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."

Comments

BOOM!

[gpinzone]

Bite my shiny metal ass!

Lazy People!

[jolyonr]

I think I'll wait until I can get a robot that'll go down to the Gym and exercise on my behalf.

Jolyon

Re:Lazy People!

[metlin]

A favourite quote of mine by David Zindell --

"Live? Our servants can do that for us!"
~Neverness and The Wild, D.Z.

Re:i like robots, joke:

[qewl]

Why do robots have small wheels?

So they can stand closer to the kitchen sink.

Well...

[appleLaserWriter]

I welcome our new Robot Masters!

We know, we know

[Faust7]

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.

Re:We don't need robots...

[Gabrill]

Robots don't complain about unwanted sexual advances.

Think ahead

[eyeball]

Someone should prepare the robots for the day when their jobs go overseas to India.

Re:Now,

[commodoresloat]

yeah but at least we'll have lots of music to listen to.

Oh. I thought you said our bodies would be kept in iPods.

Re:Asimov got it wrong

[Carme]

Hey, if you can figure out how to program the three laws into today's robots, we'd all love to
hear your technique.

10 IF ACTION = KILLHUMAN THEN STOP
20 IF ACTION = TAKEORDER THEN DO
30 IF ACTION = SUICIDE THEN STOP
40 GOTO 10

Jesus, do I have to do everything?

Re:In 50 Years,

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I had to admin a network of humans. It's horrible. The network drivers suck. I swear, you could tell 5 of them the same thing. Ask them to repeat back what you told them, and you'd get 5 different results.

The task manager for humans is also dreadful. They spend at least 1/3 of the time sleeping, and take so long to process an instruction that they need to be told what to do again and again and again. Cripes, I sometimes have to remind them in the MIDDLE of a task what they are supposed to do.

Re:That's interesting and all, but...

[corbettw]

Well, you can find sex robots at www.realdoll.com. Kinda. Not really.

Animals

[eap]

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, if only I had a girlfriend

[MacFury]

think I'll wait until I can get a robot that'll go down to the Gym and exercise on my behalf.

I think I'll wait until I can get a robot that'll go down. :-)