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Study Says 4.1M Domestic Robots In Use By 2007
jangobongo writes "The U.N.'s annual World Robotics Survey for 2004 predicts that there will be a seven-fold surge in household robots by the end of 2007. Robots that mow your lawn, vacuum, wash windows, clean swimming pools, as well as entertainment robots such as Aibo are all vying to take a place in our homes and ease our workload. The study says that Japan is the leader in consumer robotics, with Europe and North America quickly catching up."
I, for one, welcome our new lawn mowing window washing swim suit wearing robotic over...err...dogs?
ROBOT INSURANCE!!!!! Because robots have steel claws and they eat old peoples medicine for food!
Roomba Sales up 48%
Just like how they predicted everyone would using flying cars in the 21st century. Yawn.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
By 2007 we'll probably all have a personal hovercraft.
They forgot sex robots. Add a bit of movement and AI to a RealDoll and you will have a bestseller.
(I'm only partially kidding.)
Underholdning.info
I predict painfully slow progress in robotics, and a vast increase in tech support when they first become prevailent.
Support more choices in goverment-Vote 3rd party.
They are going to have to change their charter!
"WE THE PEOPLES..."
to
"WE THE PEOPLES AND ROBOTSES..."
see
http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/index.html
From the article: "robots will ...carry out surgery..."
h -in-the-dr.-kildare-robot?
And you people are worried about e-voting? How about e-i-just-lost-my-ear-lobe-due-to-a-software-glitc
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
More importantly, this further proves we are getting closer to a world like I Robot and Matrix. Remember to be kind to your robots.
Thanks to years of inactivity caused by having robots do all our work for us, in the end we'll be carried out of our houses by robot paramedics and taken to the robot hospital to have our clogged-up human hearts removed and replaced with robot hearts by the robot surgeons.
Isn't that kind of how the Cybermen got going? Will the Doctor have to stop us from trying to take over the universe?
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
What exactly is the definition of a robot here? Why is a machine that washes your dishes an "appliance" while a machine that mows your lawn is a "robot"? How about washers/dryers (some even have advanced computer control)? What if you put a sophisticated computer in a toaster or a fridge? Where is the line drawn?
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
2004.10.20: UN predicts much wider use of robots
An Associated Press report [via yahoo] of United Nations Study on robots is predicting robust increases in the use of robots both for both domestic and industrial uses. If you googled for this news you would find similar reports each year going back a ways. Here is the PDF straight from the UN. What makes this news is that its the UN talking, not some manufacturer's press release and that the numbers are more sanguine than ever: But is there a job in this "boom" for any of us?
For comparison here is last year's report, tidied up by your favorite submitter, Roland Click-appeal [hey, at least he RTFA!].
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I thought this was why people had kids.
Clearly the technology is not yet advanced enough.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
When we all have house cleaning robots, or window washing robots how long do you think it will be before people mod them to be other things. Picture this....
I just overclocked my WindowWasher PCXL and modded it to become the most powerful BattleBot ever!! Wax on, Wax off...
this is our future?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I may have mentioned this before, but Anton LaVey suggested that the next big industry will be the production of robotic companions, because they can be programmed to provide the exact type of stimulation or gratification that the user requires, thus avoiding the need to interact with real people who are imperfect at best.
Natch, the Slashdot model will look like Princess Leia, know how to handle a soldering iron, and talk about how great Linux is. Or something...
There may also be an easily-repairable Wesley Crusher model for those 'GNYAR!' moments. Or Jar Jar Binks. Or that ultimate nightmare, Jar Jar Crusher.
... Brent Spiner's appearance on Star Trek next week. W00t!
...is a robot that can sense when a politician is wacked out of his mind and going to drive us to the brink of destruction. We can even program it so that when Bush arrives it will wave its warms madly yelling, "WARNING, WARNING, ALIEN APPROACHING...".
