TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Gets Domestic . . . Robots

is called tech Stuff Gets Domestic Robots. Lauren Voge Obama and I sat down to talk about domestic robots and where we're going with them. This is another one of those episodes that probably merits a follow up, but I thought i'd be fun to listen to the original one.

I'm back in two thousand thirteen, so enjoy. This is a topic that a listener of ours wanted to hear more about, so we thought, Hey, we haven't really come a domestic robots, so yeah, let's let's do that crazy thing you Yeah, and when people think of domestic robots, I think that the image that immediately pops into most people's minds is Rosie, the robot from the Jetsons. Yeah, the documentary series. The documentary series from the sixties of

what the future will be like. This was this was created in three set in two by the way, if you didn't know that, So we've we've got some cracking to get on. Yeah, I think it's okay because their vision of the future did not incorporate some pretty amazing technologies that we have at our disposal right now. That's fair, that's fair. But they did have this giant robotic human, life size humanoid made that could you know, sit around and drink milkshakes with you and have a conversation and

and raise your kids for your kids for you. You're too busy space parents, right, So yeah, anyway, Rosie the robot kind of kind of was this idea of like the robot made or the robot butler that could take care of all the menial chores that most of us do not like to do. Like it, it just seems like it's one of those things that takes up valuable time that you could spend fragging people on halo floor doing literally anything else other than washing dishes again, dishes,

folding laundry, cleaning windows. These are these these chores that that take up time that uh, you know, we just wish someone else would take care of that every now and then, and sometimes we hire people for that, which is in fact probably enormously cheaper and easier than building a robot to do it, because a lot of these things are actually really hard to do. But we'll talk about that later. Yeah, So let's start off by talking

about where the word robot comes from. And I'm sure a lot of you out there already know this story, but there was a check writer, as in someone who was from Czechoslovakia. His name or the Czech Republic at the time, but now the Czech Republic, uh, Carol Kpek, who wrote a play called Are You Are? And Are

You Are stands for Rossom's Universal Robots and this was one. Yeah, and the word robot comes from the check word robota, which means forced labor or servitude, and that word, in fact comes from another word rob r a b That word means slave. So uh. Now, in the original form that did not necessarily mean an artificial life form of any type. It could a robot could be a person.

It could be someone who has been forced to conform to a very specific set of behaviors and to perform those behaviors for the benefit of some larger entity, and this was sure sharing. This was kind of the crux

of the play. It was exploring whether or not it was okay for machines to be used the way that we use people and yeah so so eventually the term robot became more about a device, a mechanism that can perform functions in an automated way, and perhaps even in an autonomous way auto as an automated being two different things.

Autonomous means that it can do it under its own direction, doesn't need someone there to press a button for it to to be able to do whatever it does, right, which is why we don't call, for example, our dishwashers, or our toaster ovens, or our washing machines robots, even though technically they are robotic. Yeah they have, they have features that are common to robots, though they themselves are

not a robot. Kind of like how I have features that are similar to a human being and yet defy explanation. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that one right there, all right, that's fair. So before we get into the whole domestic robot history and the sort of things that have developed over the years in the field of domestic robots and where we are today and where we expect to go. I thought it'd be interesting to talk a little bit about a survey that was conducted a few years ago

by a company called Persuadable Research. This was the last one that I saw. Was from two thousand twelves. Yeah, that was the most in one that This survey was to ask people, Hey, if you had the opportunity to purchase a robotic device that would perform your chores for you, would that be of interest to you? And sixty percent of the people surveyed said, why, yes, it would. I would love to have a robot that could do things

like clean windows or do laundry. Also, I would like a robot that could move heavy stuff from one place to another so that I don't have to do it, or provide better home security, personal assistant duties. I think we're high on the health monitoring was up there too, Yeah,

and and a lot of them. I thought that this sort of robot would be a very useful device, and and in most cases, I think they were thinking of a single robot capable of doing multiple things, not not not a whole bunch of different robots that are specialized, but more of a general purpose robot. Now that that was interesting enough, but also there were asking more questions like what form would you want this robot to be in? And it seemed like most people wanted to have a

