Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: Stuff Media and I heart radio and love all things tech.
Speaker 1: And Today, dear listeners, we have something very special for
Speaker 1: all of you because you've become so accustomed to having
Speaker 1: your lonesome hero out there on the waste lands covering technology. Today,
Speaker 1: I've got a partner in crime, Adam, and I'm Dowd
Speaker 1: from Android Authority. Thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 1: for this episode. I'm excited to be here. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. And you know what, I
Speaker 1: enjoy your your lonesome man routines, so I'm just glad
Speaker 1: that I can contribute. It's it's great. Uh. I have
Speaker 1: gotten very good at doing that tennis ball thing from
Speaker 1: stillag seven team. That's a film reference. All you youngsters
Speaker 1: out there, go check that out. But it's nice to
Speaker 1: have someone else to chat tech with and just some
Speaker 1: background guys. Adam reached out to me heading into ce S.
Speaker 1: Originally we had hoped to record a podcast at c
Speaker 1: e S itself. That didn't quite work out, but for
Speaker 1: Cess nuts, you've heard me talk about it, And so
Speaker 1: how many ce s s have you been to? Was
Speaker 1: this your first one or had you been before? This
Speaker 1: was my second one, but there were three years apart.
Speaker 1: So my first one was in two thousand sixteen, and
Speaker 1: then I was supposed to go in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: got canceled last minute, two thousand eighteen I just couldn't
Speaker 1: swing it, and two thousand nineteen, blamo, here we go.
Speaker 1: So you've been twice, I've been. I've been ten times.
Speaker 1: And that's not the summi bragging. There are journalists who
Speaker 1: have been covering ce s for longer than I've been alive,
Speaker 1: so not. But you know, is is a chaotic busy.
Speaker 1: You know, you're constantly running from one point to another experience.
Speaker 1: Nothing is close to anything else. So many ubers, so
Speaker 1: many and and you think you look at a map
Speaker 1: of the Las Vegas Strip and you think it can't
Speaker 1: possibly take very long to get from there to there?
Speaker 1: Oh boy, can it take a long time to get
Speaker 1: even just a few casinos away? You might you can
Speaker 1: probably walk into about the same time, but you're going
Speaker 1: to be exhausted when you get there. My favorite story
Speaker 1: to tell regarding the distances between places in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Was this year. I was at the Flamingo Hotel attending
Speaker 1: a robotics conference which we will undoubitedly talk about shortly,
Speaker 1: and from there I had to go to Pepcom, which
Speaker 1: was in the Mirage Hotel. Now, if you look at
Speaker 1: a map of Las Vegas, there's only it's only about
Speaker 1: a ten minute walk from the Flamingo over to the Mirage. However,
Speaker 1: once you hit the front door of the Mirage, you
Speaker 1: have to walk another literally ten minutes from the front
Speaker 1: door of the Mirage to the ballroom in the Mirage
Speaker 1: where Pepcom is actually being held. You just you hate
Speaker 1: yourself by the time you get there. Yeah. Part of
Speaker 1: this is because of the design of casinos, right. The
Speaker 1: whole idea is to try and entice people into gamble
Speaker 1: and to spend more money. So there's no easy direct
Speaker 1: path for a lot of these these sort of journeys
Speaker 1: you go through. You have to go through an entire
Speaker 1: casino floor and there's usually like that means diverting around
Speaker 1: some centralized area. Usually it's the high rollers suite or
Speaker 1: whatever in the middle, or it's a restaurant or something
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's not They don't make it easy
Speaker 1: to get around, and so we didn't get a chance
Speaker 1: to meet up during C E S. But you were
Speaker 1: covering robotics at c E S. It's a subject near
Speaker 1: and dear to my heart, which still remains human. Don't worry,
Speaker 1: but I thought we would talk. Yeah, it's well, you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta take that that test every now and then.
Speaker 1: But we're going to We're going to talk about consumer
Speaker 1: robots because I've covered robotics quite a bit on tech stuff,
Speaker 1: and I've talked about robotics from prototyping and military robots
Speaker 1: that did the episodes about Boston Dynamics and how many
Speaker 1: years they spent just trying to get a robot to
Speaker 1: hop in a circle properly. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the consumer side of things and what you saw at
Speaker 1: CES because you were right there in the thick of it,
Speaker 1: whereas I was. I was in an ivory tower next
Speaker 1: to a Claude bathtub next to my bed. For reasons
Speaker 1: I still don't quite grasp it's it. It's you know what.
Speaker 1: It gives me a wonderful mental picture, though, so I
Speaker 1: really appreciate that. So it didn't take a photo of
Speaker 1: me in the tub, but I was fully clothed and
Speaker 1: there was in the water in there. It's just just
Speaker 1: I was like, I've got to I've got to experience this, right, Oh, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just a little background. You know, I work
Speaker 1: for Android Authority and we're all things, you know, smartphones
Speaker 1: and tablets and whatnot. But I was asked by my editors,
Speaker 1: you know, if you could take a look at, you know,
Speaker 1: anything else aside from you know, smartphones, because ce us
Speaker 1: not really huge for smartphones, to be honest, so you
Speaker 1: want more about the Mobile World Congress or something from
Speaker 1: the right right, which is coming up in just a month.
Speaker 1: But so they asked me, you know what else would
Speaker 1: you like to take a look at. Would you like
Speaker 1: to look at robots? And I said, sure, that sounds great,
Speaker 1: let's do that. Because you know, I'm I'm a big
Speaker 1: Jetsons fan. I love Rosie, I love you know, from
Speaker 1: from Lost in Space, the robot you know, I love
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So I figured, let's go take a
Speaker 1: look at that. And then I realized just how broad
Speaker 1: the robotics industry is, and it's everything from autonomous cars too,
Speaker 1: you know, personal robots to room Buzz to everything in between.
Speaker 1: So I sat down with my editors and I said,
Speaker 1: we need to focus, we need to we need to
Speaker 1: narrow this thing down a little bit. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you want to look at it? And I said,
Speaker 1: I want something that will bring me my beer. Can
Speaker 1: we do that? And they said absolutely, let's do that.
Speaker 1: So that's where I kind of ended up, was looking
Speaker 1: at the robots that not not so much the ones
Speaker 1: that you snuggle with to help you to sleep, but
Speaker 1: the ones that will, you know, do things for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember a couple of years ago one
Speaker 1: of the robots I've got a lot of buzz on
Speaker 1: the floor was a close folding robot and it didn't
Speaker 1: look anything. People when they hear the word robot, I
Speaker 1: think more often than not, they're thinking of an anthropomorphic figure, right,
Speaker 1: some humors vaguely human shaped, and unless there's someone who's
Speaker 1: owned things like room Buzz and that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: where they think, oh, no, robots can come in all
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes. This thing looked like it was a box. Uh.
