Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with Text Stuff from Householst.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Text Stuff. My name
Speaker 1: is Javin Strickland. I host the show along with someone else,
Speaker 1: and that someone else is Lauren Boglebom right, and today
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk to you about domestic robots. This
Speaker 1: is a topic that a listener of ours wanted to
Speaker 1: hear more about. So we thought, hey, we haven't really
Speaker 1: covered 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 for the documentary series from the sixties
Speaker 1: of what the Future Will be like? This was This
Speaker 1: was created in three seven sixty two. By the way,
Speaker 1: if you didn't know that, So we've we've got some
Speaker 1: cracking to get on. Yeah. I think it's okay because
Speaker 1: their vision of the future did not incorporate a pretty
Speaker 1: amazing technologies that we have at our disposal right now.
Speaker 1: That's fair, that's fair. But they did have this giant
Speaker 1: robotic human, life size humanoid made that could you know,
Speaker 1: sit around and drink milkshakes with you and have a
Speaker 1: conversation and and raise your kids for your kids for you.
Speaker 1: You're too busy space parents, right. So Yeah, anyway, Rosie
Speaker 1: the robot kind of kind of was this idea of
Speaker 1: like the robot made or the robot butler that could
Speaker 1: take care of all the menial chores that most of
Speaker 1: us do not like to do. Like it, it just
Speaker 1: seems like it's one of those things that takes up
Speaker 1: valuable time that you could spend fragging people on halo
Speaker 1: floor doing literally anything else other than washing dishes again,
Speaker 1: the folding laundry, cleaning windows. These are these these chores
Speaker 1: that that take up time that uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: just wish someone else would take care of that every
Speaker 1: now and then, and sometimes we hire people for that,
Speaker 1: which is in fact probably enormously cheaper and easier than
Speaker 1: building a robot to do it, because a lot of
Speaker 1: these things are actually really hard to do. But we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that later. Yeah, So let's start off by
Speaker 1: talking about where the word robot comes from. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure 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 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 now, in the original form that
Speaker 1: did not necessarily mean an artificial life form of any type.
Speaker 1: It could a robot could be a person. It could
Speaker 1: be someone who has been forced to conform to a
Speaker 1: very specific set of behaviors and to perform those behaviors
Speaker 1: for the benefit of some larger entity and this company, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: this was kind of the crux of the play. It
Speaker 1: was exploring whether or not it was okay for machines
Speaker 1: to be used the way that we use people and yeah. So,
Speaker 1: so eventually the term robot became more about a device,
Speaker 1: a mechanism that can perform functions in an automated way,
Speaker 1: and perhaps even in an autonomous way, autonomous and automated
Speaker 1: being two different things. Autonomous means that it can do
Speaker 1: it under its own direction, doesn't need someone there to
Speaker 1: press a button for it to to be able to
Speaker 1: do whatever it does, right, which is why we don't call,
Speaker 1: for example, our dishwashers, or our toaster robins, or our
Speaker 1: washing machines robots, even though technically they are robotic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have they have features that are common to robots,
Speaker 1: though they themselves are not a robot. Kind of like
Speaker 1: how I have features that are similar to a human
Speaker 1: being and yet defy explanation. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: that one right there. All right, that's fair enough. So
Speaker 1: before we get into the whole domestic robot history and
Speaker 1: and the sort of things that have developed over the
Speaker 1: years in in the field of domestic robots, and where
Speaker 1: we are today and where we expect to go, I
Speaker 1: thought it'd be interesting to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: a survey that was conducted a few years ago by
Speaker 1: a company called Persuadable Research. This was the last one
Speaker 1: that I saw, was from two thousand twelves. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the most recent one. The this survey was to
Speaker 1: ask people, Hey, if you had the opportunity to purchase
Speaker 1: a robotic device that would perform your chores for you,
Speaker 1: would that be of interest to you? And sixty of
Speaker 1: the people surveyed said, why, yes, it would. I would
Speaker 1: love to have a robot that could do things like
Speaker 1: clean windows or do laundry. Also, I would like a
Speaker 1: robot that could move heavy stuff from one place to
Speaker 1: another so that I don't have to do it, or
Speaker 1: provide better home security, personal assistant duties. I think we're
Speaker 1: high on the health monitoring was up there too. Uh 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 they 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, yes, the one, the
Speaker 1: one that we all have. We all have a robot
Speaker 1: I think we all have a robot voice, and we
Speaker 1: all have an Internet comments voice, like we have a
Speaker 1: voice that we use when we describe Internet comments. People
Speaker 1: like you guys were awful, you are your show was
Speaker 1: bad and you should feel bad. That's my Internet voice.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not a very kind Internet voice, Johnathan.