Now you know how many robot vacuum cleaners I will own in 2007
I smell trouble.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
Sure a badly programmed bot can do the same with one tiny little difference. Once a bug has been fixed it will be fixed in all the bots forever. Doctors make the same mistake over and over again no matter how many times they are told not to.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sam Waterston is awesome.
Secondly, imagine, if you will, a world where Real Dolls meet Abio. Ruff ruff.
While I'd love to have somebody/thing else to mow my grass, I'm not sure that I trust an autonomous mechanical device with lethal whirling blades on it to wander about my lawn. Silly of me, I know ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot
At first this may seem a pointless karma whore link to wikipedia, but I have a point.
When you talk to the average person about Robots, they think of that terrible Robin Williams movie, or more recently I,Robot (the movie, not the terrific book). The point is, the term "robot" conjures up thoughts of artifical humans. However the strick definition of a robot is a machine automated to perform tasks in the place of humans. This is why I get disappointed reading articles like this, I go in with the anticipation of every geek. "Sex robots by 2007!" Ok maybe female geeks want cuddle robots... Anyway instead we get stuck with.... lawn mowers, and pretend dogs?
Unlike a dish washer wich is totally incapable of spotting a sticky bit of dirt or doing anything about it. Put a clean load in or a totally caked up load and it will do the same routine.
The robots are supposed to be able to spot what needs to be done and do it.
But yeah, the line can be blured. Is a videorecorder that cuts out commerercials a robot? A microwave that detects how much energy is needed?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"...some 21,000 "service robots" in use, carrying out tasks such as milking cows"...
I'm 52 years old and when I was FIVE my uncles had cow milking robots. They called them "milking machines".
The incremental benefit of a machine that can move from cow to cow or move successive cows to it was also addressed back then. A herd dog moved the cows and a man, "he's bit slow because he had a fever when he was young", moved the machines.
While not machines in the sense of robotics, they were certainly machines, and very sophisticated ones at that, from a bioengineering perspective.
With cows, you have to have some human interaction to make sure they are feeling well and are free of disease. I'm no animal rights guy. In fact I enjoy a tasty sea turtle, veal ribs, pig meat, fruit bat, and so on. But, it's just not right for the milk drinker or cow, if someone doesn't give each teat a squeeze or two and have a look at the condition of the milk and animal before hooking up the machine
that is funny man! I love albino black sheep!
And people are bitching about outsourcing now?
I wonder which politicians will take the heat for this one...
Well, I would certainly be glad to have a robot that cuts my lawn for me (even better if it does edging), but I wonder how it would handle objects in its path. Would I have to go around first and pick all the twigs, etc. out of my lawn first? Would it pick the stuff up with a robotic arm and move it out of the way? Or, would it avoid the obstacle and leave little islands of longer grass in my yard to mark where the dog toys are?
And what about toes? I fall asleep in a lawn chair while enjoying the extra time I now have not having to mow the lawn, and to pay me back for my sloth, the robot runs over my feet.
Bureaucracy loves company.
Not even at "Steel Magnolias"
What they need is something to play with them but in an extremely simple ruleset. They don't understand lies and half-lies let alone jokes. Human caretakers can't descend that low (we are talking well below the social skills of even a pet) but robots can. They can be programmed with a very simple ruleset of play and repeat this over and over again.
So for these kids at least the future of robotic playmates is now. They don't need massive advances in AI, the exact opposite infact. The total predictabilty of current AI is exactly what they need.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
remind me, what's the url to order that Mandy Moore sex-bot ?
I'm too lazy to do the math - can someone tell me what 7 x 0 is..?
"Unlike a dish washer wich is totally incapable of spotting a sticky bit of dirt or doing anything about it. Put a clean load in or a totally caked up load and it will do the same routine."
Around 10 year ago you could purchase them. They are for commercial purpose and they just have an on/off switch. They work by doing sample spraying where they would spray water then test the water, if it had dirt particles in it it went to the next cycle.
