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With very little addition, something like this could be used to allow people to control machinery remotely. I'm thinking of commercial janitors (vacuum cleaners

by dpatru 16y ago

With very little addition, something like this could be used to allow people to control machinery remotely. I'm thinking of commercial janitors (vacuum cleaners could be remotely controlled) and lawn mowers. Both of these activities are mainly just walking or riding around guiding a noisy piece of equipment which could be stopped if something went wrong. Also, machines could be semi-autonomous: controllable by a human when one is available, and able to do useful work by itself when not being human controlled. You probably wouldn't want to drive a car or fly a plane with this yet, as a network glitch could result in disaster, but there are plenty of activities where a shut-down can be done safely.

tlb 16y ago
Yes, I think there's a huge opportunity to automate the easy 80% of many jobs without requiring general AI. You just bring the people back on line when it gets stuck.
krschultz 16y ago
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/robot-lawnmower-kills-danish-man-begins-resistance/ http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/robot-lawnmower-kills-dan... Just saying, lawn mowers are not exactly the safest things in the world. I'm working in field of robotics (more outdoors than anybots) and I wouldn't really want to see that yet. Robots are great at detecting obstacles to avoid with Lidar, they are not great at handling edge case scenarios. With our bot even in "autonomous" mode somebody is watching, not sure if I want to add a spinning blade to it. All of the military bots are remote controlled, not autonomous. I can't think of any major autonomous vehicle being used for fluid tasks (i.e., not inventory robots). So what, you are going to have someone sitting there watching 10 robots mow lawns remotely? How much cheaper can that be than just hiring people to mow lawns. I don't think robots are very good at replacing people in low wage jobs. A lot of uniformed people think that makes a lot of sense because robots replaced factory workers, but robots did not replace factory workers because they were cheaper. Robots replaced factory workers because they were better. They were faster and more accurate. A paint job done by a robot is better than one done by a human. I worked on a project automating the assembly of a medical device - it was just too damn small to be done by a person reliably. The system cost almost a million dollars, you could have paid the girl it displaced for years and years and years before you pay it off - except that the liability of making a medical device incorrectly is astronomical. So I do not target low wage jobs as a prime market for robots, there is no money in it. Robots are good for replacing jobs that are the dull, dangerous, dirty, impossible for humans to do, repetitious etc.
- savrajsingh 16y ago
  any guesses as to why they made a 'slope mower' with such a high center of gravity?
  - lawn-boy 16y ago
    That was the first model...the second model has a much lower center of gravity (too bad the 45 yo. danish man couldn't wait till the region got the second version) but there should be a sensor if more than 2 wheels are off the ground for more than 1 second the blades disengage.
- dpatru 16y ago
  The work done to build a robot is amortized over all the robots built. So I think it will be cheaper. Factory robots do replace workers because they are cheaper. Humans can do high quality paint jobs too. It just probably takes them longer, or maybe humans need multiple tries because they mess up more often. The point is, no factory owner will invest in new technology if it didn't make economic sense. Quality is not orthogonal to price. A mower robot could also be safer. A person riding a mower is exposed to a lot of noise, sun, and shaking. If you are relatively disabled or have a bad back, you can't operate a mower. Just about anyone who can see, on the other hand, could operate a mower remotely. No exposure to noise, to dust, to sun, to bumps. Also, you would want to err on the side of safety, so if the robot is in any way unsure of itself (say because there are moving objects nearby) it should just shut off and wait for human guidance. Some jobs, like mowing, cleaning, planting, harvesting, etc, can easily be stopped with no problems. On the other hand, you wouldn't want to just shut down a car in traffic when something goes wrong. If people can attend meetings in another country remotely, why couldn't they also push around a vacuum cleaner or pick strawberries remotely? This would avoid all the costs of travel and food and boarding in a foreign country. Rather than immigrants working illegally in the US, they could be operating machines in the US from their home countries. Janitors already travel from building to building to clean the floors. If they could operate the cleaning equipment from home, why wouldn't they? Physically transporting a person is more expensive than transporting information, and the gap between the two will only widen. It seems to me that the hard part is remote controlling the robot so that it can move around while not hurting itself and other people. The Anybot robot is already semi-autonomous in this sense. Once you have this basic feature in place, it's straightforward to add other capabilities.

