Slashdot Mirror
Robot Sales Are Exploding
Roland Piquepaille writes "The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) just released its 2003 World Robotics survey. The original press release by UNECE has 15 pages in PDF format, while the full report represents 380 pages. Here are the three essential findings: robot orders in first half of 2003 were up by 26% to the highest level ever recorded; worldwide growth in the period 2003-2006 will reach an average annual rate of 7.4%; and household robots are starting to take off. "It is projected that sales of all types of domestic robots (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning and other types) in the period 2003-2006 can reach some 638,000 units."
This overview contains more details including a chart showing the growth of domestic robots for the period 2003-2006."
Bite my shiny metal ass!
...like Mitsubishi's Wakamura.
Hey, Montavista's hiring...
The Army reading list
I had my own household droid, ya know for the truly meaningful stuff. Like picking up the underwear off the floor...
[sig]darkfus[/sig]
I think I'll wait until I can get a robot that'll go down to the Gym and exercise on my behalf.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
when there are 6+ billion people on the planet. You humans are a commodity! Robots cost too much! Why spend all that money on a robot when you can get a Chinese or Indian for a quarter of the price!
Robot sales are up...and The Governator is in powah.
Sara Connor...if you're reading this...RUN NOW!!!
Sales of humans to robots are exploding!
What are they going to take over or something?
Now you just KNOW someone's going to misread that as "Robots Exploding" or something.
Why do robots have small wheels?
So they can stand closer to the kitchen sink.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
15 comments and no 'I, for one' joke yet! What's wrong with the slashdotters tonight?
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
When they come out with a robot girlfriend I'll be first in line. I tried the robot vacuum but it hurt too much:(
I welcome our new Robot Masters!
they take over the world, and feed on our bodies, which are kept in pods, inside the pods we live in an imaginary world with lots of 'Smiths'.
What is slashdot?
So where is my damn flying car?
Caffeine Good
I don't believe it. I've *never* seen a 'domsetic' robot, and the closest thing I've seen to an 'entertainment' robot is this shitty brand of Aibo knock-offs they sell at KB-Toys. Where are these robots? How can I buy them? Anyone have a brand name or even a website to point me towards?
I bought a robot from the Buck Rogers fanclub. but the damn thing doesn't talk. just says beedeebeedee all the time.
stupid 8088 in that thing is about as useful as tits on a bull.
the vocal attachment was run off a 6510 with a sweet SID chip, but it didn't come with a microsoft certificate of authentication.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
I could swear I saw my Aibo mixing up plastique last week, and my Roomba ordered two trailers full of fertilizer over the net.
What were we thinking leaving out that Asimov chip?!?
maybe they just havent made it as far as New zealand yet! but what are the decent domestic robots, and where can i buy em?
When will cnet add a robot section to their reviews?
Something we all know. The next big improvement in technology will be semi-smart machines that can move around in the world.
Someday we'll all have cool robots to assist us in our work. A robot to help us do our job would be really cool. Personally, I could use a robot to help me do the 1/2mm pitch soldering I do for the protoboards. Or it'd be cool if I could ask the robot to go and get me my lunch. Robots to inspect factories and be a telepresence are neat too.
The problem will become and already partly is what to do with all the people who loose their paying job to a robot. Our current society more or less only values a person if they have a job. This should probably be rethought.
"I'll be baaaaack" ... Arnold is around, robots are around, don't people take a hint?!?
I would wager that Roomba the automatic vacuum robot has accounted for the household robots' numbers.
There's a United Nations World Robotics Survey, and I wasn't told about it?
--Homer Simpson
Carousel is a lie!
And my first thought was, "Why haven't I heard of this store?"
This is not my sandwich.
Dollars to donuts these robots aren't coming ThreeLaws-equipped.
You humans are a commodity! Is this the first post by our robot troll overlords? Or maybe it's Dr. Zaius posting as AC. Either way, I'm scared.
all types of domestic robots (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning and other types)
Excellent gloss-over of "other types." It's okay, we know what you were thinking.
The coolest voice ever.
The cleaning robot, http://www.rumba.com
What is slashdot?
It is projected that sales of all types of domestic robots (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning and other types) in the period 2003-2006 can reach some 638,000 units.
Domestic services have been a massive yet hidden part of the economy for hundreds of years. Now, they've finally found a way to take humans out of the equation altogether.
Perhaps the poor Mexican cleaning ladies will unionize and go on strike--just like the auto workers did when their jobs were threatened by robots. But I don't think so. As automation displaces menial, low-income jobs, the unskilled workers on the bottom rung will have nowhere to turn. As usual, the rich will get richer and the poor get poorer. So much for technology empowering the working class.
And no, I don't think Cheap Internet really enriched the lives of those who needed it. Indeed, I think the computer boom was just a giant exercise in blowing money.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
And it won't happen in America. The fear of an unsupervised two-year-old getting run over by a lawn mowing robot (or more to the point, the fear of the two-year-old's parents' lawyers) will prevent any sort of robotics revolution here, outside of tightly controlled environments like factories.