Speaker 1: It looked like just a box that you put clothing
Speaker 1: in and it would bring you folded it would you know,
Speaker 1: spit folded clothing out And I was there this year too,
Speaker 1: So that's that just tells you that robots come in
Speaker 1: all shapes and sizes and for all sorts of functions,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are dedicated functions, like a
Speaker 1: very specific one function kind of robot. Because as you
Speaker 1: learn more about robotics, you learned that the more things
Speaker 1: you want your robot to do, the harder it is
Speaker 1: to design the robot to do any of them. Well,
Speaker 1: you have a development community behind you that will build
Speaker 1: all these different skills for different robots. But I could
Speaker 1: be referring to another podcast that we might have just
Speaker 1: finished recording. Yes, you you will definitely have to listen
Speaker 1: to that episode over at at Android Authority because we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the Misty robot platform, and we
Speaker 1: won't go over that material here because I think it's
Speaker 1: really important you guys go out and check out that episode.
Speaker 1: It was a great episode. I really enjoyed being on it.
Speaker 1: Thank you by the way for inviting me to be
Speaker 1: on that show. And I think you guys out there
Speaker 1: tech stuff fans, you should definitely go check that out
Speaker 1: because that will be a nice compliment to this episode,
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought something that'd be fun to do.
Speaker 1: This is just I'm just gonna run down a quick
Speaker 1: list of some of the famous consumer robots that have
Speaker 1: come out over the years and kind of give you
Speaker 1: an idea of the the evolution of consumer robots over
Speaker 1: the past decades. So, Adam, I don't know how old
Speaker 1: you are. I am not going to ask you that
Speaker 1: question unless you feel comfortable mentioning it. I am of
Speaker 1: the tender age of forty three years old. And you
Speaker 1: got me all right, there we go. So you remember
Speaker 1: the eighties right vaguely? Yeah? Yeah, it was a crazy
Speaker 1: time for all of us. But so in the in
Speaker 1: the eighties, I remember distinctly there there was one thing
Speaker 1: I really wish I could have asked for as a
Speaker 1: Christmas present, but I just I knew it was. It
Speaker 1: was beyond my star, as Shakespeare would say, it was
Speaker 1: something that was to be wished for but never owned.
Speaker 1: That was the infamous Omnibot. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: ever saw an omnibot or you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: The original Omnibot had of a dome like head. It
Speaker 1: was tiny, it was it was you know, maybe two
Speaker 1: ft tall, maybe three I don't think it was three
Speaker 1: ft tall, probably two ft tall, and had a cassette
Speaker 1: tape player built into its chest, and you could actually
Speaker 1: put programming on cassette, you know, record a program onto
Speaker 1: magnetic tape on cassette and put that into chest and
Speaker 1: it would follow it. It would also just play in
Speaker 1: regular audio cassettes if you wanted, So, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to have your robot shred to a C d C,
Speaker 1: you could, and you should I think, you know, and
Speaker 1: for those for those about two bot, we salute you,
Speaker 1: and uh. You could also program it with a remote control.
Speaker 1: You could do voice commands over the remote control, and
Speaker 1: it was it was done as like a programmable robot
Speaker 1: that you could own. And I thought it looked phenomenal.
Speaker 1: These days, if you look at you're gonna think, wow,
Speaker 1: how quaint. But that was an early example and and
Speaker 1: by all measure of today's robotics, it was certainly a
Speaker 1: primitive example. But to a kid in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: this was the next best thing to having your own
Speaker 1: R two D two in your house. Oh for sure. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, amnibot did kind of look like
Speaker 1: Artie D two's idiot cousin at the time, but yes,
Speaker 1: for sure. So this kind of leads into the next
Speaker 1: robot I want to talk about, which was the Robotic
Speaker 1: Operating Buddy or rob. Rob was a justification to sell
Speaker 1: Nintoto entertainment systems. So when the NES first came out
Speaker 1: in the United States, stores did not want to carry
Speaker 1: a video game console because the video game crash in
Speaker 1: the United States had totally decimated that that market actually
Speaker 1: decimates the wrong term, that's just reducing it by ten.
Speaker 1: That market was gone. Uh so no one wanted to
Speaker 1: carry a video game console. So Nintendo, in an effort
Speaker 1: to make it more attractive to toy stores in the
Speaker 1: United States, had developed this successory, this peripheral called rob
Speaker 1: that was a robot and I used big air quotes
Speaker 1: on that that would go along with the console. And
Speaker 1: it had maybe two titles that worked with the robot,
Speaker 1: and that was enough to get toy stores convinced to
Speaker 1: carry it because robotics was starting to become a thing,
Speaker 1: even though video game consoles no longer were really thought
Speaker 1: of as being marketable. And then and it worked. And
Speaker 1: then as soon as Nintendo saw it was working, they
Speaker 1: dropped rob because there was no reason to keep making
Speaker 1: this very expensive peripheral when they could just sell the
Speaker 1: video game console. Uh yeah, I was in Atari family,
Speaker 1: so we didn't really get into the whole Nintendo thing
Speaker 1: until much later. Same here, Buddy, I was Ayer, and
Speaker 1: later on I inherited and in television that was Those
Speaker 1: were my early consoles. Uh and then we're skipping ahead
Speaker 1: a lot here, more than a decade, actually, I guess
Speaker 1: I could argue was also when we saw an amazing
Speaker 1: robot in the uh incredible documentary film Rocky four. But
Speaker 1: the less we say about that, the better it's. It
Speaker 1: wasn't really a consumer robot that anyone could just go
Speaker 1: out and buy unless you had a quarter of a
Speaker 1: million dollars on you. So Lego introduced mind Storms, the
Speaker 1: modular design system that allowed people to play with concepts
Speaker 1: of robotics and programming as well as robotic design, which
Speaker 1: was kind of cool. Sony released the first Ibo, robotic Dog,
Speaker 1: which it continues to iterate upon, so we occasionally see
Speaker 1: new IBOs that look more I don't know if the
Speaker 1: word is realistic. It doesn't really look more like a dog,
Speaker 1: but it looks less nineties robots style, which is an improvement.
Speaker 1: I think we can all argue. I think so. Two
Speaker 1: thousand two was when we first got the room BA.
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize it was that old. But yeah.