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. It's fair. That's entirely
Speaker 1: If they can insult me, then I can insult them.
Speaker 1: You can, Yes, right, I have a I have a
Speaker 1: medium eye for an eye. It's a harsh podcast landscape.
Speaker 1: Guys like Donkey Kong, But no, that that that they want.
Speaker 1: That's my Internet voice. But my robot voice is you know,
Speaker 1: of course, like how can I help you? That's sort
Speaker 1: of that's that's I actually do not possess a robot voice.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I'm sorry. I'll work on one next time.
Speaker 1: Next time, we must get vogel bound a robot voice.
Speaker 1: Don't 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 th dollars or
Speaker 1: more for a comprehensive robotic assistant. That's a lot of money. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean when you when you think about it, that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's the mid range for a decent car, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're talking about it, and you're talking that's that's running
Speaker 1: around your house and doing everything you do. But if
Speaker 1: it's a robot that's folding laundry, you're like, how much
Speaker 1: is is the fact that I don't have to fold
Speaker 1: laundry worth fifteen grand? I guess it all depends on
Speaker 1: how much you hate laundry. Most people said that they
Speaker 1: were their their limit was like anything that was a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars or more was kind of outside the range.
Speaker 1: I think that's interesting because there are robots on the
Speaker 1: market right now, domestic robots that have very specific uses,
Speaker 1: like they don't do things outside of whatever it is
Speaker 1: they were meant four that are more expensive than that,
Speaker 1: But there there are pool robots and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: those in a bit that are so, this is so,
Speaker 1: this is perhaps unrealistic of people to expect that sort
Speaker 1: of price point. And as you were mentioning before, it
Speaker 1: would end up being cheaper to hire someone to come
Speaker 1: and do this work for you, at least over a
Speaker 1: certain period of time. Maybe you could eventually find like,
Speaker 1: how many years would it take for a robot to
Speaker 1: make financial sense compared to hiring a human being? Somebody
Speaker 1: go do that math for us. I do not feel
Speaker 1: like doing it at all. Well, also, we don't have
Speaker 1: all the variables, right because because you would need to
Speaker 1: know what is the what's the average life span for
Speaker 1: domestic robot? So without that knowledge, we can't really say, like, well,
Speaker 1: if if you if you build in maintenance costs and
Speaker 1: repair costs, then that adds to it, right, You don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to repair someone who comes in and cleans
Speaker 1: your stuff. You just hire someone else because you know
Speaker 1: you're a heartless person. I mean, I'm just talking about
Speaker 1: me here, lear my perspective. I'm like, wow, it's really
Speaker 1: sad that that my my, the people I hired to
Speaker 1: come in and clean my windows broke their legs, Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: there's this other cleaning service I can hire instead. I
Speaker 1: can just leave those first guys right there on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and just keep going. This is turning into a
Speaker 1: really terrible, really terrible discussion. Well, you should see the
Speaker 1: piles of people outside my home. You think this is bad.
Speaker 1: You should really take a look at them. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so the takeaway that I got from this Persuadable Research
Speaker 1: Corporation survey was that what people want from their domestic
Speaker 1: robots 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 a
Speaker 1: for a really good PC, for for a decent PC.
Speaker 1: And um Bill Gates actually in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: wrote an essay called a Robot in Every Home that
Speaker 1: was basically saying the same thing he said, If I
Speaker 1: can quote, he said, we may be on the verge
Speaker 1: of a new era when the PC will get up
Speaker 1: off the desktop and allow us to see, here, touch,
Speaker 1: and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present.
Speaker 1: And this was kind of his vision for the future
Speaker 1: that that we would have. If you guys have seen
Speaker 1: far Escape sort of like the d r D s
Speaker 1: more so than Rosie the Rosie the Robot. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know what a d r D and d r
Speaker 1: D was. It stands for Diagnostic Repair Drones. And these
Speaker 1: were these kind of little little bug shaped, little trilobyte
Speaker 1: looking critters that would run around far Escape and do
Speaker 1: minor repair work and play the Symphony of eighteen twelve
Speaker 1: and etcetera, etcetera as you needed them to. Okay, I
Speaker 1: can see the pressing need for the twelve over when
Speaker 1: I'm when I'm talking to a muppet. Look, it depends
Speaker 1: on 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 it's shooting out
Speaker 1: ultrasonic sounds. So this is these are signals that we
Speaker 1: cannot detect, their outside the range of human hearing, and
Speaker 1: the signal would emit from the robot and if it
Speaker 1: if it encountered anything, it would bounce back like a
Speaker 1: vacuum bat. Yeah, it was a vacuum bat. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like what Batman would be if he were
Speaker 1: a domestic cleaning person as opposed to a crime fighter.
Speaker 1: He would dress up as a bat and clean the robot.
Speaker 1: What it would do is it would send out the
Speaker 1: signal would the single would reflect back, and that's how
Speaker 1: we wouldn't know how far away it was from some
Speaker 1: other object. So when you have it set down to
Speaker 1: clean your living room and you've got all this furniture
Speaker 1: there as it would approach the furniture, the signal would
Speaker 1: go out bounce back. The robot would know, all right,
Speaker 1: I have to stop in three inches or I'm going
Speaker 1: to run into something like couch or whatever. And uh
Speaker 1: So the earliest model had these ultrasonic sensors and that
Speaker 1: was pretty much it. You could you could lay down
Speaker 1: these magnetic strips along the borders of your room so
Speaker 1: that it would not go to cross which is important if,
Speaker 1: for instance, you happen to have a staircase and you
Speaker 1: don't want your extremely expensive trilobyte robot to go take
Speaker 1: a tumble down the stairs. Yes, I imagine that those
Speaker 1: first ones were not at all inexpensive. I'm sure they
Speaker 1: were quite expensive. Yes, and uh, I think that it's
Speaker 1: still fairly expensive to get most of these sort of
Speaker 1: robots because as the years go on, the technology gets
Speaker 1: more sophisticated, so each model that comes out has more features.
Speaker 1: Uh The second round of the electro Luxtralobite also included
Speaker 1: infrared sensors, so it made it a little easier for
Speaker 1: the robot to sense its environment because one of the
Speaker 1: problems with 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: Based 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 in charge exactly. So uh, I've seen
Speaker 1: uses of this in toys as well. So for example,
Speaker 1: there was uh. Lego has a series of robots that
Speaker 1: you can build yourself in robot kits, right, and the
Speaker 1: robot kits come with a programmable base and the programmable
Speaker 1: bass actually really cool and lets you plug and play
Speaker 1: robot commands into your robots. So essentially it's like it's
Speaker 1: like if then commands, if this robot encounters this situation,
Speaker 1: then the robot should behave this way. And one of
Speaker 1: the things you can do is you can buy different
Speaker 1: types of sensors to be on your Lego robot, and
Speaker 1: one of them is the ultrasonic sensor, which allows a
Speaker 1: robot to really zero in on objects and here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works. For our big holiday party of we
Speaker 1: had some of we had someone come in with these
Speaker 1: robots and show them off. And one of the robots
Speaker 1: had just simple infrared sensors that would allow it to
Speaker 1: detect when it was coming close to the edge of
Speaker 1: the play field right and it would turn around and
Speaker 1: come back in. The other robot had the infrared sensors
Speaker 1: and the ultrasonic which allowed it to zero in on
Speaker 1: the its opponent so it could go right after the
Speaker 1: other robot. Uh. Clearly in the domestic situation here we're
Speaker 1: talking more about the robot just avoiding damn image, also
Speaker 1: avoid damaging other stuff in the environment, like your furniture. Um.
Speaker 1: I think this is a good time to take a
Speaker 1: quick break and thank our sponsor and now back to
Speaker 1: the show. Are getting back into domestic robots. There's a
Speaker 1: company that you pretty much have to talk about called
Speaker 1: I Robot, which is kind of funny. I Robot makes
Speaker 1: me think of something else. Yes, yes, yeah, we didn't
Speaker 1: even mention aac asthmov well earlier. I think this is
Speaker 1: a perfect opportunity before we dive into the company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: science fiction writer working in how you might be better
Speaker 1: at this than 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 the 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,
Speaker 1: because when you give a logical set to a very
Speaker 1: sophistic computer, it may or may not find ways around
Speaker 1: right and and it's not necessarily that the computer is
Speaker 1: trying to behave in a in a a malevolent way.
Speaker 1: For example, here's another example. This is one of those
Speaker 1: things about the robot apocalypse that you always, you know,
Speaker 1: hear science fiction writers talk about, and some futurists as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you have a super intelligent computer robot,
Speaker 1: and you tell the robot, uh I want you to
Speaker 1: make humankind. Uh I want I want you to bring
Speaker 1: about world peace. You know you're you are smarter than
Speaker 1: we are bring about world peace. It's possible that the
Speaker 1: robot could come to the conclusion that the reason why
Speaker 1: there's not world peace is because there are people, all
Speaker 1: of those pesky humans running around causing wars. So you
Speaker 1: kill all humans and then you've got peace. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the the classic example. But so you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about your domestic vacuum robot doing that.
