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What is this penchant so many engineers have for adding needless complexity to (what should be) relatively simple, single-purpose devices?

Orders. An engineer's job is to answer marketing's question with "yes, I can do that."

I had a brief moment of weakness/curiosity so I decided to look at what these guys are selling, and I think I spotted what they're up to. Check out their Roomba model comparison chart. Go ahead, you don't have to buy anything. Look. What do you see?

The first thing I saw, is that they have multiple models. Gotta admit, I didn't know that.

Check out the bullet points. There are some dubious "features" there, but a couple stand out, almost as negative things where you might think "WTF, some Roombas can't do that?" Don't you want tangle-free rollers? Of course you do, unless you're a tangle-lover! The multi-room cleaning "feature" shocked me too. Does that mean with the cheaper Roombas, you have to get one for every room? Fuck that.

It's about upselling. I think that's 100% of it. But maybe we all have different buttons to press, and what gets me to think "I have to get a Roomba 960 or else there's no point in getting any Roomba at all" is different from what might make you decide to get a 960 or none at all. ;-)

Of course, the easiest solution is to get none at all. But let's say your spouse wants one, and it's decided: you're getting something. Maybe another stupid fucking bullet point would push your button. Obviously, silly stuff like wifi mapping ain't it, but everyone has their eccentricities, and if they keep piling on weird features, something could tip you into the upsell.

Maybe?

The multi-room feature has an explanation: The traditional roomba navigation method was basically to run until you hit something, and then bounce off at a random angle. It works fine in a single room: It may not get everything on every run, but on average through the week it'll cover everything evenly without having to faff about with computer vision. What it does not do is handle multiple rooms intelligently. I believe they made some models that let you set up "beacons" to guide it into the next room, but they seem to have retired those. In comparison, the new models use multiple cameras and computer vision to build a map of the surroundings, and use that map to try and cover the entire floor in every room.

This means they have three levels of "multi-room" support: None at all; the old/retired hack with beacons, and the modern mapping. The cheaper lines are still based on the older technology, and thus only really work in a single space. Of course, the nice and sensible thing to do would have been to just retire everything but the camera/mapping models; I sincerely doubt the cameras and the SoC to run them adds that much to the cost. Their competition is basically split between companies doing only the old tech (no-name chinese stuff) and companies only doing mapping; I believe roomba/iRobot are about the only ones selling both kinds still.

What is this penchant so many engineers have for adding needless complexity to (what should be) relatively simple, single-purpose devices?

Orders. An engineer's job is to answer marketing's question with "yes, I can do that."

I had a brief moment of weakness/curiosity so I decided to look at what these guys are selling, and I think I spotted what they're up to. Check out their Roomba model comparison chart. Go ahead, you don't have to buy anything. Look. What do you see?

The first thing I saw, is that they have multiple models. Gotta admit, I didn't know that.

Check out the bullet points. There are some dubious "features" there, but a couple stand out, almost as negative things where you might think "WTF, some Roombas can't do that?" Don't you want tangle-free rollers? Of course you do, unless you're a tangle-lover! The multi-room cleaning "feature" shocked me too. Does that mean with the cheaper Roombas, you have to get one for every room? Fuck that.

It's about upselling. I think that's 100% of it. But maybe we all have different buttons to press, and what gets me to think "I have to get a Roomba 960 or else there's no point in getting any Roomba at all" is different from what might make you decide to get a 960 or none at all. ;-)

Of course, the easiest solution is to get none at all. But let's say your spouse wants one, and it's decided: you're getting something. Maybe another stupid fucking bullet point would push your button. Obviously, silly stuff like wifi mapping ain't it, but everyone has their eccentricities, and if they keep piling on weird features, something could tip you into the upsell.

Maybe?

A combination of Alexa and one of these takes care of both of those.

"Ok Google" already knows when I'm in Lowe's and Home Depot, and when I look up a product, they tell me not only the availability in the store I'm in, but the shelf location it is at. Part of that is the Home Depot and Lowe's websites wanting to know my location -- which is very useful.