Speaker 1: I Robot, which had been making military are robots up
Speaker 1: to that point, introduces a consumer vacuum cleaner robot in
Speaker 1: two thousand two. I'm pretty sure that's the that's the
Speaker 1: the actual plot to Terminator, but I could be wrong
Speaker 1: about that. Have seen its mapping out all of our
Speaker 1: houses and sending them over. Yeah, and so we have
Speaker 1: essentially like the Google Maps, except it's everybody's home because
Speaker 1: like rumbas, like this is a particularly tricky corner. I
Speaker 1: get stuck in this corner listen because the way they
Speaker 1: have the chair set up, and you just want to
Speaker 1: be aware of that. That's why I live in a
Speaker 1: split level house. Yes, yeah, I've got lots of stairs
Speaker 1: in my home. There's no chance for a rumba in
Speaker 1: my place. So I don't I don't know anyone. But
Speaker 1: then two thousand five they came out with the Scuba,
Speaker 1: which was the mopping robot. Version two thousand six was
Speaker 1: a robot that didn't it no longer is in production.
Speaker 1: It's called the Dirt Dog. It was a robotic shop back,
Speaker 1: but it was discontinued. In two thousand seven, they introduced
Speaker 1: the Luge gutter cleaning robot, which was actually a remote
Speaker 1: troll device, and then the Vero pool cleaning robot was
Speaker 1: also released in two thousand seven. And I remember this
Speaker 1: because I was at the c E s was when
Speaker 1: Parrot drone first showed off their their first quad copter
Speaker 1: at c then that I would argue is more of
Speaker 1: a radio controlled device, but it it kind of figuratively
Speaker 1: and literally launched the consumer drone craze, which later on
Speaker 1: developed into models that we saw have some at least
Speaker 1: rudimentary robotic elements to it, things like being able to
Speaker 1: follow a person around right, have facial were condition and following.
Speaker 1: It seems some pretty cool ones. STO was first shown
Speaker 1: off inven I remember that as well. Two point o
Speaker 1: came out in and there are no shortage of robots
Speaker 1: at ces past and present. They range everything from the
Speaker 1: incredibly sophisticated we're talking like autonomous car type technology too,
Speaker 1: things that are called robots but aren't really robots. They're
Speaker 1: more like fun little toys or sometimes just diversions like
Speaker 1: I think of like the Little Dancing Flower. It takes
Speaker 1: audio and it starts to move like. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of those as well. Sure, it's such a broad field.
Speaker 1: Like we mentioned at the at the beginning of the show,
Speaker 1: there's just so much that you could consider robotics. One
Speaker 1: one robot that you actually left out of your list,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, this was. This is my robot
Speaker 1: when I was a kid was the Radio Shack Armatron.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember that. That was a
Speaker 1: little robotic arm It set on a pedestal, had two
Speaker 1: little joysticks that you could use to manipulate the claw
Speaker 1: and the end, and it came with like a little
Speaker 1: little balls in a little box that you could open
Speaker 1: up and put the balls in the box. It was.
Speaker 1: It was. It was tons of fun and we used
Speaker 1: that thing for days and days and days. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I remember I never owned one, but I remember
Speaker 1: those as well. I remember when that came out, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking that was a really cool looking devices. Uh,
Speaker 1: from that same from that same sort of era of
Speaker 1: my childhood. So these are these are really we've seen
Speaker 1: an evolution of these products over the years, Like there's
Speaker 1: certain ones that are always going to be in that
Speaker 1: sort of diversion toy category, and they're never they're never
Speaker 1: gonna get particularly sophisticated, and that's fine because that's not
Speaker 1: their intention. They're meant to be toys. They're meant to
Speaker 1: be these fun little things that are not terribly expensive
Speaker 1: that can do something vaguely entertaining. Hey, guys, Jonathan here,
Speaker 1: Adam and I have a lot more to say about
Speaker 1: consumer robotics, but before we get into that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. We've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of advances in other areas of consumer robotics technology,
Speaker 1: and uh so, I'm curious what was your experience covering
Speaker 1: robotics at c e S. What were some of the
Speaker 1: things that you saw that really either stood out to
Speaker 1: you as being particularly interesting or even if there was
Speaker 1: something that was maybe confounding or you know, you're just like,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't even get what they were going
Speaker 1: before with this, because sometimes you run into that too.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, Oh, definitely one of the I think one
Speaker 1: of the coolest robot One of the things that just
Speaker 1: overall impressions that I came away from c e S
Speaker 1: with was I was kind of surprised how far we
Speaker 1: already are because I saw legitimate consumer products that someone
Speaker 1: could go out and buy and have driving around their house. Now,
Speaker 1: you'd have to be rich, you'd have to be a
Speaker 1: lot more rich than I am, but you could still
Speaker 1: have this robot driving around your house and you know,
Speaker 1: following you with music or bringing you drinks things like that.
Speaker 1: One robot in particular that stood out there were two
Speaker 1: really that I think we're really kind of creme day
Speaker 1: la creme. But the one that really stood out to
Speaker 1: me as being a little bit more realistic at this
Speaker 1: day and age would be the Temi robot, which was
Speaker 1: kind of like um, kind of like a rolling serving
Speaker 1: trade that could could roll around. It would in theory,
Speaker 1: it would meet you at the door when you came in.
Speaker 1: It would not play Stone called Steve Austin's intro music. Unfortunately, big, big,
Speaker 1: but big check against that robot, but a right, So
Speaker 1: that's the one that's one box that didn't get checked.
Speaker 1: But it did have an integrated wireless charging doc that
Speaker 1: you could set your phone down on it and start
Speaker 1: charging your phone as soon as you walked in the door,
Speaker 1: and then it would follow you It had a tracking
Speaker 1: software where you could turn away from it and walk
Speaker 1: away from it and it would follow you around. And
Speaker 1: what was really cool was if someone walked in between
Speaker 1: you and the robot, it didn't freak out. It was
Speaker 1: able to pick you back up and keep following you.
Speaker 1: And you could ask you, you know, various Alexa type things,
Speaker 1: how's the weather outside, how's you know, what's my jewel
Speaker 1: for today? Stuff like that. It had a screen so
Speaker 1: it could show you what was what you wanted to see.
Speaker 1: It could play videos for you things like that, and
Speaker 1: it had a tray on the back so you could,
Speaker 1: you know, set things down and have it carried around
Speaker 1: for you. I don't know if you're particularly lazy, but
Speaker 1: this this robot kind of stood out to me just
Speaker 1: because it was the type of robot that I could
Speaker 1: see myself using if I had a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Um I don't, so I won't, but it was That's
Speaker 1: what really kind of stuck out to me, is this
Speaker 1: is something that I could see in two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: a home actually having in it and not being stupid.
