Slashdot Mirror
Office Robots of the Near Future, Gearing Up
Reader jsrodrigues points out Businessweek's article on the predicted coming wave of office robots. These include offerings from Willow Garage, Anybots, and Smart Robots, all designed to automate certain bits of office-building meatspace gruntwork, like ferrying mail and making coffee, but more intelligently and smoothly than previous generations of such tools. Smart Robots has posted a scenario describing the benefits of office life with robots; a test run of robots from that company is set for early 2012 at "a major office building in Manhattan."
Personally i think i'll stick with products from Aladdin or Hired Girl.
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Coffee making is pretty automated as it is... the coffee maker in my office is hooked up to a water source so the only thing we have to do add beans every so often.
Now THERE'S something worth hacking!
Imagine the fun you could have with a building full of robots and normal people!
. . .should employees be allowed/encouraged to use their own robots to perform whatever "measpace gruntwork" that falls on their shoulders?
I wouldn't suggest using "meatspace" in general conversation - it's the sort of thing that gets you beaten up and stuffed into a locker.
#DeleteChrome
Why have robots to move paper around an office? Get rid of the paper.
I find this interesting because history shows that new machinery which helps cut (labor) costs almost always displaces human labor in the long run. But, even if it is only for a short term, I would love an office robot that could fetch me a new pot of coffee every hour, until it learns how to do my job.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
I think timothy has been into robots recently...second article on robots in a short bit.
Hell there is nothing wrong with robots however, they are awesome and they stories need not even be plausible as I love robots. From the article:
...it can fetch a beer from the fridge...
'Nuff said.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
So if the office girl/boy is going to be replaced by the office robot what is top management supposed to do when they need oral sex? I hope the robot builders are taking this into consideration. And how are all the cubies supposed to increase their feeling of superiority it they can not pickup the office girl/boy for a cheap fling?
Unemployment will skyrocket due to the lack of companies needing interns anymore.
So an office will be using hi-tech robots to transport... paper folders. Right.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
A real win would be a floor cleaning robot with some smarts. Enough smarts to vacuum carpets, wash and dry hard floors, work around obstacles, use reaching tools to get into corners and crevices, notice when it finds something it can't clean and report it, recover small lost objects, stay out of the way of humans, recharge itself, clean itself, and replenish its supplies.
This was covered by The Register 17th September 2010, with several follow-ups!.
Incidentally these stories also address the issue of consequences for programmers/manufacturers whose robots, through incompetence or malfeasance, cause harm to their owners. (Slashdot 16th Jan: Robots May Inspire Suits Against Programmers)
lets throw another 50,000 people out in the street, so that we can enrich the top 5% of the income bracket.
'let them go back to school'
on what? food stamps? and what do you suggest they study? how to say 'welcome to best buy'?
what really needs to be automated are CEOs and boards of directors.
just get a shredding machine, and feed $100 bills into it, about 100 per hour.
That will pretty much accomplish the same thing.
...to outsourcing contingency workers ...to office robots! Poor robots. We should give them a raise and a decent pension.
In the long run, labor is redistributed to jobs better performed by humans and qualify of life improves for pretty much everyone.
O good, maybe we can finally solve that labor shortage in this country...
Right now the robots can only move folders to the desks of other people.
Recent experiments have proven that this presents problems of its own when said people are working remotely. Many robots were lost on the highway.
But in version 2.0, you will just call the robot and the robot will scan the folder generating an "electronic image" of the paperwork and then transfer it to a similar robot "living" with the person working remotely. Kind of like an "electronic mail" system. Truly then we will live in the world of tomorrow.
We already have those--the superautomatic espresso machines, which grind, tamp, extract, and clean up on the spot. The one thing they don't do is make good coffee. Convenience trumps quality every time, and this is not making me hopeful of upcoming robotic baristas...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com] ... A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."