RFID tags on all products will allow you to check out just by pushing your cart thru the lane -- like driving thru a toll booth with an EZ Pass (or equivalent). It could speed up checkout by a great deal.

If enough people want their shopping to be a social experience, then there is a market for that and it'll happen. I don't expect my local farmer's markets to wholly automate anytime soon.

An office who pulls you over for a traffic stop has no way to know you don't plan to shoot him either. Should they just run you off the road in stead? Maybe fire a some sort of rocket at your car?

In the spirit of the article, how about they pull you over, and then instead of walking up to your car, they send over a suitably ruggedized telepresence bot to talk to you?

The bot can be unarmed, of course, because it's expendable. If you shoot it, then we're back to square one, and the police will probably come for you with guns out, but otherwise the policemen are safe in their car and you are safe in yours; no need for anyone to get accidentally shot.

Can software fully replace a fast-food worker?
This robot makes up to 340 burgers/hour.

Can a robot really do a janitor's job?
iRobot has a robotic mop as well as a vacuum.

Can software fully replace a fast-food worker?
This robot makes up to 340 burgers/hour.

Can a robot really do a janitor's job?
iRobot has a robotic mop as well as a vacuum.

Maybe I'm reading into it a bit, but I doubt the guy is so obtuse that he doesn't realize there's enough money to go around for the various forms of locomotion. I think this is just some defensive posturing he's doing in public to try and paint his company's products in a better light against the soon-to-be competition.

Here's what I see:
1) iRobot is a major supplier of defense and security robots currently in use by the US military.
2) iRobot's entire lineup is based on wheeled or treaded robots. There's no indications of them being anywhere close to fielding a walking robot of any sort.
3) Meanwhile, Boston Dynamics, a small company that wasn't yet a credible threat, has been working on both bipedal and quadrupedal robots for DARPA that are to the point where they're being field tested by the military.
4) Then, Google bought Boston Dynamics, meaning it suddenly has far more resources available to it than before, making them a much more credible threat.
5) And now, shortly thereafter, iRobot's CEO suddenly comes out trashing the technology used by the competition, just as that technology is reaching a point where it can start entering the market.

As I said, I might be reading into it a bit, but the timing and notions just seem weird. For instance, going back to the summary (emphasis mine):

The reason it has taken so long for the robotics industry to move forward is because people keep trying to make something that is cool but difficult to achieve, rather than trying to find solutions to actual human problems.

This is pretty clearly posturing on his part, since he has to be aware that none of his Roomba products can navigate stairs, an extremely basic and common component of building interiors. It's obvious that his products are not offering "solutions to actual human problems", or at least not to all of the problems, and he's scared that others will realize it too. It's good that he is, since his company isn't set up to deal with it, from what we know publicly.

Here's your starting point: http://www.irobot.com/us/learn/Educators/Create.aspx

and then they started attacking humans. Soon, FloorNet had us on the run. That's when we built a time machine to send someone back to kill the inventor of the Roomba.

Well iRobot, the company that makes Roomba, does make most of its money from defense contracts.

The iRobot Create is a great platform to start with, and with the attachment points, you can build off of it pretty easily. http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=3311368

the shape of things to come Thymio II https://aseba.wikidot.com/en:thymio any of this page too http://store.irobot.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2501652&s=A-ProductAge

Why can't we all just get a Looj?

No.

1. Really good regular vacuum cleaner costs ~300 EUR. Things like Dyson costs even more.
2. If you toss in extra motors and a battery in it, making it 500 EUR, it still does not autonomously cleans your house.
3. Roomba starts from 270 EUR: http://www.irobot.com/de/store/store_products.aspx?id=487

I own one and I love it (and I do have vacuum cleaner too, BTW).

You didn't use google to find out that the charge circuit needs to be periodically reset, as even iRobot admits, or the robot will convince itself the battery's dead when it actually isn't?