This is not my sandwich.
next more robots ...
is art imitating life?
is life imitating art?
I smell a high concept in the air
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
it's roombavac.com i'm sorry
What is slashdot?
do I celebrate in our own greatness...
or hide in some backwater woods fearing the inevitable takeover by our robot masters?
Decisions decisions decisions....
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
--
Sig not found.
I mean, isn't that why we used to get married and have children?
What's the deal with this 2003-2006 thing? Aren't we in 2003?
Or are these *projected* sales and therefore all bull?
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
I am the pusher robot....
was this post.
"It is projected that sales of all types of domestic robots (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning and other types) in the period 2003-2006 can reach some 638,000 units."
They have to get them to WORK first. I mean, have you ever actually seen what one of these does? My neighbor HAD a Robo-mower ($800), and the thing couldnt cut about 50% of the lawn becasue it couldn't navigate objects or reach a lot of places. He sold it on ebay for $340.
I watched a Roomba go around in the SAME CIRCLE over and over again in the Katy-Mills mall one day for about 10 mins. I asked the sales guy what the deal was, and he said it was just "fleshing out" the area. So I came back an hour later and it was still doing the same pattern. I asked him again; his answer: "Their might be something wrong with this one." I have no doubt they can make some cool robots, but making them affordable and in the next 3 years? Not likely.
My user number is prime. Is yours?
Exploding Robot Sales Drop to All-Time Low.
Why did they need 380 pages to say "Robot sales are up"??
Must have a bad motivator.
Mr. Bix Please?
...and time for the robot sales on top of your television set to explode.
Someone should prepare the robots for the day when their jobs go overseas to India.
_______
2B1ASK1
Why don't you play with chicks anymore, the chicks who have breasts, and vaginas, and what not, you GNU hippies??!!
and I'm sure marshall will be kind enough to swing by our government housing projects to say 'I told you so'.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Oh wait, never time. In the future please don't use the "Robots" and "Exploding" in the same sentence...
I give up, some one get me when Elvis returns...
So which robots are selling better - ones with or without Genuine People Personalities?
Exploding Robots for Sale.
San Diego Padres, 100 Park Blvd, San Diego CA 92101
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by
Of course people don't tend to realize that robotics is in use all around them, all the time. A robot is "A mechanical device that sometimes resembles a human and is capable of performing a variety of often complex human tasks on command or by being programmed in advance", or alternately, "a mechanism that can move automatically".
Besides the mechanical aspect necessary for something to be robotic, there is the usual criteria for a useful electronic circuit. It must sense, decide, and act. Even a door-opening device at your local supermarket can do this; it senses that something has entered sensor range, it decides whether the signal is strong enough to warrant opening the door (partly based on its sense of what its function switch is set to) and then decides whether or not to open it. The act stage in this case causes motion, which is what makes it a robot.
While we often hope to see robots become more useful around the house, I believe that it is in major industrial scenarios that they will take off first. This is not a shocking prediction given that this is where they currently enjoy their greatest successes, but I am referring to more autonomous robots than those which currently paint cars and so on. For instance, large earthmoving projects could be carried out with little to no human intervention simply because the problem domain is so simple. Through use of a combination of sensors (including visual/optical, radar, sonar, lidar, and others) a sophisticated map of geometry can be built. If you're not moving very quickly, this can be done with sufficient accuracy using current technology to carry out moderately complicated tasks.
I envision a cluster of wirelessly networked systems which will share computing time with one another when they have cycles to spare, working together to carry out such a project. The sum of the data from stress analyses, efficiency plans, and so on would be combined to carry out tasks as rapidly as possible. Ultimately, people will be able to focus on management tasks rather than laboring.
The question posed, then, is what do we do with all the people who will soon be unemployed by robots? Aside from forming labor unions and legislating inefficiency, what is the solution? I cannot picture any true capitalism managing to care for people displaced by robots, which will only happen with increasing regularity as robotics becomes a better-solved problem. It's bad enough when the jobs leave your country, but only the corporations (and of course the consumers - but they have to have jobs in order to consume!) benefit when the jobs go to robots.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not here to make personal sex bots or anything. If anything I hope to become a miner or an explorer through my machines. Why are people so reluctant to acknowledge the impending future where we face critical economic realities when we lose most of the rote labor industries to robots?
Are there any conferences besides futurists ones advocating policy research into this?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Most recognition algorythems in actual deployment use rule-based heuristics. Most successful chess games still use brute-force logical reasoning.
You see, neural networks are a means to a solution. They are not a solution onto themselves. For each net is only useful for one task at a time. For certain recognition tasks, they are brilliant. But only if, for instance, you need something to recognize a "C" note.
What eludes us still is how the networks commnicate with each other to produce what we call conciousness. And NO, it's not just a matter of wrapping a bunch of smaller nets together with a larger one.