humanoid robot. So we're talking about robots that have arms and legs and a head, you know, things that we would generally associate with the human form. And they also did not want their robots to necessarily have a gender, so the voice needed to be neither male nor female. Right, So kind of that that stereo root, yes, the one that the one that we all have. We all have

a robot. I think we all have a robot voice, and we all have an Internet comments voice, Like we have a voice that we use when we describe Internet comments. People like you guys are awful, you are your show was bad and you should feel bad. That's my Internet voice. That's not that's not a very kind Internet voice, Jonathan. I'm not saying that everyone on the Internet leaves comments sounds like that. I'm saying the people who leave those

kind of comments sound like that. That's entirely if they can insult me and I can insult them, you can, Yes, right, I have a I have a medium eye for an eye. It's a harsh podcast landscape guys is like Donkey Kong. But no, that that that they want. That's my internet voice. But my robot voice is you know, of course, like how can I help you? That's sort of that's that's I actually do not possess a robot voice. I don't

think what I'm sorry, I'll work on one. Okay, next time, next time, we must get vogel bound a robot voice that really do voices. This is about it. Okay, well we'll we'll break you of that habit sooner or later. So yeah. And also that the people of responded said they would be willing to pay fifteen dollars or more for a comprehensive robotic assistant. That's a lot of money. Oh well, I mean when you when you think about it, that's you know, that's that's the mid range for a

decent car. Right, Yeah, you're talking about it, and you're talking about something that's that's running around your house doing everything you do. But if it's a robot this folding laundry, you're like, how my is is the fact that I don't have to fold laundry? Worth fifteen grand. I guess it all depends on how much you hate laundry. Most people said that they were their their limit was like anything that was a thousand dollars or more was kind

of outside the range. I think that's interesting because there are robots on the market right now, domestic robots that have very specific uses, like they don't do things outside of whatever it is they were meant for, that are more expensive than that. But there there are pool robots and we'll talk about those in a bit that are

fifteen hundred dollars. So this is so this is perhaps unrealistic of people to expect that sort of price point, And as you were mentioning before, it would end up being cheaper to hire someone to come and do this work for you, at least over a certain period of time. Maybe you could eventually find like how many years would it take for a robot to make financial sense compared to hiring a human being. Somebody go do that math

for us. I do not feel like doing it at all. Well, Also, we don't have all the variables right, which is because you would need to know what is the what's the average life span for domestic robot? So without that knowledge. We can't really say, like, well, if you if you build in maintenance costs and repair costs, then that adds to it. Right, You don't necessarily have to repair someone who comes in and cleans your stuff. You just hire

someone else because you know you're a heartless person. I mean, I'm just talking about me here, right my perspective. I'm like, wow, it's really sad that that, my my, the people I hired to come in and clean my windows broke their legs. Thank goodness, there's this other cleaning service I can hire instead. I can just leave those first guys right there on the sidewalk and just keep going. This is turning into a really terrible Well you should see the piles of

people outside my home. You think this is bad? You should really take a look at them. But anyway, so, and the takeaway that I got from this Persuadable Research Corporation survey was that what people want from their domestic robo is that they want them to be really cute humanoid mobile PCs about in the price range, because a thousand dollars is about what you would pay for for for a really good PC, for for a decent PC.

And um Bill Gates actually in two thousand six wrote an essay called a Robot in Every Home that was basically saying the same thing he said. If I can quote, he said, we may be on the verge of a new era when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see here, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present. And this was kind of his vision for the future that that we would have. If you guys have seen Far Escape, sort of like the d r D s more so

than Rosie the Rosie the Robot. Yeah, I don't know what a d r D and d r D was. It stands for Diagnostic Repair Drones. And these were these kind of little little bug shaped, little trialobite looking critters that would run around Far Escape and do minor repair work and play the Symphony of eighteen twelve and etcetera, etcetera as you need them to. Okay, I can see the pressing need for the twelve overture when I'm when I'm talking to them up it. Look, it depends on