Speaker 1: Probably not. I've I've known I've known an I Robot rumba,
Speaker 1: and it did not seem malevolent, very very malevolent to me.
Speaker 1: My dog was not too share But the dog might
Speaker 1: have a completely different opinion about the intentions of the
Speaker 1: I Robot roomba. All right, well to talk about I
Speaker 1: robot before we we talked about the roomba. What's interesting
Speaker 1: to me is that it's a company that was formed
Speaker 1: in nineteen by three m I T associates. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: three m I T associates were Rod Brooks, Colin Engle,
Speaker 1: and Helen Grinder, and they wanted to bring robots out
Speaker 1: of the realm of academ and an industry. Those were
Speaker 1: the two places where you would find a robot pretty
Speaker 1: much before nineteen ninety. With some exceptions. There were some
Speaker 1: toys that were I had a very annoying robot toy
Speaker 1: when I was a young child, all of all of
Speaker 1: 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,
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 needed 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's weaponized. Most of these are in fact going on
Speaker 1: reconmissions or to defuse bombs where so that you know,
Speaker 1: or or possibly to uh, like I said, search and rescues.
Speaker 1: So for first responders, they might send a robot if
Speaker 1: there's a building, for example, that's been the target of
Speaker 1: a bomb, then sending a robot in to look for
Speaker 1: survivors could mean saving the lives of first responders. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of those things where you think, well,
Speaker 1: this is a really expensive robot, but compared to a
Speaker 1: human life, it is negligible. So uh, I Robot began
Speaker 1: to make those as well, and again this helped I
Speaker 1: Robot gain the capital they needed to go into the
Speaker 1: consumer market. And one of the other big projects they
Speaker 1: did before they got into consumer robots was called Auto Cleaner.
Speaker 1: An auto Cleaner was meant for sc Johnson wax and
Speaker 1: as an industrial cleaning robot. Uh. And this this is
Speaker 1: kind of the project that inspired a couple of the
Speaker 1: engineers once the project was winding down, to look into
Speaker 1: a way of building a consumer model of and that
Speaker 1: was what would eventually become the Rumba. And uh it
Speaker 1: was when they first started working on it, and the
Speaker 1: roombo would not hit store shelves until September two, so um.
Speaker 1: You know, by then, the the electro Lux Trilobyte had
Speaker 1: been on the market for almost a year and then
Speaker 1: they launched the robot, which don't totally different. Company obviously
Speaker 1: launched the Roomba, which has I think become almost like
Speaker 1: the synonymous, yeah exactly, or xerox it's it's or jello fridge,
Speaker 1: Yeah it's. It's one of those things where the term
Speaker 1: has almost just substituted the idea of vacuum robot roomba
Speaker 1: shorthand as of two thousand eleven, over six million of
Speaker 1: the buggers have been sold. So so, um, there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of jokes that are coming to mind, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave them all alone. X silent, but
Speaker 1: you're all welcome. Robot does make several other kinds of things, Yes,
Speaker 1: they do. They make They make a robot scuba, which
Speaker 1: is a mop. Yes, scuba actually has an interesting approach. Well,
Speaker 1: it's good to compare it to the roomba. So the
Speaker 1: roomba uses essentially three different kinds of brushes. There's one
Speaker 1: brush that that just sort of helps sweep particles within
Speaker 1: the path into the path of the roomba. But then
Speaker 1: it has these two brushes that are used to pick
Speaker 1: up the larger types of debris. And uh so these
Speaker 1: two brushes spin in a way where they're one is clockwise,
Speaker 1: the other's counterclockwise, and they use that motion to I'm gesticulating,
Speaker 1: and that's not helping. Yeah, they're they're using this this
Speaker 1: opposite rotating motion to flick stuff up into the bin
Speaker 1: that the that is inside the roomba, the the refuse
Speaker 1: bin if you prefer trash bin um. And then it
Speaker 1: also has a vacuum that uses suction to suck up
Speaker 1: the finer particles, finer being smaller, not of higher quality.
Speaker 1: And then the scuba its method is it uses it
Speaker 1: has a vacuum as well to suck up loose particles.
Speaker 1: And then it sprays the floor with a combination of
Speaker 1: water and cleaning solution, then uses a rotating brush to
Speaker 1: scrub the floor. Then it sucks up the dirty water
Speaker 1: into a waste bind that is separate from the water
Speaker 1: and cleaning solution bend. So there's two different containers inside
Speaker 1: the scuba for this stuff, so that way you don't
Speaker 1: mix the two. Clearly you wouldn't want dirty water to
Speaker 1: go back into there. And then uh, it uses a
Speaker 1: technology called I adapt to monitor and respond to its environment.
Speaker 1: So the rumba and the scuba both have to be
Speaker 1: able to maneuver through an environment and uh and cover
Speaker 1: an entire floor, because I mean, it wouldn't do you
Speaker 1: any good if the Roomba just kind of wandered aimlessly
Speaker 1: and then went to its charging station. You go in
Speaker 1: and like, well, this one meaningless path is clean, but
Speaker 1: everything else is filthy. So it has to be able
Speaker 1: to make its way around in a in a space
Speaker 1: that was not necessarily intended for a robot to move around, right,
Speaker 1: Because Yeah, while humans can instinctively look at a coffee
Speaker 1: table and go, I shouldn't walk directly into that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: robots don't necessarily necessarily know that. Off the top. They
Speaker 1: have to actually be programmed to not do that. We'll
Speaker 1: get into more of that in a second too, but yeah,
Speaker 1: those 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 down like a bullet and
Speaker 1: then just starts scoop it out gunk. So do not
Speaker 1: stand near your gutter while the all that sucker is
Speaker 1: going to stand in your gutter that's near your gutter,
Speaker 1: like or under. Yeah. Remember though, if your head's in
Speaker 1: the gutter, your eyes are looking at the stars, just
Speaker 1: a paraphrase. And my that is deep. Oh that's pretty
Speaker 1: you know, I can get pretty deep in the gutter anyway.
Speaker 1: So there are other types of domestic robots as well.
Speaker 1: I mean these these were probably the best known because
Speaker 1: they are because it's a huge brand and they've been
Speaker 1: around for a few years. But there's a robotic lawnmowers.
Speaker 1: I think we're I think I have robot actually does
Speaker 1: one of those as well. Yeah, so they might I
Speaker 1: know that. I know there are quite a few brands
Speaker 1: that do have robotic lawnmowers, and so these are again
Speaker 1: using that same those same technologies, are using collision detection
Speaker 1: to make sure that they don't bang into anything. Uh.
Speaker 1: Most of them have a little kill switches inside them,
Speaker 1: so they if they're tilted or turned over, the blade
Speaker 1: stopped spinning immediately, so that way you don't endanger anyone
Speaker 1: like a little kid wondering what this thing is, I'll
Speaker 1: put my hand on it. Yeah, that's that could be dangerous.
Speaker 1: And they also can you know, you can define the
Speaker 1: parameters of your yard so that the lawnmower works within
Speaker 1: those parameters, and doesn't you know, just suddenly like well,
Speaker 1: all done here, let's do the neighbor's yard, and then
Speaker 1: the next one, next one. So there there are examples
Speaker 1: of that. They it works on very similar uh 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 CS called the Eco vac Windbot.
Speaker 1: I 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 said it on the window and then it goes
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, Like
Speaker 1: I need to to sweep and mop the floors, and
Speaker 1: need to clean the windows, need to fold the laundry,
Speaker 1: and I need to kick the kid off the TV
Speaker 1: because he's been on it too long, which is what
Speaker 1: you know, Rosie, the robot could do. Um. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got one called the dress Man. Dress Man. Dress Man
Speaker 1: looks like a kind of a mannequin torso, but it
Speaker 1: essentially uses uh in. The robot itself inflates and uses
Speaker 1: hot air to dry and press shirts. It's a robotic iron.
Speaker 1: That's that's terrific. Yeah, I could use one. I definitely
Speaker 1: tend to wear wrinkled stuff. Yeah, I think I iron
Speaker 1: approximately never, so that's uh. There's also robots in pet care,
Speaker 1: robotical litter boxes that self scoop away, that's a valuable service,
Speaker 1: refilling food and water trays. There are robot pool cleaners,
Speaker 1: which we talked about it. You know, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: there was um and and you know that these are
Speaker 1: all different levels of sophistication. Not all of them need
Speaker 1: all the sensors that other ones need because the job
Speaker 1: they do doesn't require it, So uh, not every single
Speaker 1: robot is going to be decked out with sensors. However,
Speaker 1: the future robots might might be decked out with sensors.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of development in the robots space,
Speaker 1: people who want to create general purpose robots that can
Speaker 1: tackle different tasks so that you don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: eight different robots to do all of your chores. You've
Speaker 1: 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 all the
Speaker 1: PR two which stands for Personal Robot to the number two.
Speaker 1: And it's essentially a research and development platform. It's not
Speaker 1: necessarily meant to be a robot that a consumer will
Speaker 1: go out and buy. First of all, it's like around
Speaker 1: four dollars, 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 head
Speaker 1: like thing. Yeah, it looks like a torso with arms
Speaker 1: and uh wheels. It doesn't have legs. It's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna a wheeled base and it's a it's a little
Speaker 1: from what I saw. I didn't see like an actual
Speaker 1: scale like next to a human being. But to me,
Speaker 1: it like they came up a little higher than your
Speaker 1: waist maybe mid chest area is what looked like. It
Speaker 1: could be that they're much taller than that, but that's
Speaker 1: not what it seemed to be. When I was looking
Speaker 1: at the videos, UM, all of the robot videos that
Speaker 1: I've watched in the past twenty four hours are running
Speaker 1: into my head. So I've got no You're watching a
Speaker 1: lot of like robots that had nothing to do with this,
Speaker 1: and it's just just robots, transformers, Michael Bay kick stuff,
Speaker 1: blew up Anyway, would much much better robot videos than
Speaker 1: those well done. You Shall live. So the PR two
Speaker 1: robot is really meant for developers to create software for this.
Speaker 1: This roll right. It's all open platform, open source developing.
Speaker 1: UM is highly encouraged, and it's mostly trying to get
Speaker 1: people excited about it. Also, will Garage is doing the
Speaker 1: turtle Butt, which works together with i Robot makes something
Speaker 1: called the Create which is a room bob base that
Speaker 1: has a loading dock for whatever other stuff you want
Speaker 1: to kind of shove in there. And it's for home developers.
Speaker 1: Um you can. You can hook it up with that,
Speaker 1: connect with a netbook anything else you want, and teach
Speaker 1: it how to do your own stuff. Neat. Yeah, things
Speaker 1: that allow hackers more tools to play with stuff is
Speaker 1: always cool. And the PR two has some pretty hefty
Speaker 1: hardware on it. It's got two computers on it that
Speaker 1: have eight core processors um each. Each computer has an
Speaker 1: eight core processor, twenty four gigs of RAM, and two
Speaker 1: terabytes of disk space. Uh and um. According to that,
Speaker 1: to to what I was to one of the articles
Speaker 1: I was reading, all of that heavy duty hardware gives
Speaker 1: the PR tow the capability of folding a towel in
Speaker 1: just six minutes, which is down from twenty four minutes,
Speaker 1: which just means it's not the most efficient towel folding
Speaker 1: device ever. Well to share, But towels are towels are tricksy? No, yes,
Speaker 1: tell 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, towels are are floppy, they
Speaker 1: move around, they don't they don't. And here's here's the rub.
Speaker 1: This is the problem, is that teaching a robot to
Speaker 1: do something that's simple for a human is incredibly complex. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if you teach a robot, how do
Speaker 1: you play chess? For example? A chess is one of
Speaker 1: those if then statement kind of things. Only so many
Speaker 1: potential things you can do within a chess game. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of them, but there is a limit,
Speaker 1: there's an upward limit of the things you are capable
Speaker 1: of doing within the context of a chess game. If
Speaker 1: you ask a robot, however, to go to the kitchen,
Speaker 1: pick up a mug of tea and bring it back
Speaker 1: into the podcast room, that's I mean, that's that's incredibly complicated, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you never know what could be in the way.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the environment is constantly the same and
Speaker 1: the parameters for that task are always identical, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But when you're in an environment that's dynamic that can
Speaker 1: change over time. Maybe there's a chair that's in the
Speaker 1: way that normally wouldn't be. Maybe the mugs are all dirty,
Speaker 1: or maybe there's only only clean mugs are in the
Speaker 1: dishwasher as if people use that thing, Come on, how
Speaker 1: stuff works people? Or or maybe maybe some mugs are
Speaker 1: more delicate than others and it crushes the mug to
Speaker 1: a fine powder instead of picking it up, and then
Speaker 1: pours the tea on it and brings you a what
Speaker 1: pile a mug powder which is not delicious. No, it's
Speaker 1: I recommend you do not drink ceramic powder that would
Speaker 1: probably not go overwhelm. But yeah, I mean that's the
Speaker 1: thing is that teaching a robot to deal with these
Speaker 1: kind of changing environments is really challenging, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of companies that are working on this with
Speaker 1: various types of artificial intelligence to deal with this. I mean,
Speaker 1: you think about it this way. If I walk into
Speaker 1: a room that I have never been in before, but
Speaker 1: I have all of my norm mole senses, right if
Speaker 1: the lights are on and I'm able to see, I've
Speaker 1: got my glasses on because I am here sided. Let's
Speaker 1: say I walk into this room and I take a
Speaker 1: look around the room. I can get around that room
Speaker 1: fairly effectively, assuming there aren't like laser death traps or
Speaker 1: something in it, just a typical room, like there's there's
Speaker 1: some chairs and some other furniture around. As long as
Speaker 1: I haven't built the room right, I can get from
Speaker 1: point A to point B without killing myself or bumping
Speaker 1: into something, or you know, otherwise making an idiot of
Speaker 1: myself more so than I normally do. A robot goes
Speaker 1: into that room if it's never been there before, it
Speaker 1: has to have a lot of sophisticated equipment to be
Speaker 1: able to map out that room and then maneuver through
Speaker 1: that map. And it also needs to be able to
Speaker 1: map dynamically to be able to update this map in
Speaker 1: real time, and which is a lot of processing power,
Speaker 1: a lot of processing power, and it requires fairly sensitive
Speaker 1: and sophisticated sensors. So we take it for in it
Speaker 1: because it's our natural way of life, you know, we
Speaker 1: walk into a room and that's just the way things are.