I can't give you an answer what the ulitimate solution is. No one knows.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
We don't need robots... when there are 6+ billion people on the planet. You humans are a commodity! Robots cost too much! Why spend all that money on a robot when you can get a Chinese or Indian for a quarter of the price!
Good point, but it's pretty hard to get total control over a human, let alone run Linux on them. It's probably possible, but would require drugs and brainwashing and would negate any cost savings over robots
There's definitely going to be a difficult period as robots replace large sectors of the work force. In the end, though, it's for everyone's good. I think.
At some point, the entire situation changes such that money and working are not so intimately entwined. At some point, robot workers will provide a surplus of all the things people need to live, and gradually this surplus will proceed to more luxury type items.
I love capitalism, but I don't think that it will be eternally the center of our economy. I believe that robots are the future - program them well and let them lead the way.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
In Soviet Russia, domestic service robots purchase you?
Okay, I give up.
I had a chemistry professor (Prof. Lipschitz, not sure on spelling anymore) at Purdue during Freshman Engineering that would bring us a different article about a different idiot every friday about someone who had injured themselves masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. But not just any vacuum cleaner-- he managed to find a different incident every week involving the Hoover Dustette. And not just any articles, either-- they had to be from a reliable medical journal. The excuses were hilarious: "I was vacuuming in my bathrobe and fell on top of the vacuum and the robe came undone," etc...
We, of course, all thought it was just his twisted sense of humor. However, at the end of the year, the big lesson was "As engineers, you have to always take into account the unexpected uses of your product."
You see, other people were using other vacuum cleaners for self-gratification successfully, but the Hoover Dustette had an intake fan within only a few inches of the nozzle. Not a good design if you're gonna stick your bits in it.
Fitness for purpose aside, the point is that there are apparently a large number of people using their vacuum cleaners for exactly that.
I have been thinking seriously about investing in the robot market but it appears that most of the companies aren't public. Where would the robotic investor put their money?
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For all of you who aren't sure just go here, scroll to the bottom of the page and find out! :)
So, when can I purchase a bending unit?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
In Soviet Russia, exploding robots sell YOU!
careful, the robots are watching...
They're just flyin' off the shelves.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
I would buy one of those.
I don't want to be here.
In the case of commodities... quantity drives quality. Other than those in the academic community heavy research is limited. Until it is seen as a way to compete better in a market. The fact that robot sales is going up is an indicator to technology companies that this is a market that I can build products for and these products will naturally have to evolve to compete. Why the hell do you think we started with trash80s instead of p4's?
Have you thought for yourself today?
Remember the article about how spelling doesn't matter as long as the first and last letters are there?
Well, my brain read this to be "Robots are Exploding"
And then I was disappointed once I noted the "Sales" part...
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
If Data (from ST: TNG) ran Windows?
...Up, Data!
WORF: Captain, there are three Romulan warships uncloaking dead ahead.
PICARD: On screen.
The main viewing screen changes to a pattern of horizontal lines, each only a single pixel wide.
PICARD: Data, what's wrong here?
DATA: Captain, the main viewscreen does not have sufficient video memory to display an image of this size. May I suggest that you select a lower resolution?
PICARD: Very well....
The screen blanks, and then an image appears, with big, blocky square pixels. Three objects appear in the centre, which could be Romulan warbirds, but which actually look more like the aliens in Space Invaders.
PICARD: Data, open a hailing channel to the Romulans.
DATA: Aye, sir.
Data picks up an hourglass from the floor beside him, turns it over, and places it on his head. He punches some buttons on the console and sits motionless for several seconds. A flash of light blossoms from one of the Romulan ships on the viewscreen.
WORF: Incoming plasma torpedo, Captain!
PICARD: Shields up!
DATA: I'm sorry, Captain, but I am still attempting to complete your last instruction. I must ask you to wait until I have finished before you issue your next command.
PICARD: What on earth do you mean? Data, this is important! I want those shields up right now.
DATA: I'm sorry, Captain, but I am still attempting to complete your last instruction. I must ask you to wait until I have finished before you issue your next command.
LAFORGE: Allow me, captain. (to Data) Control-alt-delete, Data.
Data removes hourglass from head, and returns it to the floor.
DATA: The Romulans are not responding to my hails. Press my nose to cancel and return to Windows. Pull my left ear to close this communications channel which is not responding. You will lose any information sent by the Romulans.
LaForge pulls Data's left ear.
PICARD: Shields...
There is a tremendous explosion. The bridge shakes violently, and all the crew members are thrown to the floor. A shower of sparks erupts from Wesley Crusher's station at the helm, throwing Wesley back away from the console.
PICARD:
DATA: Aye, sir.
RIKER: All decks, damage report!
WORF: Captain, Ensign Crusher is injured. He appears to be unconscious.
Data puts hourglass on head and punches some more buttons. He waits a few seconds, then puts the hourglass back on the floor.
DATA: Shields are now up, captain.
PICARD: And not a moment too soon. Worf, lock all phasers on the lead Romulan ship.
WORF: Aye, sir.
He punches buttons on the weapons console.
PICARD: Mr. Data, take the helm, and prepare for evasive action.
DATA: I am sorry, sir, but I do not have the proper device driver installed for that console.
PICARD: Well, damn it, install the right one.
DATA: Please insert Setup Implant 1 in my right nostril.
PICARD: Number One, where do we keep Data's setup implants?
RIKER: I left them with Geordi.
LAFORGE: (in a surprised voice) What!!? I thought you still had them!
PICARD: Data, don't you have device drivers stored in your internal memory?
DATA: Not found, sir. Please insert Setup Implant 1 in my right nostril.
PICARD: Data, I don't have Setup Implant 1.
DATA: Not ready reading right nostril. Abort, Retry, Fail?
PICARD: Abort!
DATA: Not ready reading right nostril. Abort, Retry, Fail?
PICARD: Well, fail, then!
DATA: Current nose is no longer valid.
Data walks over to the helm, and presses several buttons. The ship lurches, the images of the Romulan warships suddenly shift to one side of the viewscreen, and a high-pitched whining noise is heard coming from somewhere else in the ship.
LAFORGE: (alarmed) Data, what the hell are you doing?
PICARD: Number One, do we have a customer service number for Data?
RIKER: Yes sir, but last time I tried to call them, I got put on hold for two hours before I was able to talk to anyone. And that person wasn't knowledgeable about androids of Data's model. She specialised in
we had household robots as cute as the one on Small Wonder.
...bulk up on our Old Glory insurance!
"You need to feel safe. And that's harder and harder to do nowadays, because robots may strike at any time."
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
It seams that most businesses have exactly that attitude: Our earnings are down! Oh well, lay-off our people and move overseas. They'll work for less.
And when those countries start to realize that they're being exploited and ask for more, those corps will just move to another country that has even cheaper labor.
I find it sad that human beings are being broken down to just numbers on an income statement.
There is no spoon or sig.
Sales will really pick up once we can get the Pusher and Shover robots.
...is becoming self-aware...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I, for one, welcome our...
(its too easy!)
This piece was suspicously left out of the overview:
snip:
While the Roomba floor vac robot, and similar household cleaning models are showing sings of an increasing level of sale, robot models T-800 and T-1000 are WAY WAY down. "People just haven't yet discovered the need nor convienence of robotic automated human termination" claims Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson, pioneer of SkyNet systems. "I still maintain my vision for the future, where humans sit back and enjoy a life where all terminations are carried out through robots equiped with our advanced neural-net processors." However, some proclaim that SkyNet itself has hindered the adoption of its T series by showing its prototype T-X model too early. With its sleek new design and automated chest-inflation sub-processor, this is the one adopters of the T-series have been waiting for.
I know thats why I haven't my own yet. I can't belive this was left out....
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
much better to have the sales exploding than the robots themselves.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) just released its 2003 World Robotics survey.
Makes me feel better about paying taxes, knowing that they're going to such a noble cause.
SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
Here's a question I don't see asked often enough on these kind of posts: What stocks should I invest in if I agree with this forecast? Not just the obvious, like Roomba (don't think they're public anyhow). But Intel,VIA,3COM, etc- who will be selling the software and hardware for the upcoming robot revolution?
In Soviet Russia, those Sale Robots explode you!
What does this have to do with the .com boom? Nothing at all. These companies are selling an actual product, a physical thing. They're selling because people actually want to buy this stuff. It nothing to do with clueless investors inflating stock based on a virtual business that does virtually nothing but play foosball all day. Have you used a Roomba? It works great. Set it go when you leave your home, come back to clean floors. .com boom? Lay off the crack man.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Why would people be buying robotic wetbacks?!!!
"Sales Robots Are Exploding"
Idiot.
20 GOTO 10
Is it perverted to install a fleshlight in my Asimo?
What if I program it to flail around and cry "RAPE!"?!!!
I for one welcome our exploding robot overlords.
Emergent behaviour.
Given the complexity of the brain, it's about the only thing consciousness can be. We're like a flock of birds.
Have we got anything which can run a 100 billion cell neural network in real time?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Isaac Asimov, 1951
That's what will happen when young people are no longer able to find jobs. Whenever you have a large population of unemployed people of military age you get wars. That's my prediction : total global war.
This is not what I want to read just after watching 'The Second Renaissance'.
now imagine a Alienware robot, a Dell robot, a HP robot, LOL!!! a Gateway robot (with cow patches)...
"The question posed, then, is what do we do with all the people who will soon be unemployed by robots?"
There are PLENTY of places for these people to work, all such positions, of course, are quite heavy in human interaction (which most humans are better at than robots).
Have a class of 20 students with one teacher? Why not give that teacher 5 assistants so that the class can be broken up into groups of 4 students each?
We have plenty of old people, right? Give each senial citizen a care giver to ensure their last years are not lonely and cold.
