you make goes to out the show. And
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate it, and I will talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I
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