They also had microwaves for use for doing potatoes and reheating other food, again for commercial use. It just had 2 buttons for for potatoes one for reheat and worked on similar principles in checking the air and if found the required particles it figured the item was hot enough.
Robotics, like space travel, is one of those technologies that we've been assuming would happen along in the not too distant future for years!
Recent events, including the launching of some commercial robotic vacuum devices that sport some level of intelligence (they have been rigorously designed to identify, and not eat, cats... there goes one form of Monday night entertainment), the announcement of work on programmable er, pleasure robots, and the progress made by all parties in the Ansari X-Prize are very heartening.
Maybe after a couple of decades sebbatical, space and robots are back in vogue, and we can yet live in the future we dreamed of as children. (Yes, replete with programmable sex toys - hey, I was a sick kid...)
I wonder what the use of such studies is. A prediction like this is largely uninteresting to most people, and no more than speculation to others. Still, announcements like this one are made from time to time.
Is it just interested people publishing their guesses, or is there some other motivation? Perhaps they want to encourage the industry to start making robots? Or they want to create a market for them?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I should have titled it "with other links" because the posted article has more links.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Ah, but the ELUA says you can't sue M$ for damages.
Check out the series of essays on:
I'm sure this was covered in Slashdot sometime before, but Marshall's essays are eerie when juxtaposed with this article.
Newsfollow.com
...can grow even fatter and lazier now.
these things go in cycles: cost drives producers to automate but when that trend has wrung all the excess effort and any trace of individual human attention out of the product, consumers start paying for product variations that are more authentic and at least seem less mechanized. Detroit now produces cars almost "on demand" with a high degree of customization because that is the next stop along the progressive dance of consumption and automation. In food, people are even more picky, hating the machine pickable tomatoes for instance ["pink tennis balls"] and prefering more expensive organic greenhouse tomatoes.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I've been using one of the "poolbots" for years now to vacuum my pool. There is a stable, mature industry that supplies robots to clean your pool. Kreepy Crawly, Polaris 360, Hayward and others will attach to connection points on your pool filtration system to clean your pool for you. And, they do a good job of vacuuming up leaves, dirt and the like while also helping to inhibit build up on the pool sides. These all exist at a price point that is acceptable for the quality of service that they perform.
While several parts of the system are programmable, in that there are adjustments that you can make that affect their actions, it would be difficult to see them as robots. You can program the timer to control when the pump comes on, which powers the poolbot by virtue of moving the water through the robot where various paddles move and power the device through gear drives. Adjustments to jets on the robot help exert pressure in a direction which alters the robots path around the pool. The manipulation of valves on the pool filtering system increases the pressure of the flowing water, and the speed of the robot.
So, you have a system that regularly performs a specific task for you. You have the ability to alter some of the parameters of it's task, but they are essentially single task machines with less processing power than one of todays dishwashers. The issue probably comes from the classic literature that portrays robots as something that mimics an existing, living organism to replicate (to some degree) its functions. I would imagine that the "lobster" type of biomimetic robots would perform the pool cleaning functions much better than the existing poolbots. With those crawling around the pools of America, then we really would have robots closer to the mainstream of American life.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
I need some help with a hack. Please.
You may want to visit the iRobot site to get your perception of the navigational logic adjusted. I'm all for healthy cynicism, but let's give credit where credit is due.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
I would like to have some of the auto-cleaning robots, like the roomba
and the Robomaid
to help me out around the house. It's almost impossible for me to do housework. Having a large dog makes housework even harder, what with the hair problem. I can not sweep, vacuum, mop, etc..
I think they should classify these devices as assistance devices for disabled/handicapped people because I can't afford them as I'm sure many other disabled/handicapped are on very tight budgets like myself. It would be nice to get them covered like scooters and wheelchairs are..
I won't be holding my breath though..
Crude joke maybe, but certainly not a troll.
Imagine an insect sized bug wandering around grooming, shaving stubble, removing dead skin, cleansing your pores all like a roomba.
