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Household Emergent Behavior?

Posted by Cliff on from the silly-'intelligent'-household-devices dept.

Sam Pullara asks: "I got an IM from my Mom today telling me that she couldn't find her Roomba. It somehow had escaped the kitchen and she couldn't find it anywhere, all the doors that it could reach were shut and she checked under everything. She eventually found that it had gotten into a room and closed the door behind it. Once all household items are networked I wonder if a rich environment like a house will make strange behavior like this commonplace? Will the interactions between all the individual devices create something more than the sum of their parts?"

8 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory bash.org reference by slavemowgli · · Score: 5, Funny
    #5273 +(16837)- [X]

    <erno> hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.

    I just couldn't help but think of that. :) (#5273) And BTW, if I may say so, your mother's quite cool if she has a Roomba and knows how to use IMs. I can't imagine mine ever doing either.

    --
    quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    1. Re:Obligatory bash.org reference by david.given · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'll remind you of this old story; which if you come to think of it, is quite an advertisement for Novell products...

  2. Computer! by bahamat · · Score: 5, Funny

    Computer, where is Commander Data?

    Lt. Commander Data is on the Hollodeck.

  3. Dialogue by mao+che+minh · · Score: 5, Funny
    Your mom: "Hey, where's my roomba?"
    Roomba: "No dissasemble!"

    OK that sucked.

  4. Did You Hear That? by cynic10508 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's the sound of a thousand philosophers rolling their eyes in unison.

  5. So... by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 5, Funny

    did you have to encourage the Roomba to come out of the closet?

  6. Yo Mama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yo' mama so ugly, even robots try to hide from her!

  7. Re:prank by spywarearcata.com · · Score: 5, Funny

    Once back in my Bandley 3 days, I hid an LED with half a 555 timer and a battery up in the acoustic tile so that the dome of the LED was ensconced within one of the camouflaging grots.

    It was timed to flash just outside what I estimate the tipping point of boredom for people whose eye caught one of its flashes.

    Coupled with the obsessive engineers who noticed it, it was both hilarious and -- instructive.


    Now, I suppose, I would design it with a cadmium sulfide resistor so that the flashing interval would increase if it noticed less ambient light, which might happen if a head were close to discovering it.