how crazy you get while you're lost in space. Okay, lost in space now I can talk about that show, but that had a different robot. Anyway, I'm getting off track. So it's interesting that you say that this whole trilobyte idea, because in fact, the very first domestic robot that I could come up that I came across my research as far as on the consumer level goes. So the first robot that the average person could go out and buy

for their home was a very specific use robot. It was the electro Lux Trilobyte, and it was a robot that looked kind of like a trilobyte, and it was a vacuum robot. And you've probably seen different vacuum robots. We will talk about a very famous one in a little bit, but the electro Lux Trilobyte was the first robotic vacuum cleaner and it hit the market in two

thousand one. And the original model used ultrasonic sensors to navigate through an environment, So essentially it's shooting out ultrasonic sounds. So this is these are signals that we cannot detect their outside the range of human hearing, and the signal would emit from the robot and if it, if it encountered anything, it would bounce back like a vacuum bat. Yeah, it was a vacuum bat. It was kind of like what Batman would be if he were a domestic cleaning

person as opposed to a crime fighter. He would dress up as a bat and clean the robot. What it would do is it would send out the signal. It would the single would reflect back, and that's how we would know how far away it was from some other object. So when you have it set down to clean your living room and you've got all this furniture there, as it would approach the furniture, the signal would go out

bounce back. The robot would know, all right, I have to stop in three inches or I'm going to run into something like couch or whatever. And so the earliest model had these ultrasonic sensors and that was pretty much it. You could you could lay down these magnetic strips along the borders of your room so that it would not go to across, which is important if, for instance, you happen to have a staircase and you don't want your extremely expensive Trilobyte robot to go take a tumble down

the stairs. Yes, I imagine that those first ones were not at all inexpensive. I'm sure they were quite expensive. Yes, and uh, I think that it's still fairly expensive to get most of these sort of robots because as the years go on, the technology gets more sophisticated, so each

model that comes out has more features. Uh. The second round of the electro Lux trilobyte also included infrared sensors, so it made it a little easier for the robot to sense its environment because one of the problems with the ultrasonic ones was that if it came across, uh, something that was like a really sharp curve or whatever, the ultra the ultrasonic responses wouldn't be accurate enough for it.

So that was the first one, and it also had a base unit that it could automatically find, again using ultrasonic sensors. The base unit, you know, it sends a signal. Base unit picks it up, it sends a signal. The robot hones in on that signal so that it can plug back in charge exactly. So I've seen uses of

this in toys as well. So for example, there was uh Lego has a series of robots that you can build yourself robot kits, right, and the robot kits come with a programmable base and the programmable base is actually really cool and lets you plug and play robot commands into your robots. So essentially it's like it's like if then commands, if this robot encounters this situation, then the

robot should behave this way. And one of the things you can do is you can buy different types of sensors to be on your lego robot, and one of them is the ultrasonic sensor, which allows a robot to really zero in on objects. And here and how stuff works. For our big holiday party of we had some of we had someone come in with these robots and show them off, and one of the robots had just simple infrared sensors that would allow it to detect when it was coming close to the edge of the player right

and it would turn around and come back in. The other robot had the infrared sensors and the ultrasonic which allowed it to zero in on the its opponent, so we could go right after the other robot. Uh. Clearly, in the domestic situation here we're talking more about the robot just avoiding damage, also avoid damaging other stuff in the environment like your furniture. UM, I think this is a good time to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, and now back to the show. Are getting

back into domestic robots. There's a company that you pretty much have to talk about called I Robot, which is kind of funny. I Robot makes me think of something else. Yes, yes, yeah, we didn't even mention Isaac asthmov well earlier I think this is a perfect opportunity before we dive into the company. Yeah, science fiction writer working in Oh, you might be better at this and I am in the sixties, is that correct? And earlier? Yes, and earlier, but um, I've wrote wrote