Speaker 1: If that makes that's that's that's a legit thing. Though.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we're getting to a point where the
Speaker 1: technology is reaching a level of sophistication where we can
Speaker 1: actually see applications beyond that very singular approach. Every time,
Speaker 1: every time you want a robot to do something, in
Speaker 1: addition to whatever it's primary function is, you've just to
Speaker 1: increase the complexity of the build, the complexity of the
Speaker 1: software sometimes the complexity of the interface. And obviously you
Speaker 1: can only do that for so long before it gets
Speaker 1: unmanageable and uh or the robots just crappy at everything, right,
Speaker 1: It's just you can't, like sure and in theory can
Speaker 1: do all these things, but it doesn't do any of
Speaker 1: them well, and it's more frustrating to use than if
Speaker 1: I just did them myself. That that's it's a hard
Speaker 1: barrier to get past because it requires so much sophistication
Speaker 1: from multiple perspectives, from multiple starting points. It's funny you
Speaker 1: should mention that because since c E S. Since I
Speaker 1: was covering robotics at CES, I was particularly interested in robotics,
Speaker 1: and as part of my daily tech news roundup podcast
Speaker 1: I Report, I reported on a hotel in Japan who
Speaker 1: was retiring half of its two hundred and THIRTIESO robotic workforce.
Speaker 1: Mainly because the people required to keep those robot bots
Speaker 1: on task basically were made it kind of silly to
Speaker 1: have the robots themselves. So people would like walk up
Speaker 1: to those robots and say where can I catch a cab?
Speaker 1: And the robot would be like, I have no idea
Speaker 1: what you just said. And then people would say, well,
Speaker 1: where's a good place to eat? And the robot would
Speaker 1: be like, I have no idea what you want. And
Speaker 1: so they ended up having to turn to a person
Speaker 1: to answer those same questions because once again, these the
Speaker 1: people that were coming into the hotel had this expectation
Speaker 1: that a robot will be able to answer whatever questions
Speaker 1: that I should have. Personally, I think they should have
Speaker 1: just replaced it with a Google Home and called it
Speaker 1: a day. But you know what, beggars, camp be choosers,
Speaker 1: I suppose. But they actually had to retire half of
Speaker 1: their They actually had the term used in the article
Speaker 1: was laid off their half of their robotic workforce because
Speaker 1: they had to have so many people supporting those robots
Speaker 1: that it was it made it silly to have the
Speaker 1: robots in the first place. This this is the robotic
Speaker 1: equivalent of using a vacuum on a car pit and
Speaker 1: you're running it over a piece of fluff that's on
Speaker 1: the carpet, and the vacuum runs over it, and you
Speaker 1: pull the vacuum back, and the fluff is still there.
Speaker 1: So you push the vacuum over it again, you pull
Speaker 1: it back, it's still there. You've been down. You pick
Speaker 1: up the fluff, you put it back down on the ground,
Speaker 1: you roll it over with a vacuum cleaner, and you're
Speaker 1: just you're you're spending so much time just trying to
Speaker 1: get the thing that does the thing to do the
Speaker 1: thing that you could have just done the thing yourself.
Speaker 1: I was really hoping that you were going to talk
Speaker 1: about picking up the fluff and then putting it back down,
Speaker 1: because it's exactly it's a universal experience. I think just
Speaker 1: about everyone who's ever used a vacuum cleaner has done
Speaker 1: this thing where they've you know, it's not just pick
Speaker 1: up the fluff and throw it away. It's no, this
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner is supposed to do this thing, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep at it until it works. Uh. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: all had that experience. So seeing that with robotics, it's
Speaker 1: it's absolutely the same sort of thing, just on a
Speaker 1: different application. The thing that really impressed me by what
Speaker 1: you were saying was the idea of a robot that
Speaker 1: can follow us specific person and not be able to
Speaker 1: not lose its way if something breaks its line of sight,
Speaker 1: like if someone else comes in between it. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I say, I find that really interesting. I
Speaker 1: went to a talk at south By Southwest a few
Speaker 1: years ago and the person giving the talk that it
Speaker 1: was all about robotics. The person giving the talk was
Speaker 1: talking about how they were teaching a robot how to
Speaker 1: open a door. And this is a non trivial problem
Speaker 1: because we don't have a single standard for doors in
Speaker 1: the human world. They are all the different kinds of handles.
Speaker 1: Some of them you have to push something specific so
Speaker 1: that the door will unlatch and you can open it.
Speaker 1: Or you have to turn a door knob, or you
Speaker 1: have to press down on a little thumb leaver or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, and there's pushing versus pulling. There's
Speaker 1: all these sorts of different features that could be in
Speaker 1: place for any given door, and so we humans, we
Speaker 1: in on her this once or twice, we can then
Speaker 1: extrapolate in other situations and very quickly figure out how
Speaker 1: to use a door, even if we've never gone through
Speaker 1: that that specific door before. Robots. Robots are not good
Speaker 1: at this. Robots typically can do what you program them
Speaker 1: to do, and even with machine learning, they have to
Speaker 1: go through lots of training in order to actually learn
Speaker 1: what the the quote unquote correct approach is. And so
Speaker 1: she talked about how they had this robot and they
Speaker 1: were training at how to open doors, different doors, and
Speaker 1: the robot would sit motionless, staring at a specific door
Speaker 1: they had in this one hallway in their research facility,
Speaker 1: and it would just be processing this image for hours
Speaker 1: at a time, just just staring at a door. One thinks, wistfully, perhaps,
Speaker 1: but that's projecting and before it ever makes an attempt.
Speaker 1: And the problem that one of the many problems, was
Speaker 1: that if someone were to walk down the hallway and
Speaker 1: break the line of sight between the robot and the door,
Speaker 1: that would confuse the robot and it would just effectively
Speaker 1: increase the amount of time it would require to study
Speaker 1: the door before it can make an attempt. So someone
Speaker 1: just walking down the hall could mess up an entire experiment,
Speaker 1: or at least make it go on twice as long
Speaker 1: as they had intended because of that unexpected interruption and
Speaker 1: line of sight. So to have a have a consumer
Speaker 1: robot that is capable of following a specific person even
Speaker 1: if that line of sight is broken is a phenomenal achievement.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like it because we to us the
Speaker 1: humans that's easy, but two machine, that's very hard. But
Speaker 1: think about it. You're spending all this time trying to
Speaker 1: teach a robot how to open the door. That's also
Speaker 1: very simple. It's something that we do dozens of times
Speaker 1: every day. And the thing about technology, or at least
Speaker 1: this is how I am with technology, is I will
Speaker 1: get a new piece of technology and I will start
Speaker 1: pushing those limits because I want to know actually where
Speaker 1: those borders are. So if you have if you have
Speaker 1: a device that can watch Netflix, fine, I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask for a very specific episode of a very specific
Speaker 1: show on Netflix. And if you can't serve that up
Speaker 1: to me, okay, I know that that's my limitation. I
Speaker 1: can have you open Netflix, but I can't ask or
Speaker 1: you to play episode three of season two of Stranger Things.