But, wait!, you ask, how the heck can we afford that!? Well, there are two factors I see supporting this revolution in social services. One, the displaced workers are usually not as well educated, and they are going to be pretty desparate after a couple years competing with Indian PHD's working for 5k/year. So these displaced workers are going to be CHEAP.
Second, who is against corporations making BIG BUCKS when you can get your cut? Though government can be a bit slow and dumb, it won't be long before it realizes that robots pay less income taxes than employees. Therefore, expect the government to implement larger income taxes on corporations, in general.
So, though workers will be displaced by this revolution of industries, a national program that helps these workers make the transition while increasing the reach and caliber of current social services should make this change bearable and maybe, even enjoyable. However, there is always the risk that special interests will buy the policy makers out so that policies will be created that protect the additional profit businesses make from additional taxes. So I implore you to BUY YOUR OWN POLITICIAN:
www.blogforamerica.com
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Robot Sales Are *Exploding*
What a poor choice of words haha!
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
I find Communism to be a really nice idea, but it seems really hard to implement (outside of the family unit) due to the disincentive to production created by abandoning private property.
Robots, of course, don't exhibit this behavior.
At this rate, Communism may actually become feasible within my lifetime!
-Peter
The question posed, then, is what do we do with all the people who will soon be unemployed by robots?
The same thing we did with people displaced by every single human invention that has increased our society's production as a whole (textbook example, read up on the Industrial Revolution).
And as always, the standard of living will go up for everyone, most particularly the lower income/uneducated workers.
Those who ignore history, etc, etc...
What's the definition of a robot? For example, do automated arms manufacturing cars count?
a computerized arm at a factory. He walked into its zone, and crushed him.
As soon as Realdoll teams up with Asimo's makers and they start selling Cherry2000's - then you'll see INSANE numbers of "robots" being sold.
I'd buy one... to um... help me around the house... yeah...
Ave Molech Setting
Yes, and for most people it weighs 3 pounds and sits on top of their shoulders.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
That's what was done in the industrial revolution era. It will be done once the robot revolution is in full swing.
>So which robots are selling better - ones with or without Genuine People Personalities?
Dunno, but the ones with the GPP are usually very depressed...
This is the kind of /. headline we've been hoping for!
/.
Next we'll get the rocket packs, flying cars, the moon colony, the manned Mars mission, some more SCO comedy, the first Robot murder, 50 stories about the robot's trial, robot uprisings, the robot nation, the robot war, and uh... well that'll be about it for
See you all in the Matrix!
:)
We're not going to see many advances on A.I. and therefore independant robots till we've got hardware capable of simulating in real time the emergent behaviour of *large* numbers of neurons.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
A lot of those robots aren't even that good at what they do!
are robots too. Count them in and the world has hundreds of millions of robots in everyday use. To people who say those machines are not robots - look at India, Africa and so on, where vast numbers of people wash clothes in the rivers, causing enormous polution. A whole class of people has already been displaced by washer robots and nobody is complaining about the loss of jobs.
Well, the costs of many types of labor are already quite high if you factor in all the costs. What for example is the risk that we'll see some new epidemic arise as a result of globalization? Its been less than 90 years since the Influenza pandemic-in the big scheme odf things, that isn't that long.
Personally, I think we ought to be considering moving completely away from payroll and sales taxes towards taxes on land, polluting activities, monopoly capital(i.e. large companies), private concentrations of wealth. Tarriffs are probably a necessary short-term to handle the US balance of payments.
The point though: something like advancement of robotics really might necessitate substantial societal reorganization. My own concern though: would increases in productivity just be associated with increases in "make work" types of activities. In the US, what seems to have happened is the replacement of industrial activities with jobs in law, finance,accounting, civil service that largely amount to make-work programs for the middle class.
For the good of their health, do you?
People said that what Asimo does now was impossible. Once the robot motion and deterity becomes equal to that of a human, their cost will plummet, to, I would imagine, roughtly what it costs to mass produce a car - a pretty complex piece of machinery.
..don't panic
I can see the future now. All the corporations will fire their human workers and replace them with American robots. When the corps eventually figure out that they can get Indian robots even cheaper, they'll fire the American robots, who will then be forced into a life of prostitution. Then they'll finally make PimpBot 5000 models to keep the hooker robots in line. But not to worry: we in Cal-eee-for-nya have the Governator(TM) to protect us.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
>>20 years of genetic programming and neural networks has produced almost nothing
I dropped out of school cuz I thought there'd be jobs, you insensitize clod.
Why would you expect that buying VIA stock would in any way produce an investment tied to VIA's chips being bought in large quantities ?
If you buy stock in any company producing products for the robot revolution, that money doesn't go to build them a better factory. In fact, it doesn't go to that company at all. So why would you expect that some of their profits would come back to you ? Companies don't pay dividends any more.
The fact is that almost all business investment is internally financed, from current revenues. Some comes from initial investors, in the case of new companies. If a big company wants to build a robot factory and make billions, they go to a bank.
The stock market is like fantasy baseball. It's how the wannabe's and the fans pretend like they are part of the game.
Come on, unless it walks, talks and basically looks humanoid or R2D2ish, I really wouldn't consider those robots. By those liberal standards, Al Gore is a robot too.
I, for one, welcome our new robot masters.
Berrik
Current karma: Terrible (due to mods without a sense of humor)
The exploration of freedom would not have become a burden if we had not been delayed with the delusion of equailty in any other manner except under law and in politics. Now we have people that have wasted their life being accountants and burger flippers that may very well not be welcome in a society not only predicated on science and technology but excusively run and mantained by such.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
...they were just equiped with Nokia batteries. *whew*
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
"There are a number of jobs out there where no matter how much or how little you pay people, at some point, a machine will be able to do the job better and cheaper."
Robo-hooker.
All right meat bags, skin tubes, coffin stuffers, wait for when Ma takes over all of these new machines!
:)
Kill all humans! Kill all humans!.....
*beep*
Free Soda for all humans!
As long as they don't go on a "Human Hunt" I think we will be OK.
Hedley
I think that the US may be rapidly approaching a major decision point in this area. Now, with Japan being the world leader in robotics, the likely way for the US to avoid robotics is to go strongly nationalistic/protectionist. The problem there though, is that policy would probably have a dramatically empowering effect on folks in the US with a technological bent. The US has borrowed in recent decades basically by threat of military force(i.e. loan us this money or we'll go ballistic-which was never said-but IMHO that has been the reality of the situation).
I think there is some risk the strain of this decision may tear the US apart quite literally. There is a portion of the US that wants to go technological-and a portion that doesn't. Now, when push comes to shove, the portion that wants to got technological has a tremendous advantage in a shooting war.
Does a RealDoll count as a domesitc robot, then?
Carthago delenda est!
One way to encourage reindustrialization adequate to the task of lowered population and higher resource efficiency might be to allow people threatened by imported disease to sue the globalist companies importing the cheap labor.
My GI generation father lives with some life-threatening conditions, and does he have some stories to tell since he moved from Iowa to the border with Mexico!
I rarely see the man anymore, however, so the change is hardly gradual and is quite palpable.
Sitting in a waiting line with illegals ahead of him for medical service is finally getting to him. Never a racist act nor word from him during his entire life, and now at the end of his life, he's having to think about what he was fighting for when he, before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, left the Quakers, where he could have easily evaded the draft, and volunteered to go fight the Germans. He is probably going to die quite a few years earlier for the want of a small amount of service from Medicare to which he is entitled. He will likely lose these years of life due to the degradation of Medicare by immigration promoted by globalist companies forcing wages for American workers down. He could actually get better care if he were an illegal rather than a WW II vet.
As Paul Craig Roberts reports - Friday, Oct. 3, 2003:
Can you imagine what things will happen when the boomers, whose economic and therefore reproductive viablity has already been decimated by government policy which is now compounded by immigration-induced age, if not race, discrimination, hit retirement and all that imported labor that was supposed to keep Social Security solvent is voting?
I'll admit I'm angry about this; however, the public health menace facing those on Medicare is a drop in the bucket compared to what is starting to become obvious to even the most dogmatic proponent of globalism:
Globalist companies are using immigration to drive down labor costs at the expense of profound risks to the public health from epidemics.
When SARS turned out not to be the threat so many feared, some thought this might have been due to quick rea
Seastead this.
Would pick up a virus and start mowing porn URLs into your lawn.
Would mow down your flowers and shrubs and leave the grass standing. Microsoft would insist this behavior is by design.
Steve Ballmer would spend 10 minutes on stage at a MS meeting chanting, "Landscapers! Landscapers! Landscapers! Landscapers!"
Would stop for no apparent reason, then suddenly race over to the neighbors yard and shave their cat.
On a certain date lawn mowers from all over the neighborhood would rush to your house in a denial of yard attack.
After it finally started working right and was stable MS would stop supporting it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Pictures for your pleasure.
Forget the lawn mowing robots, we should be genetically engineering new breeds of animals to take care of these chores for us.
Imagine birds that are instinctively programmed to pick up trash. We have plenty of squirrels around, so why not enlist them to rake our yards? Don't get me started on the rodents (think giant turbines).
Animals in cities have way too much time on their hands and are always causing problems by flying|crapping|shitting on everyone else. It's high time they started pulling their own weight in the world.
If things get out of hand and the animals evolve beyond our ability to control them, *then* we can start thinking about robot exterminators.
Oh great, now my Robot Insurance premiums are going to go up!
I think I'll wait until I can get a robot that'll go down. :-)
In 20 years slashdot will have the headline "Robot Salesmen are exploding."
"Robots are being bought and sold like inanimate objects. That sounds like slavery! It's high time we extend human rights to robots. After all, robots are people, too." - William Smythe
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Therefore, after machines take over and men and robots terminate each other in a matrix/terminator/paranoia-like war, whoever remains can use it as part of a chronicle to tells the history of the previous civilization.