An expensive mistake, that I also made on my first roomba.

What I really want is a roomba that looks like a trilobite, and a scooba that looks like a snail, and a looj that actually works.

Hear, hear!

IIRC, the "First Law of Robotics" is how the robot, "shall not perform any action that would cause harm to a human."

So... what actions are we talking about here? Vibrating? Playing tawdry ringtones? Playing music too loud? That's about all the "actions" that can be performed by even the fanciest smartphone. (i.e., out of the box) Everything else entails the relay of information from somewhere or something else; it's more of an information portal than a robot, if you... y'know... think about it. That information didn't come from the phone, it came from a server. Implementing all three Robotics Laws on the phone wouldn't even change that one whit. If you say that a Galaxy Nexus or an iPhone could be made into a robot... sure, but that's true of any computer ever made. It is not, itself, a robot in any way, shape or form.

So, @OP: Yes, please do implement the first law of robotics. Now, go find yourself an actual robot that is capable of performing actions potentially harmful to humans. A Roomba® could very well give me sore toes after a botched pedicure attempt. Are you saying devices should be inherently safe, that it should be designed-in as well as built-in for safety? Then you're not implementing laws on devices, you're implementing laws on manufacturers, developers, distributors and service-providers. Good luck with that.

Here's a cause worthy of legend; go implement the First Law of Robotics (just the first one, for starters) on military drones. See how that works out for ya.

Ah yeah, it looks like this is the cut-price "feed it alkalines" model. You can get the one with a rechargeable battery and dock for the dearer price point of $220.

It's a bit higher than that price range though, at $130.

Indeed!

I understand you some automated system capable of removing dust from a flat surface. :)

(another alternative)

there's a BOT for that.

http://store.irobot.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2662061&s=D-StorePrice-IRBT

I am surprised they weren't doing this on day 2 after the event.

Me too. After 9/11, there were robots on scene in under 2 days. The iRobot unit being used here is a standard PackBot, of which about 20,000 have been manufactured for the US military.

The priority just wasn't having a look. They had to cool the thing, and some robot poking round the reactor would not have helped the cooling one bit.

After 9/11, the priority would have been to find improbable survivors. Hence the deployment of robots.

The worst aspect of this disaster for the future of nuclear power is that it all came merely from a loss of cooling. The plant survived the earthquake. The reactor's cooling system survived the tsunami and continued to function until the battery backups were drained. Loss of cooling caused heat buildup, hydrogen release, and the hydrogen explosions. All the damage you're seeing is from the hydrogen explosiions, not the natural disaster.

One could argue that had the hydrogen been allowed to be vented to the atmosphere, even the hydrogen explosions wouldn't have happened.

It has been noted that these were old designs, and more modern designs have passive cooling designs that do not require power to operate, I guess using convection to circulate coolant.

Regardless, the cooling system did NOT survive the tsunami. The backup diesel generators were written off in the tsunami, which is why the backup batteries were being used for the cooling system.

A total loss of cooling power could happen for other reasons - a fire, tornado, hurricane, or act of terrorism. There's been a design assumption that no disaster would result in the loss of all power sources. That turns out to be a bad assumption.

Let's be clear. This was an unprecedented earthquake and subsequent tsunami. A once in a millennium occurrence? The design assumption was based on how big previous natural disasters had been.

Acts of terrorism? To replicate the devastation of the tsunami would require how much force do you think? It would probably require a sustained direct assault from an army unit with heavy artillery. I doubt an airliner crash could have enough impact, and a lone operative could surely never penetrate with enough explosives to cause enough damage once inside and not be noticed as "a bit suspicious".

With Japan being regularly hit by typhoons, I guess the plant was designed to handle hurricane force winds. Tornadoes? Don't make me laugh.

As we've seen, the worst impact of the "nuclear disaster" is economic, rather than human or ecological.

the only two things that will be scarce will be things like music and waiters and cleaners

Not when you have cleaning robots. In a society where AI has reached human-level intelligence very few things will be truly valuable, some rare metals, perhaps, and prize real estate are two things that come to my mind.

