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Why the US Consumer Doesn't Deserve A Decent Robot
SkinnyGuy writes "PC Magazine has up a lengthy look at how differing cultural approaches and expectations for robots are setting the stage for Amercian consumers to miss out on the best robots have to offer. The first paragraph is kind of funny:
'Someday the robots will rise up and kill us all. They'll record our lives, obliterate our privacy, set off nuclear war, and eventually turn on us and eat our brains. If any of this ever did happen, it would serve us right. We, at least American consumers, don't deserve the future that robots really have to offer.'"
The general public didn't care for the computer either, until it could do MSN.
I know this is slashdot, where technology is loved for the sake of technology, but seriously - are robots really that important? I guess I'm like the "average American consumer" in my disinterest in robots - be they androids or those little vaccum things. I'd rather do things myself, or have another human do it. Why? Because even dumb humans are going to be able to adapt more readily than the smartest robots we have today.
Would you want your house built by a robot that was programmed by someone who has never built a house but who read a book, or by someone who has been doing it for 20 years and can make adjustments as they are required to work within the actual, physical situation - not some theory from an architects' manual? Would you rather have your house cleaned by some cold, metal machine, or by some sexy, 20 year old, Russian girl?
Frankly, its just like the people who complain on here that calculators have made kids suck at math. if we start to rely on the machines all the time, then we're going to lose the skills ourselves. The pool of people that will be able to debug and improve the machines will shrink over time. Eventually, we'll be fucked - and not by that sexy, 20 year old, Russian housekeeper.
His point seems to be that Americans are threatened by robots with personality.
Back up the truck. American's recognize that personality is an unneeded and costly add on for robots. A roomba with a head and arms that walked around and vacuumed my house wouldn't threaten anything other than my banking account. The frisbee shaped roombas already cost too much. There is no way in hell I'm going to pay extra for personality.
Clue to the author:
Unless you are building a sex toy, giving a robot human (or animal) shape is expensive and pointless. Don't blame Americans for seeing through this.
Americans are going to get robots made at rock bottom prices with shoddy programming because people are too cheap to buy a quality model. Bloomingdales or Macys will have decent models, but Target and Wal Mart are going to have the crappy models.
The entire article focuses around this point. The idea that robots will some day become common place. That we will have "robot repair centers" and the like(Although he never mentioned that in the article, he hints at this kind of common place usage in other countries). The simple fact of the matter is that even the "best level" consumer robotics are horribly unuseful. The only useful one is the vacuum robot.
I work with robotics as a hobby, and consider myself a little above a "novice" in applied robotics. The issue at hand today is not a technological one, is it an inspiritional one. Try and think of a useful robot.
Go ahead, do it.
What did you come up with? If you're like most people the idea of a robotic butler("Bring me a beer robot jeeves"), perhaps a robotic lawn mower, maybe even a robotic gaurd who patrols your house.
The problem is that all of these already exist in various forms.
Take for example the robotic butler. Lets say you are watching football and you want a beer. You would simply hit "beer" on your remote and the little robot would wander off. Lets say it takes him 45 seconds to get it and bring it over. You can do it in 15. Also, you can go to the bathroom while you're up. So the only time it would be very useful is when you are being lazy and want to "veg".
So would you spend say 400$ on this robotic butler simply to be lazy? Is buying an ice chest and ice really that hard?
What of the gaurd robot? People buy dogs for this normally, or alarms. Both are easy to use, fufilling(dogs at least), and relatively wide used.
Robots are not popular in america because A. We don't need them for day to day activities. B. We already have conviences we enjoy, and most people do not want to be so lazy as to never move. C. The majority of America is only now becoming PC enabled.. try making them robot enabled. D. There are no good robot needs.