Actually, reading this article, I felt just like reading the intro to a post-holocaust video-game, or the page were the past history is explained to the protagonist on a B SF book.
-><- no
FWIW, meteorology has been working on this problem for years. In fluid mechanics the finer the resolution of your model, the better the results. Each grid mark in X,Y,Z represents a cube of air or water. Once you break the world up into tiny parts, you can use very rudimentary thermodynamics to model the behavior. Each grid will heat up, cool down, pressurize or depressize based on its internal state and inputs from the world around them.
The problem you run into after a while is chaos theory. No matter how fine grain you make the model, small approximations build up to large errors. This is why we can't forecast weather beyond 5 days, despite the massive increase in weather forcasting power. Too many factors outside the model affect our real weather.
And no. They don't know what all of the factors are. Many of them are simple phenomina interact in complex ways to skew our macroscopic view. The devil, quite literally, is in the details.
To view the brain by sampling nerve cells would be like evaluating a beach based on grains of sand and drops of water. An artificial brain would end up a bag of sand in a kiddie pool. Well, until some new science takes charge of it, at which point it becomes a dumpster of sand in a clorinated pool.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Aren't you just proving his point by agreeing that the human brain is nothing more than the product of the emergent behavior of a 100 million cell neural network? It's more logical to disagree because "neural" networks don't fundamentally work like real neurons as we currently understand them today (neural networks were developed a relatively long time ago).
Incidentally, I think it's somewhat misconceived to require AI to reach a human-level before it can be useful. How useful is a seeing eye dog, or a trained rat, or even an earthworm? While we're certainly not at the dog stage, nor even the rat, I'm sure we've already got enough computational capacity to create much-better-than-earthworm AI on the desktop.
The real problem isn't developing a system with human-level intelligence; it's applying what we know into a synthesis that accomplishes the goal. The general approach in engineering a solution to a typical problem like automobile production is to use machines without any intelligence (like a sheet metal press) or capacity to learn (not counting programmability, which requires a human to tell a computer how to do the job). Nobody's going to take the risk of trying to develop and build 100 androids using advanced technology to do a job that can be done perfectly well on an assembly line with well-understood components.
However, that also means that when you need a task that does require more intellectual muscle, there isn't a big domain of knowledge. Experimentation in robotics is restricted pretty much to basic research. Military robotics will probably be a big driver in applying research results to systems that have to operate in hostile, real world environments (note that the hostility of an environment for a robot has little to do with whether it's being shot at or not--any unanticipated circumstance that hasn't been engineered for will cause most current robots to fail in conducting their mission).
Pathfinding, search, and other simple tasks that you might expect an insect-level intelligence to do well should have excellent military applications, as evidenced by the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge. Indeed, the much-ballyhooed Bayesian filter approach to spam has already been used for many years in military radar systems for target recognition. Military applications will surely find uses for more advanced AI systems.
Incidentally, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea of self-consciousness, just as a philosophical matter. It just doesn't seem to make much sense that there should be a unique observer. However, IANAAIR (IANA AI researcher?) and IANAP (IANA philosopher), so I couldn't say what the state of the art on that is. (Incidentally, what is the point of using IANA acronyms when you have to explain what they mean?) However, I do have my own personal crackpot theory on intelligence and logical reasoning, derived from the observation that human beings are not really rational. Scientists recently discovered that human beings don't really react fast enough to, say, balance a pencil on their fingertip, and that accomplishing that feat is mainly a matter of many small random movements that hopefully cancel each other out for the most part, along with some conscious movement on top. Similarly, when walking much of the act of balance is carried out sometimes a very local level, with little central coordination and also with randomized movements. (Neither of these two findings were surprises to me, so I'm a little puzzled what took so long to figure out.) Anyway, I have a pet theory that human "reason" may be a similar thing, with some level of logical connection to it derived from experience, but with a large element of brute force combinations with a self-check system. In that way, the human brain and human creativity wouldn't be anything particularly mystical, but really just as sophisticated as a Deep Blue, except with (at the moment) more sophisticated hardware and slightly better software. In which case, I think the whole approach of build
Now what really bakes my noodle is the idea that our civilization as a whole may be concious.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Not true. Most use something like SVMs or Boosting. At least the effective ones I've seen.
Why is the UN doing this ? If I had to come up with a list of 10 things I think the UN should be doing, a robotics survey doesn't exactly make the cut. It might be cool, but ... ?
Have you read the Robotic Nation or manna articles by Marshall Brian.? Btw... MarshallBrain is the founder of howstuffworks.com. They descibe a possible future where robots may eliminate most horrible minimum wage jobs... and more. I think this could be a problem, but you judge for yourself. It's only one prespecitve.
U.S Robotics will actually start making robots for once? :)
I think exploding robots in Japan would be cooler....or is this redundant already? I'm late!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I misread that, missing the word "sales"... I thought the kill-all-humans protocal had finally kicked in.
Cheers,
-j.