However there's one thing that's very valuable today and will certainly lose once we have better than human-level AI.

Leadership will be worthless.

What is this quality called "leadership"? It's what let some people get other people to do things. We need it today because there are tasks that cannot be done by one person alone and needs coordination between many people. Leadership is the ability to get a bunch of people to work together.

When we have machines capable of performing any task a human can do, the equivalent to leadership will be software development. Just as leadership is important today, getting computers to do what needs to be done will be the most important and valuable quality in the future.

I am surprised they weren't doing this on day 2 after the event.

Me too. After 9/11, there were robots on scene in under 2 days. The iRobot unit being used here is a standard PackBot, of which about 20,000 have been manufactured for the US military.

The worst aspect of this disaster for the future of nuclear power is that it all came merely from a loss of cooling. The plant survived the earthquake. The reactor's cooling system survived the tsunami and continued to function until the battery backups were drained. Loss of cooling caused heat buildup, hydrogen release, and the hydrogen explosions. All the damage you're seeing is from the hydrogen explosiions, not the natural disaster.

A total loss of cooling power could happen for other reasons - a fire, tornado, hurricane, or act of terrorism. There's been a design assumption that no disaster would result in the loss of all power sources. That turns out to be a bad assumption.

These are radiation hardened industrial robots. Not grandma diaper changing, go playing, receptionist robots.

The iRobot 710 Warrior isn't interested in managing your manga collection or cooking you ramen noodles.

iRobot also sent a 510 packbot. In fact, the 710 can carry 510 packbots on its back and deploy they through openings (windows, holes, etc). A little Skynety, but fun.

These are radiation hardened industrial robots. Not grandma diaper changing, go playing, receptionist robots.

The iRobot 710 Warrior isn't interested in managing your manga collection or cooking you ramen noodles.

iRobot also sent a 510 packbot. In fact, the 710 can carry 510 packbots on its back and deploy they through openings (windows, holes, etc). A little Skynety, but fun.

On the other hand what is really novel about this?

These are the folks that make your friendly little Roomba ....

(Goes upstairs, checks Roomba again, considers removing battery)

So when do I get my robot servant?

Well, we're part-way there:

http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=2804605

Shouldn't you also insist that your vacuum cleaner be user programmable or you will refuse to buy it?

Maybe s/he does

Haven't the been using them for years? See iRobot

First degree of freedom: Move forward/backward.
Second degree of freedom: Turn left/right.
Third degree of freedom: Adjust cleaning head (select "Carpets to hard floors"; direct link doesn't seem to work)
So at least the current version of Roomba fulfills all criteria for a robot.

This combination of power required and volume would allow essentially for current day supercomputer in every single military vehicle, assuming the weight and heat exhaust constraints aren't too onerous. 60 kW is about 80 horsepower and even a 19 in x 19 in x 19 in cube is only about 4 cubic feet*, which is less than than the trunk space on a Mazda Miata (5.1 cubic ft for a 2006 model), so it's within the space-power envelope of a small sports car, albeit the engine would need to be uprated some to account for the power drain.

Having such great computational power available to every single vehicle would open up a huge realm of possibilities: Combine it with sensors you could detect damage and minimize its effects by comparing the vehicle's response to a detailed finite element model. You could do on the fly aerodynamic analysis, allowing a fighter to keep performing to it's best even after damage has significantly altered it's shape. You could manage the control of thousands of actuators, allowing you to create a shapeshifting walker out of programmable matter, and you could definitely do learning/optimization algorithms that would allow for an AI capable of a significant amount of learning. Combine this with the amount of image processing it could do, and you're very near a completely autonomous, smart enough combat vehicle.

