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Robot Family in Every Home?
cswilly writes: "Yahoo has a story that Sony wants to see a robot animal in every home. I was wondering if Sony has a total cost of ownership argument for these things? Let's see, $2500 for a robot dog + $100 in electricity oven ten years. A real dog costs, say $1/day to feed, lives ten years for $3650 on food, plus $1000 in vet bills. The robot wins hands down." But keeping it in Mom's Robot Oil isn't cheap either...
Most families are already like robot families. White, protestant, republican-voting, heterosexual people with 2.5 kids, SUV and a house in suburbia who also go to church every Sunday - not because they believe but because it's expected.
If I sold flower pots, I'd want one in every home. Preferrably 10. That's a stupid statement on Sony's part, really. Anyone who sells anything wants lots of them everywhere. It's called "selling product to make money". Sheeh.
--jcwren
A sufficiently sized and well-trained dog is able come up with it's own food if you live in a neighborhood sporting enough cats.
OTOH, the Sony petdogs probably have a setting to disable barking at night.
+++ath0
I got two kittens a couple of weeks ago. I'm already out $500 in vet bills, food, cat toys, litter, etc., etc., etc.
I think my vet gets more per hour than my internist. And no insurance hassles.
Of course, he'll probably pick up robot repair as a sideline if this actually comes off.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
Some kind person left a pamphlet on my car, indicating that the world was going to end soon, and that I should beware the mark of the beast. As fate would have it, there is a pretty clear section of this highly informative and exceptionally soul-cleansing literature about robotic animals and their place in God's kingdom. As it turns out, this is clearly mentioned in an obscure and out-of-context verse of the bible. Beware, my friends, the end is near.
Man, what I wouldn't give to know who that kind person was, so that I might track them down and give them a good thanking.
Free artificial Minds for robots are now available from http://mind.sourceforge.net in both MSIE JavaScript (for learning about AI) and in Win32Forth (for implementation in robots). Some tweaking or porting to new languages may be required. Ports have already been launched for Visual Basic and Java.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mind/ is just one of well over three hundred (300) Open Source AI projects on SourceForge, and the AI "Mind" project is unusual in that it is based on awell-developed and highly original linguistic Theory of Mind (see SourceForge/ Mind/ Docs/ Theory of Mind) drawing upon Chomskyan linguistics and the neuronal feature-extraction for which Hubel and Wiesel won their Nobel prize.
Onwards to http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-s ing.html -- Technological Singularity!
So they will start eating robot dogs instead of real ones? ;)
42 + 1 = 42
Interesting article here on sony's attempts to standardize robot architecture. At least they're playing nice with whatever competitors they have.
Who would be so emotionally bankrupt?
Sony would.
Remember, it's big corps like that that bring us DRM, CRPM, DMCA, soon the SSSCA, and other things which are morally bankrupt (indeed often downright evil). Why on earth wouldn't you expect them to be emotionally bankrupt?
People often form a bond with their pets. This bond can be highly individual and have great emotional depth. Therefore, it is bad for the economy. Thinking, independent individuals are hard for marketing departments to profile. What we need are consumers. Robot dogs can be targeted at consumers, just like prepackaged megacorp entertainment "content". If you are thinking for yourself, you're hurting the economy, and harming the business of the megacorps, so stop it right now.
Only commies, intellectual property pirates (like library patrons), and dangerous anti-american open source software users would want a real pet when one could have a Market Approved robot pet!! (Warning: reverse engineering or modifying your Robot Pet is a violation of the DMCA, and an un-American thing to do. Rest assured that you will be protected from the dangers of such violaters as they spend 5 years in prison and pay $250,000 in fines.)
-Rob
Haven't they already got a protptype working in this home?
You're using her as bait, Master!
I wonder what the average life expectancy of one of these is. Cats can live as long as 20 years in some cases. I'd bet this thing would wear out in about 5 if it was kept operational all day long, as a real animal is.
Not that I break into many houses, but if the house I burglar has a robot dog, it's not going to scare me off. I'd take it.
Woot w00t w007.
There are countless dogs and other perfectly good pets waiting to be 'put to sleep' in Humane Societies all over the country and around the world. Go get the real thing. The Sony bot is just going to wind up turned off in a corner and eventually in a landfill.
$2500 for a robot dog + $100 in electricity oven ten years. A real dog costs, say $1/day to feed, lives ten years for $3650 on food, plus $1000 in vet bills. The robot wins hands down."
Firstly, a dog does not cost $1/day to feed. A medium sized dog would probably cost 25-50 cents at most to feed if you were feeding it dry food.
More importantly, however, since the majority of the costs you attribute to the real dog occur in the future (some of it in the far future) you have to discount those dollars spent in the future to today. For those of you who flunked economics, this means that the value of $100 in 1 year is less than the value of $100 today, the value of $100 2 years from now is less than the value of $100 in 1 year, etc and the decline of value of moneys to be paid/received in the future is exponential. I don't have a calculator handy but you will find that the cost of ownership of a real dog (assuming the already unrealistic cost structure as explained above) is far less than the $4650 you came up with.
Whereas with the Sony dog, almost all the costs of the dog are up front so the present value/cost of the Sony dog is very close to its $2500 sticker price.
If they could get up to the marginally useful level, like picking up junk on the floor, customers might leave them on all the time.
They should at least be able to find their recharging station.
The robot dog will be the equivalent of 1984 telescreens for Big Brother.
Sony would be the perfect company to do this since they are a major consumer electronics manufacturer, but also have an interest in protecting their copyrights on both audio and video recordings. None of the other major intellectual property giants have the capability to get a dog installed into every home.
IANAL, but now that the idea has been mentioned in public, is it too late to patent?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
We're straying into science fiction here, but I don't think a pet that lives forever is really a good thing to give children. They have to learn that things die sooner or later, and better that this come as the death of a pet when they're 6 than the death of a friend or relative when they're 30.
real dogs are cute and warm. robot dogs are cold and look robotic. The basic thing is I *can't* love a robot dog the same way I love my dog at home. Yeah, real dogs maybe harder to train, they might need to be housebroken, but so are human babies. We all complain how hard it is to raise kids, but do we even think about replacing them with robotic counterparts? I guess a robotic dog could work as a viable "man's best friend" for someone. But, real dogs all the way for me.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Robot cats are the way to go here... they're much cheaper to make, since they only need to be programmed to sit there and ignore you...