by dpatru 16y ago

tlb 16y ago

Yes, I think there's a huge opportunity to automate the easy 80% of many jobs without requiring general AI. You just bring the people back on line when it gets stuck.

krschultz 16y ago

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/robot-lawnmower-kills-danish-man-begins-resistance/ http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/robot-lawnmower-kills-dan... Just saying, lawn mowers are not exactly the safest things in the world. I'm working in field of robotics (more outdoors than anybots) and I wouldn't really want to see that yet. Robots are great at detecting obstacles to avoid with Lidar, they are not great at handling edge case scenarios. With our bot even in "autonomous" mode somebody is watching, not sure if I want to add a spinning blade to it. All of the military bots are remote controlled, not autonomous. I can't think of any major autonomous vehicle being used for fluid tasks (i.e., not inventory robots). So what, you are going to have someone sitting there watching 10 robots mow lawns remotely? How much cheaper can that be than just hiring people to mow lawns. I don't think robots are very good at replacing people in low wage jobs. A lot of uniformed people think that makes a lot of sense because robots replaced factory workers, but robots did not replace factory workers because they were cheaper. Robots replaced factory workers because they were better. They were faster and more accurate. A paint job done by a robot is better than one done by a human. I worked on a project automating the assembly of a medical device - it was just too damn small to be done by a person reliably. The system cost almost a million dollars, you could have paid the girl it displaced for years and years and years before you pay it off - except that the liability of making a medical device incorrectly is astronomical. So I do not target low wage jobs as a prime market for robots, there is no money in it. Robots are good for replacing jobs that are the dull, dangerous, dirty, impossible for humans to do, repetitious etc.

savrajsingh 16y ago
any guesses as to why they made a 'slope mower' with such a high center of gravity?
- lawn-boy 16y ago
  That was the first model...the second model has a much lower center of gravity (too bad the 45 yo. danish man couldn't wait till the region got the second version) but there should be a sensor if more than 2 wheels are off the ground for more than 1 second the blades disengage.
dpatru 16y ago
The work done to build a robot is amortized over all the robots built. So I think it will be cheaper. Factory robots do replace workers because they are cheaper. Humans can do high quality paint jobs too. It just probably takes them longer, or maybe humans need multiple tries because they mess up more often. The point is, no factory owner will invest in new technology if it didn't make economic sense. Quality is not orthogonal to price. A mower robot could also be safer. A person riding a mower is exposed to a lot of noise, sun, and shaking. If you are relatively disabled or have a bad back, you can't operate a mower. Just about anyone who can see, on the other hand, could operate a mower remotely. No exposure to noise, to dust, to sun, to bumps. Also, you would want to err on the side of safety, so if the robot is in any way unsure of itself (say because there are moving objects nearby) it should just shut off and wait for human guidance. Some jobs, like mowing, cleaning, planting, harvesting, etc, can easily be stopped with no problems. On the other hand, you wouldn't want to just shut down a car in traffic when something goes wrong. If people can attend meetings in another country remotely, why couldn't they also push around a vacuum cleaner or pick strawberries remotely? This would avoid all the costs of travel and food and boarding in a foreign country. Rather than immigrants working illegally in the US, they could be operating machines in the US from their home countries. Janitors already travel from building to building to clean the floors. If they could operate the cleaning equipment from home, why wouldn't they? Physically transporting a person is more expensive than transporting information, and the gap between the two will only widen. It seems to me that the hard part is remote controlling the robot so that it can move around while not hurting itself and other people. The Anybot robot is already semi-autonomous in this sense. Once you have this basic feature in place, it's straightforward to add other capabilities.