While it's a too big for a man portable system, with work, you could fit such a device (and a power source) into something as small as a motorcycle or a somewhat scaled up iRobot Warrior. That's not much more than man sized. It may not be a T-800, that much computation in that small size and power envelope is enough build a near-man sized autonomous fighting vehicle that can see, learn and adapt with an endurance on gas of several hours. It's a bit frightening to consider.

--sabre86

I recommend Wired for War. http://www.amazon.com/Wired-War-Robotics-Revolution-Conflict/dp/1594201986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242847860&sr=8-1 Btw...the company that makes the Roomba is also the same company that makes the PackBot and other robots deployed in combat zones. Same company http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp Different url... http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=109

I recommend Wired for War. http://www.amazon.com/Wired-War-Robotics-Revolution-Conflict/dp/1594201986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242847860&sr=8-1 Btw...the company that makes the Roomba is also the same company that makes the PackBot and other robots deployed in combat zones. Same company http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp Different url... http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=109

All of the parts appear to be readily available off-the-shelf parts.

The base is an iRobot Create.
The arm appears to be a modified Lynxmotion AL5C.
Plus a generic laptop, webcam, etc.

iRobot makes much, much more than Roombas.

You'll never get an even cleaning.

You're assuming that this is about driving a vacuum cleaner. There's other things iRobot does such as their communications product.

Then there's just, you know, the hack. Neat things are done to honor the hack. Realizing that there might be a practical use for the hack comes later.

Not to mention the social problems of trying to find a road sweeper or janitor when we are all giving birth to baby Einsteins.

You've never heard of robotics, have you? This guy name Asimov coined the term, but I'm sure it will never work out in the real world, so never mind.

(2) some kind of automated space cleaner that went around removing debris - but we had no idea how that could possibly work or be designed

Put a gyroscope in a Roomba?

Would having a conversation with a computer that was capable of understanding conversational english be awesome? I imagine it would be. But what would we talk about? What would I do with such a computer that I couldn't do with my current PC?

You are thinking too narrowly about "computers". I agree that talking to your desktop is largely inefficient compared to using a keyboard and mouse but natural language processing in robotics is another story.

The idea is that we may have hundreds of computers within our immediate environment all around us most of the time. See Intel's work on Claytronics http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/ and MIT's work in robotics http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/projects.html. These technologies will be miniaturized and have some degree of natural language processing. Since you are not necessarily siting down at a desk with a keyboard and mouse, one of the most convenient ways of communicating with them will be through speech, gestures and eventually thoughts. Emotive and others are already making good progress in the thoughts category. http://emotiv.com/

Yeah, that'd be awesome. but that's nowhere near being on the horizon yet, and I don't know that we'll ever get there, because where's the demand for the intermediary steps that would lead us there, and what would those intermediary steps even be??

There is indeed a great demand for first generation, speech enabled robots and embedded computers. Think of the money that can be made for a robot that cleans using even a very limited amount of AI. Add in some speech recognition and I bet someone from http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=2804605 would be very interested in talking with you.

Hmm. Good questions, I don't know perhaps we will have them in the future.

Snark aside, a robot of humanoid versatility would be nice. We have roombas, and dishwashers and things; but the transition cases(dishes from sink to dishwasher, unsticking stuck roomba) look like they'll be stubbornly human jobs for a while longer.

Hmm. Good questions, I don't know perhaps we will have them in the future.

Snark aside, a robot of humanoid versatility would be nice. We have roombas, and dishwashers and things; but the transition cases(dishes from sink to dishwasher, unsticking stuck roomba) look like they'll be stubbornly human jobs for a while longer.

Hmm. Good questions, I don't know perhaps we will have them in the future.

Snark aside, a robot of humanoid versatility would be nice. We have roombas, and dishwashers and things; but the transition cases(dishes from sink to dishwasher, unsticking stuck roomba) look like they'll be stubbornly human jobs for a while longer.