the three Laws of robotics. Yeah, these were the laws that that in within the Asimov stories guided the robots behavior so that they would try and follow ethical programming. Uh. The idea being that the basic three rules, I don't have them written in front of me, so I apologize for the fact that I'm going to get these out of order and that I'm paraphrasing. But that the robot could not do anything to harm itself unless it would mean that it would allow others to come to harm. So,

in other words, first, robot couldn't harm itself. A robot could not harm other people. Uh, And there was another one. I think it's property that robots can't hurt. But anyway, the most important rule of all of them was that a robot could not allow could not hurt a person or allow a person to be hurt to come to damage yes through inaction. Uh. And that overruled all other

robotic rules. So if it meant that the robot would end up being damaged in the process of preventing a living thing from being hurt, the robot would go ahead and override that rule and allow itself to be damaged

so that could save the person. Uh. Most of Asimov's stories involving robots had had stuff to do with unintended consequences of these what what appeared to be ironclad rules, right, because when you give a logical set to a very sophisticate in computer, it may or may not find ways around, right. And and it's not necessarily that the computer is trying to behave in a a malevolent way. For example, here's

another example. This is one of those things about the robot apocalypse that you always, you know, hear science fiction writers talk about, and some futurists as well. Uh. Let's say that you a super intelligent computer robot, and you tell the robot, uh, I want you to make humankind. Uh, I want I want you to bring about world peace. You know, you're you are smarter than we are, bring

about world peace. It's possible that the robot could come to the conclusion that the reason why there's not world peace is because there are people, all of those pesky humans running around causing wars. So if we just end of all kill all humans and then you've got peace. So yeah, that's that's that's that's the classic example. But so you don't have to worry about your domestic vacuum robot doing that. Probably not. I've I've known I've known an I Robot roomba, and it did not seem malevolent,

very very malevolent to me. My dog was not too shared. The dog might have a completely different opinion about the intentions of the I Robot roomba. All right, well to talk about I robot before we we talked about the roomba. What's interesting to me is that it's a company that was formed in nineteen by three m I T associate uh. Those three m I T Associates where Rod Brooks, Colin Angle and Helen Grinder and they wanted to bring robots

out of the realm of academ and industry. Those were the two places where you would find a robot pretty much before ninety nine, with some exceptions. There were some toys that were had. I had a very annoying robot toy when I was a young child, all of all of the noises. My my aunt, who didn't have kids yet, got it for me. Of course, that's always the relative

who does that. Yeah, So there were toys, and like hobbyists had some access to some robotics, and a lot of people were doing d I y stuff, but much like the field of early computers, most people were just kind of going like, what is this thing good for? Yeah? Yeah, so what can we do with it? Consumers didn't have

an option as of yet. This is way back in purchase. First, they well, first their company was called I S Robotics, but they would change that further down the line, and they originally built their business plan on the idea of space exploration robots. So their first designs were for NASA and UH. They created some robots that were meant for things like lunar exploration and UH spaceship robot type creations and planetary exploration robots, and these designs allowed them to

get some contracts with the government. And the whole point of them making these designs, besides the fact that this was like they were genuinely interested in, was that it would allow them to gain the capital they would need to invest in a consumer robot, because that's not a

small undertaking. Remember this is a decade before we see the first consumer robot on shelves, So it's as Lauren was saying before, it's not the most efficient or economically feasible way for you to take care of minor chores around the house. It could be a very expensive thing. So they need to raise some capital first before they could start getting into consumer robots. You know, they couldn't just hit the ground running doing that. So first they

started working on robots for space exploration missions. They developed a robot called the I Robot five tin PackBot, and this was a search and rescue and bomb disposal robots. I was used by the military, and they still do a bunch of military work I believe they do. So, yeah, you've got to hope that your room bud does not get mixed up with the PackBot five ten. Yes, fingers crossed to be fair. Of the five tin pac bots not it's not a military robot in the sense of

one it's weaponized. It's at most of these are in fact going on reconmissions or to defuse bombs where so that you know, or or possibly to uh, like I said, search and rescue. So for first responders, they might send a robot if there's a building, for example, that's been the target of a bomb, then sending a robot in to look for survivors, UH could mean saving the lives of first responders. You know. It's it's one of those things where you think, well, this is a really expensive robot,

but compared to a human life, it is negligible. So UH, I Robot began to make those as well, and again this helped I Robot gain the capital they needed to go into the consumer market. And one of the other big projects they did before they got into consumer robots was called Auto Cleaner. An auto cleaner was meant for S. C.