"The Richest Man in the World: A parable about structural unemployment and a basic income
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
From my comment here: http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-392
In brief, a combination of robotics and other automation, better design, and voluntary social networks are decreasing the value of most paid human labor (by the law of supply and demand). At the same time, demand for stuff and services is limited for a variety of reasons -- some classical, like a cyclical credit crunch or a concentration of wealth (aided by automation and intellectual monopolies) and some novel like people finally getting too much stuff as they move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or a growing environmental consciousness. In order to move past this, our society needs to emphasize a gift economy (like Wikipedia or Debian GNU/Linux or blogging), a basic income (social security for all regardless of age), democratic resource-based planning (with taxes, subsidies, investments, and regulation), and stronger local economies that can produce more of their own stuff (with organic gardens, solar panels, green homes, and 3D printers). There are some bad "make work" alternatives too that are best avoided, like endless war, endless schooling, endless bureaucracy, endless sickness, and endless prisons.
Simple attempts to prop things up, like requiring higher wages in the face of declining demand for human labor and more competition for jobs, will only accelerate the replacement process for jobs as higher wage requirements would just be more incentive to automate, redesign, and push more work to volunteer social networks. We are seeing the death spiral of current mainstream economics based primarily on a link between the right to consume and the need to have a job (even as there may remain some link for higher-than-typical consumption rates in some situations, even with a basic income, a gift economy, etc).
Essentially, mainstream economists are clueless and living in a conceptual bubble. And that is not just e saying it, other economists say that about their peers, like here:
"They Did Their Homework (800 Years of It)"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/economy/04econ.html
"But in the wake of the recent crisis, a few economists -- like Professors Reinhart and Rogoff, and other like-minded colleagues like Barry Eichengreen and Alan Taylor -- have been encouraging others in their field to look beyond hermetically sealed theoretical models and into the historical record. "There is so much inbredness in this profession," says Ms. Reinhart. "They all read the same sources. They all use the same data sets. They all talk to the same people. There is endless extrapolation on extrapolation on extrapolation, and for years that is what has been rewarded.""
For more info:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/robots-jobs-and-our-assumptions/#comment-402
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
welcome our new office assistant overlords.
- -
But going beyond that, the way mobile devices are trending, and with just a little more acceptance from society with regards to telecommuting, I don't see why many people would even need to go in to the office most days. Even face to face meetings could be done in some temporary venue, like a nice coffee shop.
Once businesses realize that they don't have to spend all that money just to rent office space so they can stuff their employees into cubicle farms, well then ...
Rather than designing robots to do very simple tasks that don't pay much, we really should design robots which do very specialized task much better than a human can.
I would be very interested in designing a robot that could cut diamonds. 4/5 of the cost of a diamond is reflected in the cut. If we can design robots which maneuver around obstacles, I would think it would be much easier to just program the physics of a cleave and use that to chop up rocks.
I'm surprised they picked the PR2 from Willow Garage and compared with the Anybot. Willow Garage also makes the Texai robot, which has almost identical capabilities as the Anybot, and fulfills the same kind of role. PR2 and HRP are not designed for offices, but are research robots which are loaned out to universities and other institutions. Neither is designed to be a commercial robot, while Texai and Anybot are commercial products.
Disclaimer: I work for Willow Garage
In the tradition of the highly successful paperless office.
business have been able to do that for a decade already, with decreasing costs as time has progressed. It's not a cost issue, it's a management issue, they simply don't trust that staff will work if the management aren't keeping a constant eye on the grunts.
Obviously this doesn't apply to all employers, but enough to have stopped its uptake.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
In my case, the paper is already mostly gone. Most documents that I work with are on the computer. Most of the info I read is now online. And I hardly ever print anything anymore - there's just no need for it. - -
But going beyond that, the way mobile devices are trending, and with just a little more acceptance from society with regards to telecommuting, I don't see why many people would even need to go in to the office most days. Even face to face meetings could be done in some temporary venue, like a nice coffee shop.
Once businesses realize that they don't have to spend all that money just to rent office space so they can stuff their employees into cubicle farms, well then ...
Let me guess, you work as a programmer or something?
Most low level office jobs require people working in the same place, with physicl access to paper documents. Most companies aren't going to be too thrilled to have their accounts team sitting at home performing online electronic transactions., or secretaries communicating only by email and phone with their bosses.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it