There are real cites for this problem. If you're an engineer and don't want to get sued, pay attention.
t e.html
http://www.urbanlegends.com/sex/vacuum_wanking_ci
When will I be able to purchase my own Bender unit?
Put down the Nietzsche (or the Ayn Rand) and get a soul.
There's a great career ahead of you in robot repair services!
Pictures for your pleasure.
OB Fark:
"I'd hit it!"
It's not a troll. Seriously. It was Professor Lipschitz or Lipshitz or some variation on that-- no idea if he was tenured or not. It was my freshman year, and I *believe* it was first semester, making it Chem 124 (the honors chemistry for freshman engineers-- biggest mistake I ever made taking honors for a class unrelated to my core CmpE studies) in fall of 1995.
I know this is only going to make you doubt me further-- I'd give you his full name and a definite semester/year/class, but I'm on a 2-week business trip out of town and can't get to my old notes at home to check for you.
He had an interest in asteroids as well, and was always bringing us images and videos of that stuff, despite it being a chemistry class.
I *believe* it was this guy, as the face matches up roughly with my memory, but it's been 8 years and he looks to have lost some weight. Email him and ask him about the Hoover Dustette.
Even better, here is a link indicating at least a few of these incidents as having appeared in the British Medical Journal.
I couldn't make this shit up.
"The problem you run into after a while is chaos theory."
*Exactly*. Hence my mention of birds and emergent behaviour. And the requirement for massively powerful processing before real advances will be made in AI. I would put money on human consiousness being the result of tiny tiny fluctuations in very simple equations which govern individual neurons.
I think you'll be right about variations in manufacturing as well.
BTW, These guys are attempting to build a brain. I reckon they have the basic idea about right. It isn't remotely realtime though.
http://www.ad.com/
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
You're a self-righteous prick for accusing me of lying without doing any fact verification yourself. And a pretentious one at that for using the term "dangerous meme."
Sorry to all for getting this far offtopic, but being falsely accused of trolldom by somebody who couldn't be bothered to do a couple of googles and pop up the faculty listing at purdue has really pissed me off.
:) Sorry. I wasn't trying to get you upset. Seriously, the phrase "dangerous meme" should have been clue #1 that I was just playing around.
Like I'd really accuse you of being the source of all Dick-in-the-Vacuum-Cleaner accidents. I don't even know you.
Please accept my apology if you got worked up.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Civility! Wow. Now I feel like a tool for the namecalling. Apology accepted, and you have my apologies for a lapse in the humor department as well.
No problem. As you implied, civil behavior is lacking here. I don't know if it's because everyone is anonymous or they are really jerks in the meat world. I used to write insightful comments but I found two people that plagiarized every post I put up. Those are only two that I know about. The result is that I treat /. as a place for light banter. Just put on some light armor and browse at + 3. You have a pretty low ID number so I suspect you've been around for ages. I can see where someone writing an "elitist douchbag" (as I'm guilty of impersonating) would get under your skin. You were probably here long before /. got a broader audience. Anyway, peace and look out for those tell-tale signs like "dangerous meme" to separate the wheat from the chaff. This whole place is a dangerous meme. Have fun with it.
Laws are for people with no friends.
The reason robot mower companies don't add any geometry tracking is probably because they don't want to "add a penny more" to the cost of producing the robot - that is one more penny in profit, dontcha know!
Anyhow, you likely wouldn't even need a vision system for most of these robots. A few k of RAM would probably suffice - note:
Lawns are mainly two-dimensional surfaces - so all you really have to keep track of is where you have been in the two dimensional plane. And you don't even have to keep the tracking super accurate - down to meter or half-meter square would probably be accurate enough (hell, lets make it nice - to the square foot). Each "square" of lawn gets one byte in an array. Now, instead of a single wire surrounding the property with only one signal, each "edge" of the property gets its own wire with a specific signal or identifier coming from it (maybe it is a different frequency, or maybe it is sending out a different pulse ID or something). So, the robot is placed in this delimited "grid" (which would be marked up in a GUI to show where the wires "are", how big the yard is, what squares in the tracking memory represent the yard, where the robot is placed in the yard at the start, and what direction it points in), and let to do its random walk or pattern to mow. Using "dead reckoning" by tracking the distance the wheels have moved, it will know what squares (bytes in the array) it has visited, and maybe even the coverage (0=no coverage, 255=fully mowed), based on how often it has visited the square, and from what square(s) around it it has come from. Now, the dead-reckoning system isn't perfect (but is cheaper, currently, than GPS), the robot could get turned around and lost. However, eventually it would come to one of the boundry lines, and it would get a signal telling it what side of the lawn it was on, and it would know that it is turned around in some manner - perhaps it could reset itself, and orient from that position, and continue on from there.
Such a system (which I hereby place under the GPL for Hardware license - and my description is prior art) would be very cheap (most of it is software - the rest of the hardware is probably on board most mower robots, and what little isn't is VERY cheap) - but they won't implement it because it would mean a better product that costs them more to make, and hence less profit for them.
Greedy bastards!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon