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."
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.