Going to sleep stubbly and waking up with clean unclogged hair and a smooth chin. Or just let it work whilst your watching tv or sitting in your cube.
Simple AI would allow it to tell the difference between stubble and long specific hair thats meant to exist, heck it could even do as the parent suggests and trim your pubes.
It could even scan for other skin related problems whilst its there.
For everyone yicked out by the thought of this, remember the world is full of symbiotic creatures, whales and sharks have cleaner fish which do a similar job, whilst I would also get the eeby-geebies about having insects crawling on me, I don't seem to have a problem with letting a robot do the job.
liqbase
Any sensible AI will be smart enough to figure that a guy willing to fuck a silicon doll is not worth it, and will shutdown itself.
Stick with Blonde dolls, you can even maintain the code, I've heard it's a BASIC striped-down version fo ELIZA...
[]'s Carlos Cardoso - Becoming a brazilian ProBlogger, typo by typo
The milking machine. It fits the teat and is shaped so that a slight vacuum manipulates the teat in a way similar to the human hand. The teats are manipulated in turn as the air is directed to each teat cup (under programmed control such as a cam). The milk is delivered to a container.
r /milke r.htm
"The pulsator was first introduced in the "Thistle" milker, using a steam driven vacuum pump. While the Thistle machine presented problems of sanitation, it proved an efficient milker. In Hoard's Dairyman, in 1898, a reviewer of the Thistle machine demonstrated at the Hamburg Exposition faulted the machine for its intermittent flow, as observed in the glass tube leading to the milk vessel. That reviewer was Dr. Benno Martiny, one of the most prominent dairy scientists of the time. The pulsator, resulting in this intermittent flow is what finally led to a really workable milking machine. The USDA finally tested and gave it's approval to a pulsator milking machine in 1898."
excerpt from
http://www.americanartifacts.com/smma/milke
- Washing machine
- Dryer
- Dishwasher
- Food processor, coffee maker, standing blender, bread machine, ice maker
- VCR/TiVo
- Stereo with CD auto-changer/jukebox
- Alarm Clock
- Snow thrower
They fit the definition of a robot per the article:
Myself, I'm looking forward to an affordable robot that I can put in charge of sweeping the pool.
... is still vaporware, but I am waiting with rabid anticipation.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Got myself a big rabbit and built a cage with no floor. Haven't touched the lawnmower since.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Note that according to the study, the vast leading majority of robots are ones used in industry most often for manufacturing (the study mentions the auto industry, but semiconductor fabs are starting to become all robotic as well). The study goes on to say that even though household robots will become more common, the overwhelming majority will still be industrial.
...flying cars will be massively deployed in 2008, people will take holidays on Mars by 2009, and you will be able to fly to Saturn in 2010.
Editorial note: this information will be inaccurate and grossly overestimated as of 2008.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
What would be the best way to way a success in robotics for an X-Prize like competition. Multiple prizes A.I. developement Speed and manuverablity pressure atmosphere conditions?
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
I don't consider that a robot since it has to be attached by hand, and only performs a small movement. Kind of like a washing machine - it's an appliance because you put the clothes in, it agitates them, then you take them out again. A washing machine that put the laundry in for you, washed, then removed & folded would be a robot.
Robotic milkers do exist - the entire setup will feed the cow (common to feed supplements, grain, etc. in the milking parlor), position her correctly, wash, attach the milker to the udder, remove when done, and send her on her way.
Pretty cool, no?
These systems are most common in New Zealand and certain parts of Europe (early work from the Netherlands, I believe). They haven't been widely adopted in the US for economic and political reasons.
I prefer to be called Evil Scientist.
Stinkoman:
What's a robot?
You don't know what a robot is? hah hahaha!
You're so dumb!
Hah hahaha!
Dumb!
1936 Homestar:
Oh go soak your fat head!
S:
Are yo asking for a challenge!?! (powers up)
H:
Yes sir, yes sir I am.
S:
Double deuce!!!! (Jumps into air)
H:
Patooei! (1936 Homestar shoots a spitball at Stinkoman)
S:
My eye!
Its like my eye
It hurts so bad!
H:
Well folks you know what that means
Now I'll do a dance (1936 Homestar dances)
S:
Hah hahaha!
That dance cracks me up!
Hah hahaha!
You gotta teach me!
H:
Just watch me shimmy and shake
H:
20x6!
S:
1936! (dances with 1936 Homestar)
Repeat and then watch for yourself
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
Yeah right, next thing you know they'll be saying that out jetpacks are right around the corner!
Robots mow your lawn, vacuum, wash windows and clean swimming pools... in Japan!
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
Ok now mod me down! (again)
Robotic Nation by Marshall Brain, a great read on our appending doom.
:\
I for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
The gradparent is right. Roomba does not do any sort of mapping to figure out where it hasn't cleaned or where it is okay to travel. It is much more similar to a bump-and-go toy car than what most people think of as a robot. This doesn't change the fact that it is a nice designed and commercially successful product.
The beta version didnt have enough waterproofing for the internal components.
Some of the worst cases I have been around of autistic childeren lacked this capabilty. Perhaps lately better threathment has come around, it been 20 years so I certainly would hope so but not at the time.
There reason I used pet was because it was given to me as an example of how different their behaviour is. It is not like dealing with a small child or a pet who are stupid but capable of dealing with other emotions, a baby or a cat can easily read your mood. Autistic childeren are not stupid, some are even very intelligent but they have no capability to read your emotions.
So don't talk babytalk I was told but keep it emotionally simple. Don't expect them to read between the lines. Tell them clearly what you want or not want. Wether this is still accurate today I don't know but it was how I was instructed. I wasn't supposed to work with them directly, just work around them.
Anyway the robot I seen wasn't about teaching. It was to get them out of their isolation, give them something to interact with that doesn't have all these complex social things that playing with humans has (and without the strain and cost on human care takers) to these childeren. It seemed to work very well as a kid who had been sitting in a huddle was actively playing and having fun.
Perhaps that is just what it was. A toy for fun, you complain about the use of pets as a comparision but seem to think they have only need of toys to train them to be like us. I hope you don't mean it that way but I seen an awfull lot of programms aimed at helping people who are different have no other goal then to make them like the rest.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah I was just joking around and now I have bad karma, heh. I guess it didn't strike anyone else as being funny. I'm officially a troll, lol.
Agreed, the Roomba is hardly worth the name "robot".
However, the Electrolux Trilobite does do intelligent mapping of the environment it is vacuuming. On the other hand, it also costs several times the price of a Roomba.
Looks like we solved world poverty, hunger and terrorism, and the Machias Seal Island dispute. Now the UN has time to think about fucking Roombas!
x=0
:)
sin(0)=0
So sin(0)/0 equals...
0/0
which is 1
As -1/-1=1, 0/0=1, 1/1=1, 2/2=1, 3/3=1.... for neZ
QED
Film at 11!
I, for one welcome our robotic barber overlords.
Busy aligning my non-linear thoughts.
Except that the option of variation, such as your car example, is only possible because of automation. Automation drives down manufacturing costs and gives the manufacturer the ability to differentiate products. Effective automation is rarely removed. Sometimes the result is a smaller workforce, sometimes people get re-tasked to add value.
How many here are old enough to remember when going to Mcdonalds and saying "hold the onions" was a special order and meant you had to wait a long time while they made it. By automating registers, fast food companies had the ability to change their processes. Now, 'special' orders are normal.
BTW, machines picking 'pink tennis balls' isn't the problem. The problem is that real tennis balls probably taste better. I grow my own tomatoes because 'hothouse tomatoes' shouldn't be a selling point. It's kind of like putting food coloring in water and calling it coke.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
Robotic Nation
mow your own lawn. then maybe americans would not be so damn fat and lazy. sitting on their ass waiting for a robot butler to bring them another bucket of Ben and Jerrys.
"The first alien race we meet will be the one we build ourselves." --DB_Story
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I predict that as bandwidth gets cheaper, remote-controlled robots controlled from the so-called third-world will be taking over a lot of blue-collar jobs such as flipping burgers or painting houses. I doubt they will be as effecient as a single human, but for the labor rate savings a place can run two such bots. Plus, they can work the night shift.
We don't need AI for "smart" robots, we just need cheap bandwidth to reach cheap overseas brains. Offshore labor will screw more and more professions.
Table-ized A.I.
That said, we lower strata of geek may yet have a career as a robotic technician. We and that kids who spend 6 weeks learning how to repair truck engines, air conditioners, and cars.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Ohhhhh, poor Aibo. If there were ever a dog to fear a bath...
I just hired all those illegal aliens to do that work for me, and now they're telling me I need to replace them with robots?
That's just going to further depress the wage structure of the underclass!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
Ever use a Roomba? It's really dumb, navigates by bumping into things, gets tangled in cords, and doesn't clean very well. I'd expected better from Rod Brooks. Even for a purely reactive robot, it's unusually stupid.
There are better automated vacuums. There was a good one back in the 1980s, from Denning Robotics, but it was a huge riding vacuum for malls and airports. Good technology, but too big. There's a new small robot vacuum that doesn't bump into stuff, but it's priced around $1000. That's the technology to watch.
Soon I will be protected from the Terrible Secret of Space.
Seastead this.
April 3, 2007, BumFrell
Robot theft up 10-fold. Robot theft in the moderately sized midwestern town of East BumFrell has increated to near epidemic proportions. "I just let RX-238 out to mow the lawn", says one irtate owner...
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
Well, hopefully by 2007 these bots will have come down in price. The Honda & Sony bots cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I doubt every rich person on the planet will go out and pay for this, considering they'll have to pay even more for a robot technician than what it would cost for hiring a human being.
~Idarubicin
I wouldn't pay someone to mow my lawn, let alone purchase a robot in the thousands of dollars to gouge the grass.
Sorry but this is pathetic. Let's rename the survey, "How lazy Humans are Becoming: Robots to do menial chores."
And sex robots? "Now for the weak and deprived you too can shot your juices inside!"
What will happen to all our jobs if robots automate everything.
In a capitalist society like ours a person is only worth their salt if they provide some valuable labor to society. What will happen to all those people once their jobs are automated. With they be worth any salt?
I personally think that every person is worth more money than we could ever print. They are worth so much because they have within their possession a neural network with decades of programming that allow them to be creative and innovative in ways machines are not yet capable. Besides all that they are human, like me, so they automaticly get a +1 value of anything that is not. However, capitalists don't view the world this way.
I am affraid that these coming robots will displace jobs and the net result will be more poverty which leads to more crime and mental illness.
Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to phase out the existence of money than to attempt to make enough work for everyone to keep busy?
Perhaps if things get bad enough we will become more open minded to these ideas.
Similarly if you want people to be happy don't force them to live in poverty. Want to prevent crime, prevent homeless and jobless environments. Want to stop terrorism, don't shoot their relatives, provide them a better way of live by sharing and giving.
We would be a lot more productive if we didn't spend all our time counting coins, IMHO. What if we invested that time, instead, in building robots and automating labor?
Make this look like a spider and yeah, this would have huge ick factor for most of the public. Maybe if it looked like a cute little (very, very miniature) puppy.
I think it's a great idea, esp. if while trimming public hair it can detect STD's like herpes or genital warts or whatever. Honestly, how often do you give your genitals a through examination? Every day? Oh... I didn't realize...
The Allied newspapers (UK, American) often called the German V2 rockets "robots" which technically were the first self guided machines that moved from point A to point B under it's own power and with it's own self-guidence system.
Although they had quite a bit of margin of error, but for it's day they were quite technological advanced.