Speaker 1: I'm going to know that so and and that's the
Speaker 1: thing is, if I get a robot in my house,
Speaker 1: Oh my lord, I'm going to be pushing so many boundaries,
Speaker 1: like go get me a beer. Okay, you can't do that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so go to the refrigerator. Okay, you don't know where
Speaker 1: the refrigerator is, Okay, follow me, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: figure out. And then the problem is is that you're
Speaker 1: eventually going to get down to a point where you're
Speaker 1: just like, well, why do I have this thing? It
Speaker 1: can't do anything? And that's the that's the biggest obstacle
Speaker 1: that robotics and roboticists are facing, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to consumer applications. Sure. Yeah, there's so many things that
Speaker 1: go into designing good robotics in general. Uh, everything from
Speaker 1: just the mechanics of how the robot moves that is
Speaker 1: that's a that's an art form unto itself. People spent
Speaker 1: years trying to do things like replicate the way biological
Speaker 1: leg works in order to have a robot that can
Speaker 1: walk on two legs. The Grand DARPA Challenge of a
Speaker 1: few years ago, where the robots were doing a rescue mission,
Speaker 1: simulated rescue mission as if it were in the wake
Speaker 1: of a Fukushima disaster. They they had they were using
Speaker 1: legged robots that the reason they did was because the
Speaker 1: robot had to be able to do multiple things that
Speaker 1: humans can do, including operator vehicle, get out of the vehicle,
Speaker 1: open a door, go through the door, pick up a
Speaker 1: power tool, use it, all this other stuff. So the
Speaker 1: that that meant that the robots had to fall into
Speaker 1: a certain area of design. Well, building a robot that
Speaker 1: can move the way a human can before you even
Speaker 1: get to the software part, just building the complexity necessary
Speaker 1: in the robotic limbs is incredibly complicated. That's why we
Speaker 1: see a lot of robots that rely on things like wheels.
Speaker 1: That's much easier to implement than limbs. And you know
Speaker 1: it also and when we talk about easier to implement,
Speaker 1: that also means it brings the price down, which makes
Speaker 1: it more accessible as well. You can't you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a Boston Dynamics big dog style robot on the consumer market.
Speaker 1: It would cost a million bucks at least. Uh, so
Speaker 1: you go much more simple. We've got a little bit
Speaker 1: more we're going to say about consumer robotics. Really excited
Speaker 1: for you guys to hear this episode. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, let's take another quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor so anytime you're making a consumer robot, you
Speaker 1: have to start with these considerations, like how complicated is
Speaker 1: the machinery going to be? That alone has going to
Speaker 1: impact the price I'm gonna have to charge for this
Speaker 1: thing if I want to have even if I just
Speaker 1: want to recoup costs, that's before I even think about profit. Sure,
Speaker 1: then what is it supposed to do? How am I
Speaker 1: going to make sure it does that really well? Well
Speaker 1: enough so that justifies the purchase of the robot? These
Speaker 1: are these are all tricky things. So you saw this,
Speaker 1: this robot that could follow people around. I know what
Speaker 1: I would use it for. If I could program it,
Speaker 1: I would program it so that it would hold my
Speaker 1: phone in the morning. And my phone is what it uses,
Speaker 1: my alarm clock. So having my alarm clocks set on
Speaker 1: the robot. When my alarm goes off and and the
Speaker 1: robot sees me stirring in bed, it knows to just
Speaker 1: slowly back away so that I have to get up
Speaker 1: to go after the phone, because that guarantees I actually
Speaker 1: get out of bed and get on my way and
Speaker 1: that so so it's the opposite of what it would
Speaker 1: normally do. Instead of following me it's retreating a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty crazy niche case, but we'll go with it,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean it's to me, it's like it
Speaker 1: means that I actually get started in day. So really,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, my time is invaluable. So
Speaker 1: there you go. That's hounds justify it to the I
Speaker 1: R S exactly. Yeah, And as long as I counted
Speaker 1: off as a work expense, everything's cool, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I king robot. So what else did you see at
Speaker 1: C E S So actually getting back into the concept
Speaker 1: of walking robots and as opposed to wheels, there was
Speaker 1: a robot there by a company called ub Tech, which
Speaker 1: is actually appropriately named Walker. And it's called Walker because
Speaker 1: this is a robot that walks around. It's similar to
Speaker 1: that Sony robot whose name escapes me, that fell down
Speaker 1: on stage famously back in back in the late eighties
Speaker 1: early nineties. Similar look to that, but this is a
Speaker 1: robot that's about I want to say it was about
Speaker 1: four and a half feet tall, so it's a pretty
Speaker 1: big robot too that can walk around. And they put
Speaker 1: on a demonstration for me where and granted this is
Speaker 1: a very specific set of steps that were set up
Speaker 1: to demonstrate the robot's capabilities. But basically what it did
Speaker 1: was it came to the door to greet you, and
Speaker 1: it took your coat, hung the coat up on a wall,
Speaker 1: and then, oh it should I should also mention it
Speaker 1: opened the door before before you walked in. Then it
Speaker 1: followed you to the middle of the room. The demonstrator
Speaker 1: went down and sat on the couch. So it went
Speaker 1: and got a tasty beverage out of the refrigerator, opened
Speaker 1: the door of the refrigerator, pulled out the pulled out
Speaker 1: the cannon I think it was soda or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then closed the refrigerator. Went over and picked up a
Speaker 1: can of chips that come into can that will go nameless,
Speaker 1: but it rhymes with flingles, and then brought it over
Speaker 1: and then brought it over to the guy in the couch,
Speaker 1: and it said, by the way, you have a hot
Speaker 1: date coming up tonight, but it's supposed to rain. Can
Speaker 1: I get you your umbrella? And said, yeah, I'd love
Speaker 1: to you get your my umbrella. So then it walked
Speaker 1: over and picked up the umbrella, came back and handed
Speaker 1: over the umbrella and shuffled him out the door. So
Speaker 1: I mean it was a lot of very complex motions
Speaker 1: that it had to get down. Now, you could tell
Speaker 1: that this was a very specific demo. Um. There there
Speaker 1: were targets all over the floor, like barcode looking targets
Speaker 1: that kind of told the robot, this is where this
Speaker 1: item will be. So it didn't really have to know
Speaker 1: where all this stuff, or I should say it didn't
Speaker 1: have to find all this stuff. It already knew where
Speaker 1: all this stuff was. So you know, you know, the
Speaker 1: soda was putting a very specific place that Pringles were
Speaker 1: putting a very oh I said, the name, we're put
Speaker 1: in a very specific place. Um, the umbrella wasn't a
Speaker 1: specific place. Yeada, YadA YadA. So but still, the fact
Speaker 1: that this robot was up and around and walking and
Speaker 1: talking and not falling over did a little dance at
Speaker 1: the end of a demo, so that was kind of cute.