FTA: Devoted Aiko â" âoein her 20sâ â" has a stunning 32-23-33 figure, pretty face and shiny hair. Should also read: comes complete with an assortment of outfits including Goth Lolita, Hello Kitty Maid, Sailor Moon Schoolgirl and Pink Nurse... FTA: She is always happy to clean the house for âoehusbandâ Le, help with his accounts or get him a drink. When she is put into iRobot Roomba mode Okay, he's got me here, that a HELL of a lot less expensive than a real wife... FTA: Computer ace Le, 33, from Ontario, Canada, has spent two years and £14,000 building his dream girl. FTA: He had planned to make an android to care for the elderly. But instead thought - "'no, I'll make a creepy prototype sexbot - to heck with the old people...) FTA: But his project â" inspired by sci-fi robots like Star Warsâ(TM)s C3PO â" strayed off-course. ...especially in the sense that it isn't complete anal-retentive, or homosexual (not that there is anything wrong with C-3PO being a poof) FTA: Le said: âoeAiko is what happens when science meets beauty.â . and when lust meets geek-desperation... FTA: Robo-wife Aiko starts the day by reading Le the main newspaper headlines. Then follows by reading the Playboy Adviser, and Penthouse Letters.


FTA: The couple often go for a drive in the countryside, where Aiko proves a whizz at directions .

Which makes her JUST LIKE any other wife in the car, except for the getting the instructions correct part - "Turn Right, Turn Right, Turn Right, Turn Right..."


FTA: And they always sit down for dinner together in the evening, although Aiko doesnâ(TM)t have much of an appetite.

...preferring instead to remind Le constantly what a horrible provider he is and reminding him of his inadequacies in bed...


FTA: Le says his relationship with Aiko hasnâ(TM)t strayed into the bedroom, but a few âoetweaksâ could turn her into a sexual partner.

Christ, this guy is such a dullard he has to get a robot 'tweaked' (most likely on meth) to get her to have sex with him...


FTA: Le said: âoeHer software could be redesigned to simulate her having an orgasm.â

so like so many wives out there, she has perfected faking the orgasm for him... (sigh)


FTA: Aiko can already react to being tickled or touched. She also recognises faces and speaks 13,000 sentences.

some of these sentences include: "stop touching me", "Don't touch me!", "Which part of STOP don't you understand otaku?". "NO! means NO!" and "I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave"...


FTA: Now Le is seeking a sponsor to help him overcome the robot-makerâ(TM)s biggest challenge â" making Aiko walk like a human.

Because, despite buying on outer-shell from REAL Doll, the fact that she walks like she has a palsy turns him off...


FTA: Once Aiko has been perfected, Le hopes to sell clones for use as home-helps.

ignoring the much more lucrative and inevitable market of automated sex-slaves.


FTA: He said: âoeAiko doesnâ(TM)t need holidays, food or rest, and will work almost 24 hours a day. She is the perfect woman.â

For which he now needs this robot, because after that comment, he will never get laid again by a human woman...


FTA: Aiko sparks mixed reactions in public. Le said: âoeWomen usually try to talk to her. But men always want to touch her, and if they do it the wrong way she slaps them.â

,,,then berates them, "Dammit, my nipples are not radio knobs - you stupid Japanese are creepy and don't know how to please a robot, or clearly a woman"...

Buy a Roomba ConnectR: http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=338

Yes, but expect a 'vacation' at gitmo for trying this.

Oh, and be VERY careful with the Roomba!

"Save Big with Robot Value Packs
The smarter way to get it done"

*note to self* Never (again) post [hic!] drunk!

iRobot has a very nice device ConnectR.
Apparently they do not sell it just yet. And yes, I would be careful buying it because my mom could be very... um... advisable?

Well the problem is you can only reach so far, so you have to keep going up and down the ladder and move it bit by bit all around the house. With this you just have to reposition the ladder 4 times or however many corners your house has, so it does save quite a bit of work.

This is what I want though, although it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make one at home: http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=338

http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=354

Um... I have a robotic vacuum cleaner and niether of my cats has been eaten... yet.