Speaker 1: But for a robot, there is no natural way of life.
Speaker 1: We have to program all of that into the robot,
Speaker 1: and that is really really tricky and It gets even
Speaker 1: more tricky when you start talking about things like can
Speaker 1: the robot navigate stairs? There are some robots that can.
Speaker 1: Honda's Asimo can go up and downstairs, but it needs
Speaker 1: to be the stairs have to be programmed in Asimo.
Speaker 1: At least in the last I read, Asimo could not
Speaker 1: navigate us upstairs that it had not encountered before. It
Speaker 1: could get through a room it hadn't encountered before, because
Speaker 1: its sensors were sophisticate enough so that if you said,
Speaker 1: all right, as Amo, I need you to pick up
Speaker 1: the red ball that's in this room, as Amo could
Speaker 1: navigate through a room even if I've never seen it
Speaker 1: before and get to the object. And this is if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen one of these critters. It is. It
Speaker 1: is bipedal. It looks more or less like a like
Speaker 1: a person. I think it's about four ft two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a small as human. It's it's Lauren's size. Welcome. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm five too, I'm gigantic compared to that. Take him,
Speaker 1: totally take it, I keep saying him. But as Amo
Speaker 1: doesn't technically have a gender. It is genderless. It is
Speaker 1: it is a robot that was like a little spaceman
Speaker 1: that 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 have? It
Speaker 1: has this little hopping run because Asthma that was that
Speaker 1: was one of the things that was famous about Asthma
Speaker 1: was that was the first robot of that size to
Speaker 1: be able to run. And by definition, running is a
Speaker 1: is a method of conveyance where at some point both
Speaker 1: your feet are off the ground, and most robots had
Speaker 1: to have at least one foot in contact with the
Speaker 1: ground at all times in order to support over and UH,
Speaker 1: and it does mean that you have to program very
Speaker 1: sophisticated sensors in the robot to be able to have
Speaker 1: both feet come off the ground and when when a
Speaker 1: foot makes contact with the ground again, the robot has
Speaker 1: to be very carefully balanced so that can react in
Speaker 1: the right way so it remains upright and as Amo.
Speaker 1: They achieved that with Asimo, so when it runs, it
Speaker 1: it's really this little hoppy run that looks kind of
Speaker 1: comical when you when you first see it. UM. But
Speaker 1: Asimo also had a lot more sophistication than UH than
Speaker 1: previous versions of robots did and um I wrote a
Speaker 1: whole article about Asimo, and I got a chance to
Speaker 1: see Asimo in person. Actually anyone could, because Asimo was
Speaker 1: at Disneyland's in Oventions and uh it was it was
Speaker 1: interesting to see. Now again, Asimo is kind of like
Speaker 1: an example of what a domestic robot might one day
Speaker 1: look like. But it it really illustrates how challenging it
Speaker 1: is to build a robot that is bipedal and humanoid.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't it's not it's not the easiest design,
Speaker 1: all right, it doesn't necessarily make development sense. It's easier
Speaker 1: in the long run to build these kind of small
Speaker 1: things the room by the window washer, etcetera, etcetera. If
Speaker 1: we're going to I mean, because we can either we
Speaker 1: can either build robots to interact with our environment, or
Speaker 1: we can build our environment to interact more easily with robots.
Speaker 1: And that would involve, you know, having an extra entire
Speaker 1: space in our kitchen so that a robot can can
Speaker 1: access all of our food and cook for us, or
Speaker 1: rather than you know, set it loosen there and just
Speaker 1: kind of see what it does. Yeah, it's it's there
Speaker 1: are a lot of challenges and grant. They're very smart
Speaker 1: people working on these challenges to try and and overcome them.
Speaker 1: There are other challenges as well. There are emotional challenges,
Speaker 1: because the more humanoid you make a robot, the more
Speaker 1: likely you are to develop some sort of emotional attachment.
Speaker 1: There are people who find their room bas to be
Speaker 1: perfectly charming. There are people who have named their room bas.
Speaker 1: Apparently most people name their room bas. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: ends up becoming almost like a pet, even though this
Speaker 1: is this is a 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 the move around and go through
Speaker 1: an environment. I used to talk to mine all the time,
Speaker 1: and to be fair a long and you just talk
Speaker 1: to yourself all the time, so entirely fair, Yeah that
Speaker 1: was I mean, yeah, so of course you talked to
Speaker 1: it all the time. However, if it had looked I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the way the way that I reacted to
Speaker 1: the videos I was watching of of the Asimo, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of creeped up by it. I'm not really okay
Speaker 1: with humanoid robot, which brings to the concept of the
Speaker 1: uncanny valley, right where you start to the closer you
Speaker 1: approach the appearance of a human, the more likely you
Speaker 1: are to make it an unsettling experience for someone to
Speaker 1: look at. Right. Um, now, if you were to ever
Speaker 1: get to a point where the robot is indistinguishable from
Speaker 1: a human being, you would bridge theoretically, you would bridge
Speaker 1: the uncanny valley. It would no longer be an issue.
Speaker 1: But the problem is when you get really close but
Speaker 1: not exactly there, so that there's something that's off, and
Speaker 1: it just really it unsettles you in a in a
Speaker 1: very Freudian itch in between your shoulder blades kind of way.
Speaker 1: It's it's it gives you the willies and the in
Speaker 1: the Americans sense the word plate. Please Brits, don't write
Speaker 1: to me. I'm not being rude. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: be anyway now I am ha ha. Anyway, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get to these robots that look kind of human, but
Speaker 1: they're not quite right, and that definitely gives a coming
Speaker 1: un settling feeling. The example, I always hear that this
Speaker 1: isn't robots, this is computer generated uh imagery? Is the
Speaker 1: film Polar Express? Oh yeah, the when the when the
Speaker 1: trailers came out for the Polar Expressed movie. The animated
Speaker 1: models looked very lifelike, but the eyes were not quite
Speaker 1: right and kind of gave the sort of deadlights kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you get a little creepy. Now, as
Speaker 1: as we get better and better at that, there may
Speaker 1: be a time where we do bridge that gap, we
Speaker 1: get that that David from Prometheus kind of thing where
Speaker 1: all robots look like Michael fast Spender. And 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 uh specification type robots, you know,
Speaker 1: robots made for specific use. Um. It will still be
Speaker 1: quite a while before we get robots that can be
Speaker 1: general purpose domestic robots, especially the humanoid ones. I think
Speaker 1: that's easily more than a decade away, just because the
Speaker 1: the stuff that we could do now is incredible, but
Speaker 1: it requires so much computing horsepower and such a huge
Speaker 1: support system around it. It's not feasible for them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the hardware is kind of getting their hardware is cheap
Speaker 1: enough these days that that I think that that part
Speaker 1: is on the feasible end. But it's really the software
Speaker 1: that we do not have the capacity yet to 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 that the robot
Speaker 1: would 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. That's
Speaker 1: a that's an amazing idea. Yeah, that's wonderful. Um, whether
Speaker 1: or not we ever see that to a point where
Speaker 1: in our lifetimes that's a consumer thing that's affordable and reasonable,
Speaker 1: you know, where it's not just the Bill Gates is
Speaker 1: of the world. Who can afford one? Um? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. We'll have to see. I certainly hope the
Speaker 1: day comes, because those floors ain't cleaning themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: they are not. I got a pile of people outside
Speaker 1: my house, so I need to get rid of robo.
Speaker 1: Would be good for that. All right, Well, if you
Speaker 1: guys have any topics you would like us to discuss
Speaker 1: in future episodes of tech Stuff, please let us know.
Speaker 1: You can write us our email addresses tech Stuff at
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Speaker 1: at Facebook or Twitter or handle with both of those
Speaker 1: as text stuff. Hs W and Lauren and I will
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