Speaker 1: It was It was very apparent that first of all,
Speaker 1: this was going to be a very expensive consumer model
Speaker 1: when it does when it does come out. I was
Speaker 1: talking with one of the PR guys and they anticipated
Speaker 1: that as the technology involves, the cost will eventually come
Speaker 1: down to a place where it's reasonable for I don't know,
Speaker 1: not me, but people fluid but right. But the fact
Speaker 1: that this is on legs means that it can handle stairs,
Speaker 1: It can handle you know, my split level house wouldn't
Speaker 1: bother it all that much. And it has you know, fingers,
Speaker 1: you know, manipulatable digits and the thumbs, so it can
Speaker 1: pick up things and carry them around. So it's a
Speaker 1: lot more potentially farther down the road useful than something
Speaker 1: like a temmy, which is basically a rolling serving tray.
Speaker 1: But it's also because it's that much more complicated, you
Speaker 1: know that the cost associated with that are going to
Speaker 1: be huge at least the start Yeah sure, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And and the idea of having the barcodes there to
Speaker 1: give the robot the points of reference it needs to
Speaker 1: in order to do the demonstration that is not surprising
Speaker 1: to me. It is incredibly challenging to create a robot
Speaker 1: that is capable of not just sensing its environment. That
Speaker 1: part we've got that down. You know, we've got amazing
Speaker 1: sensors out there where robots can tell when they're getting
Speaker 1: close to say, an obstacle of some sort, but to
Speaker 1: be able to do pathfinding that's far more challenging and
Speaker 1: requires a lot a lot of artificial intelligence. You may
Speaker 1: remember Azumo, the robot that Honda made years and years
Speaker 1: ago and fantastic. It was the first robot that could
Speaker 1: ever run. And by run, it means that a part
Speaker 1: of its gate both feet are off the ground for
Speaker 1: a split second, so it's run actually looks like it's
Speaker 1: doing a weird, little hoppy jog, kind of like I
Speaker 1: always thought that it looked like Ozomo really needed to
Speaker 1: use the facilities that maybe there's Yeah, you've never seen
Speaker 1: me run either, So not so much passing judgment as
Speaker 1: I'm just making an observation. I wrote how Ozumo works,
Speaker 1: so I had to watch a lot of video of it.
Speaker 1: And but but as amazing as the robot was, and
Speaker 1: it truly was remarkable, it required programmers to work very
Speaker 1: closely with it so that it would follow pre programmed routes.
Speaker 1: It could climb stairs, it could descend stairs, it could run,
Speaker 1: but it had to have all of that environmental information
Speaker 1: programmed into it ahead of time so that would know
Speaker 1: what route to take. It could not make that determination
Speaker 1: on its own. You couldn't put it at the entrance
Speaker 1: of a room on one side and say exit the
Speaker 1: room on the other side, you would have to program
Speaker 1: that route into the robot. And you know, we're slowly
Speaker 1: moving beyond that. We're moving to the point where artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: machine learning, pathfinding technology, all of these sort of things
Speaker 1: are getting more sophisticated to the point where we might
Speaker 1: be able to have robots find numerous ways to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point B, the most efficient or
Speaker 1: most effective ways, the most power efficient ways, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be. We're getting. We're getting to that point, but
Speaker 1: it it's a very difficult problem to solve, not just
Speaker 1: for robotics but for artificial intelligence in general. So so
Speaker 1: I give a lot of Slack two companies for these
Speaker 1: sort of demonstrations because they typically are saying, here's one
Speaker 1: element of this technology that has really come a far away,
Speaker 1: and here's how we're envisioning it in the future. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you have this other set of of challenges you still
Speaker 1: have to overcome before that's truly achievable. But you want
Speaker 1: to be able to show something off right right exactly,
Speaker 1: it's important to recognize the advances that have been made
Speaker 1: while recognizing that you know, there's still a long way
Speaker 1: to go. Exactly. It's like it's like concept cars at
Speaker 1: a car show. You know, when you see a concept
Speaker 1: car that is not what you're going to see on
Speaker 1: a show floor at your car dealership down the road,
Speaker 1: you're most you're almost certain not to see that exact
Speaker 1: same design, but elements of that are going to find
Speaker 1: their way in two cars down the line, hopefully, and
Speaker 1: that you'll get the best implementation of those ideas in
Speaker 1: future models of cars. Same sort of thing here. These
Speaker 1: demonstrations we see, they're meant to wow people, and they're
Speaker 1: meant to show off. Yes, we've come a long way
Speaker 1: in this particular fashion. We still have ways to go,
Speaker 1: but we want to make sure we're inspiring people because
Speaker 1: that helps drive the development process. Otherwise, if if there's
Speaker 1: no interest, no one, there's If there's no interest, there's
Speaker 1: no money. If there's no money, there's no development. Well
Speaker 1: it's also it also should be mentioned that a lot
Speaker 1: of the capabilities that robots have today are also contributing
Speaker 1: to other advancements that have been made outside the field
Speaker 1: of robotics. So you know, for example, the software algorithms
Speaker 1: that a robot can use to find the path from
Speaker 1: A to B that can also be used in autonomous driving.
Speaker 1: That can also be used in even something like you
Speaker 1: know where house picking, you know, finding various products within
Speaker 1: within a warehouse. There was another robot that I saw,
Speaker 1: also by ub Tech that was designed to be more
Speaker 1: of a retail presence where it would greet you at
Speaker 1: the door and you would say, you know, you're at
Speaker 1: home depot, I'm here to get a hammer, and then
Speaker 1: you would push the hammer button and it would take
Speaker 1: you over to where the hammers are and then it
Speaker 1: would show you a video on why this hammer is
Speaker 1: the best. So a lot of that stuff that is
Speaker 1: integrated into that robot is also going to be used
Speaker 1: in you know, various AI applications and location finding, you know,
Speaker 1: who knows. It might even be used to implement like
Speaker 1: in a sort of indoor GPS type system. It's it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's. One of the great things about technology is
Speaker 1: that everything helps everything. So so if you make it,
Speaker 1: if you make an advancement in you know, A, it
Speaker 1: will also help in B, C and D. And as
Speaker 1: you get more of these robots out in the real
Speaker 1: world and you're able to get data on how they're doing,
Speaker 1: then obviously that can go into the design process to
Speaker 1: make the next generation of robots better or more effective,
Speaker 1: or to do firmware updates to improve the operation of
Speaker 1: robots that are already out there. Um, did you get
Speaker 1: a chance to see the Samsung robot that takes your
Speaker 1: pulse and tells you if you're healthier or not or dead?
Speaker 1: Or I saw the demonstration at the press conference, I
Speaker 1: didn't actually get a chance to go face to face
Speaker 1: with it as it were. Usually usually things that are
Speaker 1: at that level are normally hands off, I found at Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Typically it's like you might see a couple of of friendly,
Speaker 1: semi approachable handlers who will be happy to answer questions
Speaker 1: as long as you keep your filthy mits off of it,
Speaker 1: and they'll be happy to put their figures on the fingerprints. Yes, exactly, exactly,
Speaker 1: But you don't the thing about Samsung, and you know
Speaker 1: Samsung released I want to say it was four different
Speaker 1: bonts ads at c at CES this year. They had
Speaker 1: the Samsung but Care, the butt Retail, the Bot Air
Speaker 1: and I want to say there was maybe it was
Speaker 1: only three anyway, But one thing that I thought was
Speaker 1: really interesting about the fact that they introduced three different
Speaker 1: robots was there kind of tacitly admitting that right now.
Speaker 1: This robot is designed for your health, and that's it.
Speaker 1: This robot is designed for a retail experience, and that's it.
Speaker 1: And this robot is designed to test the quality of
Speaker 1: the air in your house or filter the air in
Speaker 1: your house, and that is it. So it's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest complications, especially when it comes to consumer robots,
Speaker 1: is finding that robot that can do a hundred different things,
Speaker 1: because you don't want a robot that's just going to
Speaker 1: back away from you when your alarms going off. You're
Speaker 1: gonna want a robot that will back away from you
Speaker 1: when your alarms going off. Then it'll go get your
Speaker 1: toothbrush and your toothpaste, and then get the paper from
Speaker 1: outain front. I'm just kidding. Nobody reads papers anymore. But
Speaker 1: then you wanted to go, you know, make you start
Speaker 1: making your breakfast, turn on the oven for you, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. You want a robot that's gonna do all
Speaker 1: the those different things. And Samsung's robots were designed for
Speaker 1: pretty much. You have one job to do. Yeah, and again,
Speaker 1: by focusing on the one job, you can try and
Speaker 1: make sure you're making a thing that does what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to do, really, really well, but as as you,
Speaker 1: as you point out, no one wants to sit down
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, but do I want a hundred things
Speaker 1: that do the one thing really really well and clutter
Speaker 1: up my house? And my house just becomes house of robots.
Speaker 1: And really at that point, it just becomes how can
Speaker 1: I get another outlet installed so I can charge everything?
Speaker 1: You know, it gets to a point where you start
Speaker 1: to ask, well, is this useful enough to be worth
Speaker 1: the investment it would take for me to have it
Speaker 1: in my life? And we're we're still we're still at
Speaker 1: that level where that's still going to be a struggle.
Speaker 1: And uh, again it comes into play with how complicated
Speaker 1: this whole approach is. In the sister episode to this one,
Speaker 1: the one that we did on on Android Authority, we
Speaker 1: talked a bit about Misty, and I'm really not going
Speaker 1: to dive into it here, but just to give a
Speaker 1: quick hint to my listeners what that's all about, Misty.
Speaker 1: They were creating a robot development platform, not just not
Speaker 1: just a robot, although they did build that too, They
Speaker 1: created a platform for developers two create different applications that
Speaker 1: the robot could potentially do, and thus open this up
Speaker 1: to a much broader array of developers. It's no longer
Speaker 1: just an internal team that is part of a single
Speaker 1: company that is trying to, you know, suss out, well,
Speaker 1: how can we make the robot do this one thing
Speaker 1: really well or do this second thing just as well
Speaker 1: as it does the first thing. Now it's opened up
Speaker 1: to an entire community with a sort of open source
Speaker 1: approach almost two to really see where the limitations are,
Speaker 1: almost like what you were saying earlier, thinking I have
Speaker 1: this this practically a blank slate in one of me,
Speaker 1: what what's the most out there thing I can make
Speaker 1: it do? And then you start seeing all these different
Speaker 1: applications arise as a result of that. That could go
Speaker 1: a very long way into getting closer to the robot
Speaker 1: that can do a hundred things as opposed to the
Speaker 1: robot that does the one thing. And the overlying philosophy
Speaker 1: behind the Misty two robot was to take an almost
Speaker 1: Amazon Alexa type approach where you can download different skills
Speaker 1: depending on how you want you know, what you want
Speaker 1: your robot to do. And that was kind of the
Speaker 1: you could tell Misty was really taking a long view
Speaker 1: in terms of that. So anyway, but that that was
Speaker 1: an indication of Misty taking the long approach, the it's
Speaker 1: a marathon, not a splint a sprint approach. So you
Speaker 1: could go buy a robot and one of the beautiful things,
Speaker 1: like you were saying before, is you know, you could
Speaker 1: take a robot and you can say, what's the most
Speaker 1: out there thing I wanted to do? Well, Missy's approach
Speaker 1: is to send out five hundred different robots to five
Speaker 1: hundred different developers and have them each asked the question,
Speaker 1: what's the most out there thing I could imagine this
Speaker 1: robot doing? And then they'll build it on their own,
Speaker 1: and then you'll suddenly have a robot that's capable of
Speaker 1: doing five hundred different things depending on what you want
Speaker 1: to download. That's a really compelling thing about the Misty
Speaker 1: two platform. Yeah, I I love that, uh that approach.
Speaker 1: It is something that I think it's going to take
Speaker 1: a few generations for us to really uh see what
Speaker 1: truly stands out. I mean, I'm guessing that the Misty team,
Speaker 1: when they see these different approaches, they're gonna say, you know,
Speaker 1: when we develop the next the next generation of this
Speaker 1: particular platform, we're gonna change the design slightly because we've
Speaker 1: noticed a trend towards such and such, and we just
Speaker 1: think that by changing the form factor a little bit,
Speaker 1: we will facilitate that in a better way. And that's
Speaker 1: a really cool organic approach to developing con summer robotics.
Speaker 1: And so we've seen we've seen both. We've seen the
Speaker 1: very focused approach where we're gonna go for something that's
Speaker 1: not going to be terribly expensive. It's gonna do one
Speaker 1: thing reasonably well. I mean, I would argue the roomba
Speaker 1: as a great example of this. It's, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not cheaper than a vacuum cleaner, but it does
Speaker 1: automate that process. And if you have the money and
Speaker 1: you have the right kind of space for it, my
Speaker 1: house would be hopeless. I live in the town. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, yeah, it would be nice to have,
Speaker 1: except for the fact that I have to own three
Speaker 1: of them and I like to have all my doors
Speaker 1: open all the time. Yeah, it just would. It does.
Speaker 1: It's not practical for my use but for the right
Speaker 1: type of home, you can see you can make the
Speaker 1: the use case argument for it. And I think I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's fine, and we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: seeing those we're gonna see improvements of those over time.
Speaker 1: But I like also this more almost experimental approach where
Speaker 1: we're going. We don't know what we're going to get yet,
Speaker 1: and that's the beautiful thing about it. It's great company
Speaker 1: embrace that it's a beautiful thing, and it's a scary
Speaker 1: part because you don't know, you know, it's the type
Speaker 1: of thing where it could very easily blow up. But
Speaker 1: I just think that based on what I've seen so far,
Speaker 1: and you'll have to listen to the first episode to
Speaker 1: like really get into what we're talking about in terms
Speaker 1: of like the developer community that they're building. They've really
Speaker 1: got the right approach, and I'm very optimistic about what
Speaker 1: Misty is going to be doing in the future. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to see as well. I uh I was
Speaker 1: thrilled to hear about it. Since I didn't get the
Speaker 1: chance to go to the the robotics parts of the
Speaker 1: show floor, my CES experience this past year was much
Speaker 1: more limited than it typically is, uh for for better
Speaker 1: and for worse. The better being, I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: I was had been through a twelve round fight with
Speaker 1: a championship boxer every day, which is typically how I
Speaker 1: feel at the end of the day at c e S.
Speaker 1: But the bad part is I had a very limited
Speaker 1: amount of stuff that I got to see uh in person,
Speaker 1: although I got to hear about a lot of really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff while I was there. So and now you've
Speaker 1: heard about more of it. Yeah, I'm so glad you
Speaker 1: were able to join the show and to give us
Speaker 1: your experience, your insight on this topic. And it was
Speaker 1: a pleasure having you on. It was also a pleasure
Speaker 1: being on on your show, Android Authority. So Adam, please
Speaker 1: please tell my listeners where they can find your great work. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you. Um I am I actually am a podcast
Speaker 1: producer over with the Digit Studios, which is associated with
Speaker 1: Android Authority. Obviously, we've already talked about the Android Authority podcast,
Speaker 1: which I think would be a wonderful It would be
Speaker 1: wonderful for your listeners to come over and take a
Speaker 1: listen to. Um. I think even more appropriate for your
Speaker 1: more general look at technology in general is our Digit
Speaker 1: Daily podcast, which is a podcast produced by B and
Speaker 1: one other, one other awesome dude named Sam. We we
Speaker 1: do a daily podcast which is all the tech news
Speaker 1: that you need to know, and it comes out every day.
Speaker 1: Right around noon Central time, because I live in Central
Speaker 1: Time and that's how I roll. So it's based on
Speaker 1: it is based on our newsletter, which is also really cool.
Speaker 1: They worked. We worked very well with the newsletter team.
Speaker 1: We worked together, We kind of prop each other off.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. So I actually think that with the
Speaker 1: more generalized nature of your audience, I think the Digit
Speaker 1: Daily would probably be a a good fit. And I
Speaker 1: think the Android Authority would be an awesome fit for
Speaker 1: those who are interested in mobile technology because we break
Speaker 1: down the all the top news of Android every week.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a pretty great uh, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty great thing. We've also got since you mentioned Parrot
Speaker 1: earlier in the episode, we also the third person on
Speaker 1: our Android Authority team is Jonathan Fist, who runs Drone Rush,
Speaker 1: which is also a sister site for Android Authorities, so
Speaker 1: he's all drones all the time. I got to love it.
Speaker 1: It's a really it's a really diverse group that we
Speaker 1: have over there. Excellent. Yes, I I urge my listeners
Speaker 1: to go and check out those shows and those sites
Speaker 1: because it's always nice to run into other people in
Speaker 1: the field who have this same sort of passion for
Speaker 1: a tech, whether it's a very specific niche in tech
Speaker 1: or a general approach to tech. It's just great to
Speaker 1: find communicators who really love it and they love sharing
Speaker 1: that enthusiasm and that knowledge with an audience. I value
Speaker 1: that quite a bit, so it's great too. Has been
Speaker 1: really fun. Yeah, we'll have to do it again soon
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna do that. Hey, please do. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm always happy to have someone to chat with on
Speaker 1: this show, and goodness knows, I'm going to be having
Speaker 1: some fun episode topics coming up in the near future.
Speaker 1: There's a great spy story, and by great spy story
Speaker 1: I mean a terrifying story about surveillance that I'll be
Speaker 1: covering pretty soon that doesn't even have to do with
Speaker 1: a FaceTime I'll be doing that one as well. So
Speaker 1: there's a couple of surveillance episodes. Oh, you're doing a
Speaker 1: FaceTime episode. That's great. Yes, yeah, I'll be doing one
Speaker 1: of those as well. But the other one is is
Speaker 1: unrelated to that, not now, at least not directly related
Speaker 1: to that. But we'll get into it later this week
Speaker 1: when I sit down and and dive into this CD
Speaker 1: dark world of spies. But that wraps up this episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. If you guys have any questions, or
Speaker 1: you have uh suggestion for a future topic, maybe there's
Speaker 1: someone you want me to have on the show. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're all thinking, can you please get Adam back on here.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to hear that. I know Adam would
Speaker 1: love to hear that too, So you can write me.
Speaker 1: The email address is tech stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. You can pop on over to our website
Speaker 1: that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find the archive
Speaker 1: of all the old episodes there. You'll find the ways
Speaker 1: to contact me on social media over there. And also
Speaker 1: don't forget to check out our merchandise store that's over
Speaker 1: at t public dot com slash tech stuff. Every purchase
Speaker 1: you make goes to help the show and we greatly
Speaker 1: appreciate it. And I'll talk to you again really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com, wh