Suggested mods:
1. Troll
2. Flamebait.
Suggest responses:
1. Nub.
2. You're an idiot, your argument makes no sense and furthermore I would love robot that does
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
The article goes to great lengths to bash the American consumer, yet where does it speak to an alternative? Vaguely mentioning "the Japanese" hardly counts. If American expectations of robots are absurdly high, Japanese expectations are equally absurdly low. It seems the only stories you ever hear about Japanese robots, other than Asimo, are essentially attempts to make animatronic puppets that resemble people or pets so closely until they finally achieve "uncanny valley" levels of creepiness. Yet these "robots" offer no real functionality. If we want to make generalizations, we may as well say the Japanese are obsessed with creating the appearance of robots, without actually fulfilling any other purpose other than "Kawaii!!!"
Case in point: He brings up the Aibo. Of course the market rejected it - who has $2000 to spend on a battery-powered dog whose novelty wears off after about 6 hours, unless you're a programmer who wants to use them for competitions or hacking. And cheap knock-offs costing $40 or less quickly showed up and sold well, demonstrating that there was a market for trivial fluff, as long as it was priced right.
And then there's the Roomba. Sure, it works in certain well-defined environments to remove minor debris; but we're talking about a device that takes over for a task that most of us only spend an hour/week doing, if that, and only for a single floor. This isn't to say that the Roomba is a failure, or that vacuum-cleaning robots are a dead end. It's a decent start, and there's no reason that a fully functional vacuum robot that does as good a job as a person with a full size vac isn't in the near future, but for now, unless you're Stephen Hawking, a Roomba is more about entertainment than cleaning a house.
And that's what it really boils down to: people will embrace robots when they fulfill some useful purpose that is worth the price you'll pay for them, the hassle factor in dealing with them, and the real estate they take up in your closet when you're not using them. We will get there - the recent Urban Challenge for autonomous cars reported hear earlier is a stepping stone - but stop putting the cart before the horse and demanding some hypothetical consumer buy a lot of novelty garbage just to get an industry a jump start.
-BbT
As long as America has cheap Mexican labor, they won't need robotic labor. One of the main reasons for Japans enthusiasm for robotic helps has to do with their demographics shift and their general xenophobia/aversion to immigration from poorer Asian countries.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
The article touches on but, in my opinion, doesn't do justice to a well documentet trait of human nature: That how appealing we find a representation (robot, image, etc) lives on a bell curve. Something that has some resembelance to, say, a dog; we will connect with. When it moves from "dog-ish" to looking like a plastic-dog-zombie, it grosses us out. As long as we are seeing the robot and finding similarities with the dog, it's appealing for the resembelances. When the reality gets close enough that we are seeing the dog and finding the robot, then it's freaky. The answer is simple, and hardly does anything to stop adoption of robots... give them faces, but not ones that look like zombie-people. I think the movie I-Robot did a really good job of creating a robotic design that had all the traits that would cause us to view it as a peer, while keeping out that "freaky" effect of the rubber mask. BTW: We see the same thing in rendered people. When we move from "realistic but obviously a CGI" to "looks not-quite-real" we cease to find them appealing (they also stop feeling generic). There's also a place for distinctly non-human robots. While I do agree that the telepresence robot likely should have been taller and had more manipulation ability... I see no reason that the roomba should have been 4ft and worked a vacuum with its hands... that's just adding unneccessairy size and complexity to an efficient little robot.
Most of them can't figure out how to hide the expense of a Real Doll from their spouses anyway, so a *robotic* version, being even more expensive, would be out of the question!
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Like most Americans, I'm concerned about robots. That's why I have Old Glory Insurance coverage.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
What IS relevant is whether there's a demand for it, and Americans are willing to pay for it. It's simple economics. Do Humans "deserve" cars? Do we "deserve" a refrigerator? I dunno, but it doesn't matter. We buys cars and fridges anyway.
I don't really understand the focus on having anthropomorphic robots. Humans are relatively
bulky and require quite a bit of energy for locomotion and so far move fairly slow. The one
benefit of bipedal locomotion is the ability to walk over multileveled and rough terrain, but
I'm guessing the majority of robot uses will be in offices, homes, etc. Why not have more designs
like this? http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair