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Silicon Valley Library Tests Book-Returning Robot Created By Google (siliconvalley.com)
What if a robot came to your house to retrieve library books? An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup:
Residents in downtown Mountain View have gotten their first peek at the future with the debut of BookBot, the library's newest non-human helper. A creation of Google's Area 120 -- an experimental division of the technology juggernaut -- the bot is the company's first personal delivery robot to hit the streets and begin interacting with the public, said Christian Bersch, the project's team lead. It's part of a program to test the waters of what could be possible for autonomous, electric robots, he said...
The pilot will run for nine months with a human handler following behind the BookBot for the first six months, he said. That's just to make sure it's operating as planned, get it out of trouble as needed and observe how people are responding. After that, a human will sit behind the controls remotely. And, on a recent Thursday, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Children shrieked at the sight of the robot and immediately jumped in its path to see if it would stop. (It does...) Users must schedule the pickup time in advance, which -- because the bot is fairly popular -- means planning at least a week ahead. It can carry up to about 10 items, Bersch said, depending on the size of the books.
The pilot will run for nine months with a human handler following behind the BookBot for the first six months, he said. That's just to make sure it's operating as planned, get it out of trouble as needed and observe how people are responding. After that, a human will sit behind the controls remotely. And, on a recent Thursday, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Children shrieked at the sight of the robot and immediately jumped in its path to see if it would stop. (It does...) Users must schedule the pickup time in advance, which -- because the bot is fairly popular -- means planning at least a week ahead. It can carry up to about 10 items, Bersch said, depending on the size of the books.
Just when you think they hit peak silicon valley, this one goes to 11.
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In a digitally-transformed publishing world, we have AI-powered robots that handle returns of library books?
Look, I love books and libraries. But Google, I think you may be doing it wrong.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Maybe it's marginally useful in a senior citizen home providing services to the bedridden.
Otherwise I think it's just embarrassing.
They'll turn humanity into this.
I'm purely guessing, but cannot believe that ebooks are not wholesale replacing actual paper and pages.
Which makes Googles experiment either :
- a "we've got so much freaking cash let's have fun" experiment
- a wolf in sheep's clothing as this is either the future of pizza and Amazon delivery, just wrapped up in a neutral package, OR a means to swot your house if you're found in violation of the leftist norms polluting Google, and as speach is violence, this provides a means for the soft sjws to terminate with prejudice folks who tweet stuff like "boys are biologically different than girls."
Premise 1. Before the computer-robot-techno age, retrieving overdue books back to the free public lending library was a big deal, still is, to make sure all can enjoy the item. From that perspective, this is indeed a neat achievement, for the reasons stated, because people get lazy about the returns, so this makes it simple, in a hassle-free non-retaliatory way. But, the very technologies that make this possible have also changed the nature of libraries and public consumption of media, so there are novel better ways to use BookBot.
Premise 2. I love books. I have a huge library at home. I love libraries. I also love my desktop computer and ability to read large tracts of writing and other content from remote sources, on demand, and find things that otherwise would be unknown or inaccessible, with the supreme convenience of not having to drive to the library which isn't open anyway at 2 AM. What I have come to realize is that some books are better because they are books, codices that you can hold in your hand and flip the pages. But some books are valuable for their content only, and reading on a screen is more practical, and having a pdf or other digital version without wasting real space with a physical volume or magazine is preferable.
Here is how the book bot could work better. Sure, use it to collect overdue books, that is a worthy purpose. Even better, use it to deliver books to people who cannot get out of the house, a digital age bookmobile.
And third, allow users to place a book of their own on deposit with the library. When the book gets there, the library will scan it for you (because you might not have the time or resources to do so at home), and then send you the digital file in whatever format you prefer. With the user's permission or preference, (1) the user could leave the real book with the library, a donation to the public holdings, because it is no longer needed at home because you now have the digital format, and (2) make the digital version publicly accessible.
We have huge online libraries such as archives.org, HathiTrust, university libraries, Library of Congress, and many others. But, they are either pay-walled, or restricted to tuition paying registrants, or they are free but simply do not have what you are looking for, or it could be years before they get around to digitizing the thing you want. Allowing BookBot to pick up a book you no longer need or would prefer the e-book would make life easier for the user and contribute to the public, all in a friendly neighborly way. Modern digital technologies have forced libraries to rapidly reassess their purpose and retool for new ways of doing things. BookBot could serve its original purpose of solving the age old problem of book returns, or its role can be expanded for new tasks, born of the digital age, that extend the reach of the library and the knowledge therein.
Who will win?
It will work mostly ok for the 6 months where there is a human supervisor, and as soon as it's fully autonomous it will disappear within a week, to be found smashed up in an alleyway somewhere.
Google obviously doesn't know how people use the library. You go to the library, check out books, then when you're done reading those books, you go back to the library, return the old books and get a new batch. Google - it's a freaking ENDLESS LOOP. There is ZERO need to pickup the books unless you can actually deliver new books at the same time. Geesh, the tech world has been taken over by the brainless fucktards.
It takes a weeks notice for it to show up, and then it can take up to 10 of your library items....