Johnson wax and as an industrial cleaning robot. UH. And this this is kind of the project that inspired a couple of the engineers once the project was winding down, to look into a way of building a consumer model of and that was what would eventually become the Room And it was when they first started working on it, and the Rombo would not hit store shelves until September

two two so um. By then, the electro Lux Trilloby had been on the market for almost a year, and then they launched the I Robot, which don't totally different. Company obviously launched the roomba, which has I think become almost like the best synonymous basically, yeah exactly, or Xerox

it's it's or Jello fridge. Yeah. Yeah, It's just one of those things where the term has almost just substituted the idea of vacuum robot roomba shorthand as as of two thousand eleven, over six million of the buggers have been sold. So so um, there's a whole bunch of jokes that are coming to mind, and I'm going to leave them all alone. Excellent, but you're all welcome. I Robot does make several other kinds of things, Yes, they do. They make They make a robot scuba, which is a mop. Yes,

scuba actually has an interesting approach. Well, it's good to compare it to the roomba. So the rumba uses essentially three different kinds of brushes. There's one brush that just sort of helps sweep particles with in the path into the path of the roomba. But then it has these two brushes that are used to pick up the larger

types of debris. And uh so these two brushes spin in a way where they're one is clockwise, the other's counterclockwise, and they use that motion to I'm gesticulating, and that's not helping. Yeah, they're using this this opposite rotating motion to flick stuff up into the bin that the that is inside the roomba, the the refuse bin if you prefer trash bin um. And then it also has a vacuum that uses suction to suck up the finer particles,

finer being smaller, not of higher quality. And then the scuba its method is it uses it has a vacuum as well to suck up loose particles, and then it sprays the floor with a combination of water and cleaning solution, then uses a rotating brush to scrub the floor. Then it sucks up the dirty water into a wastebind that is separate from the water and cleaning solution bend. So there's two different containers inside the scuba for this stuff, so that way you don't mix the two. Clearly you

want dirty water to go back into there. And then uh, it uses a technology called I adapt to monitor and respond to its environment. So the rumba and the scuba both have to be able to maneuver through an environment and uh and cover an entire floor, because I mean, it wouldn't do you any good if the room bad just kind of wandered aimlessly and then went to its charging station. You go in and like, well, this one

meaningless path is clean, but everything else is filthy. So it has to be able to make its way across around in a in a space that was not necessarily intended for a robot to move around, right, because yeah, well humans can instinctively look at a coffee table and go, I shouldn't walk directly into that. Yeah, robots don't necessarily seraily know that off the top. They have to actually be programmed to not do that that. We'll get into more of that in a second too. But yeah, those

are the two big ones, roomba and scuba. Yeah, yeah, they I think it's CS or it might have been. And they also introduced the I Robot Luge, which is a gutter cleaner. Yeah. I've seen examples of the luge for a couple of years, but it's it's essentially this thing that you put in your gutter and it just kind of goes, it goes, it goes down like a bullet and then just starts scoop it out gunk. So do not stand near your gutter while the while that sucker is going to stand in your gutter that's near

your gutter like or under Yeah. Gross. Remember though, if your head's in the gutter, your eyes are looking at the stars, just a paraphrase of that is deep. Oh that's pretty you know, I can get pretty deep in the gutter anyway. So there are other types of domestic robots as well. I mean, these these were probably the best known because they are it's a huge brand and they've been around for a few years. But there's a robotic lawnmowers. I think we're I think I have Robot

actually does one of those as well. Yeah, so they might I know that. I know there are quite a few brands that do have robotic lawnmowers, and so these are again using that same tech. Those same technologies are using collision detection to make sure that they don't bang

into anything. Uh. Most of them have a little kill switches inside them, so they if they're tilted or turned over, the blade stops spinning immediately, so that way you don't endanger anyone like a little kid wondering what this thing is, I'll put my hand on it. Yeah, that's that can

be dangerous. And they also can you know, you can define the parameters of your yard so that the lawnmower works within those parameters and doesn't you know just suddenly like well, all done here, let's do the neighbor's yard, and then the next one, next one. So there there are examples of that. They it works very similar technologies as the vacuum robots. Another similar robots, window cleaning robots

that use suction to attach themselves to a window. And then again with the cleaning solution and the interesting water. I haven't seen any of these. They sound terrifying. There was one unbuild at CSEN called the back windbot. I wish I had seen that now, and uh it's yeah, yeah, it's supposed to debut later this year for under four dollars supposedly, and yeah, reusable pads to wash and dry. It has a little squeegee in there, so I guess you set it on the window and then it goes Yeah,

that's that's the thing. This is another example of why people are a little disappointed, not that they should be, but they're disappointed in domestic robots because it's not a robot that just comes out of a closet and then takes a look around says, oh, these are the four

things that need to be done in this room. I need to to sweep and mop the floors, and need to clean the windows, need to fold the laundry, and I need to pick the kid off the TV because he's been on it too long, which is what you know, Rosie the robot could do. It's John again. The robots still beeping, So we're going to take another break while I try and figure out how to turn this thing off. Yeah, I've got one called the dress Man. Dress Man. Dress Man looks like a kind of a mannequin torso, but

it essentially uses uh in. The robot itself inflates and uses hot air to dry and press shirts. It's a robotic iron that's that's terrific. Yeah, I could use one. I definitely tend to wear wrinkled stuff. Yeah, I think I iron approximately never, so that's yeah. There's also robots in pet care, robotical litter boxes that self scoop away, that's a valuable service, refilling food and water trays. There

are robot pool cleaners, which we talked about it. You know, I mentioned that there was um and and you know that these are all different levels of sophistication. Not all of them need all the sensors that other ones need because the job they do doesn't require it. So, uh, not every single robot is going to be decked out with sensors. However, the future robots might might be decked

out with sensors. We've got a lot of development in the robots space, people who want to create general purpose robots that can tackle different tasks so that you don't have, you know, eight different robots to do all of your chores. You've got one robot that can do all of them, right. Willow Garage is one company that has been making a lot of waves. Yeah, they've got a robot called the PR two, which stands for Personal Robot to the number

two and it's essentially a research and development platform. It's not necessarily meant to be a robot that a consumer will go out. And first of all, it's like around four dollars tag prohibitively expensive for most of us, including myself. Um And but what what this is meant to do is it's meant to allow people to build apps, robot apps that would increase the functionality of the robot. So you might create an app that's a laundry folding app

or an app that's a fry an egg app. And the robot is humanoid in the sense that has arms, it's got like sensors that are in a head length thing. Yeah, it looks like a torso with arms and uh wheels. It doesn't have legs. It's gonna it's gonna a wheeled base, and it's a it's a little from what I saw. I didn't see like an actual scale like next to a human being. But to me, it like they came up a little higher than your waist maybe mid chest

area is what it looked like. It could be that they're much taller than that, but that's not what it seemed to be when I was looking at the videos. Um, all of the robot videos that I've watched in the past twenty four hours are running into my head, so I've got no to You're watching a lot of like robots that had nothing to do with this. It's just just robots, just rot It's transformers, Michael Bay kick stuff blew up. Anyway, much much better robot videos than those

come on. Nice, well done, you shall live. So the PR two robot is really meant for developers to create software for this role. Right, it's all open platform, open source developing UM is highly encouraged, and it's mostly trying to get people excited about it. Also, Willo Garage is doing the turtle Butt, which works together with I Robot makes something called to Create, which is a roomba base that has a loading dock for whatever other stuff you want to kind of shove in there. And it's for

home developers. UM you can you can hook it up with a connect with a netbook anything else you want, and teach it how to do your own stuff. Neat. Yeah, things that allow hackers more tools to play with stuff is always cool. And the PR two has some pretty hefty hardware on it. It's got two computers on it that have eight core processors um each each computer has an eight core processor, twenty four gigs of RAM, and

two terabytes of disk space. And according to that, to to what I was to one of the articles I was reading, all of that heavy duty hardware gives the pr tow the capability of folding a towel in just six minutes, which is down from twenty four minutes, which just means it's not the most efficient towel folding device ever. Well, to sure, but towels are towels are tricksy? No, yes, tells the other boy. Towels are so much trickier than say,

t shirts. Well, I mean, you know, if if you're if you're looking at it as a as a human, then no, towels are pretty simple. But if you're looking at it as a robot, it tells are are floppy? They move around, they don't they don't say. And here's here's the rub. This is the problem is that teaching a robot to do something that's simple for a human is incredibly complex. Yeah. I mean, if if you teach

a robot, how do you play chess? For example? A chess is one of those if then statement end of things. Only so many potential things you can do within a chess game. There are a lot of them, but there is a limit. There's an upward limit of the things you are capable of doing within the context of a

chess game. If you ask a robot, however, to go to the kitchen, pick up a mug of tea and bring it back into the podcast room, that's I mean, that's that's incredibly complicated, Yeah, because you never know what could be in the way. I mean, if the environment is constantly the same and the parameters for that task are always identical, that's one thing. But when you're in an environment that's dynamic, that can change over time. Maybe there's a chair that's in the way that normally wouldn't be.

Maybe the mugs are all pretty, or maybe there's only only clean mugs are in the dishwasher, as if people use that thing, Come on, how stuff works, people, Or or maybe maybe some mugs are more delicate than others and it crushes the mug to a fine powder instead of picking it up, and then pours the tea on it and brings you a what pile a mug powder which is not delicious. No, it's i recommend you do not drink ceramic powder. That would probably not go overwhelming.

But yeah, I mean that's the thing is that teaching a robot to deal with these kind of changing environments is really challenging, and there are a lot of companies that are working on this with various types of artificial intelligence to deal with this. I mean, you think about it this way. If I walk into a room that I have never been in before, but I have all of my normal senses, if the lights are on, if lights are on and I'm able to see, I've got

my glasses on because I am here sided. Let's say I walk into this room and I take a look around the room. I can get around that room fairly effectively, assuming there aren't like laser death traps or something in it, just a typical room, like there's there's some chairs and some other furniture around. As long as I haven't built the room right, I can get from point A to point B without killing myself or bumping into something or you know, otherwise making an idiot of myself more so

than I normally do. A robot goes into that room, if it's never been there before, it has to have a lot of sophisticated equipment to be able to map out that room and then maneuver through that map, and it also needs to be able to map dynamically to be able to update this map in real time and act processing power, a lot of processing power, and it requires fairly sensitive and sophisticated sensors. So we take it

for granted because it's our natural way of life. You know, we walk into a room and that's just the way things are. But for a robot, there is no natural way of life. We have to program all of that into the robot, and that is really really tricky, and it gets even more tricky when you start talking about things like can the robot navigate stairs? There are some robots that can. Honda's Asimo can go up and downstairs, but it needs to be the stairs have to be

programmed in Asimo. At least in the last I read, as Amo could not navigate us upstairs that it had not encountered before. It could get through a room Manhattan encountered before, because it's sensors were sophisticate enough so that if you said, all right, as Amo, I need you to pick up the red ball that's in this room. As Amo could navigate through a room even if I've never seen it before and get to the object. And this is if you haven't seen one of these critters.

It is. It is bipedal. It looks more or less like a like a person. I think it's about four ft two, so it's a small as Hueman's his Lauren's eize, thanks welcome. Hey, I'm five too. I'm gigantic compared to that. You could take him, totally take it, I keep saying him. But as Amo doesn't technically have a gender. It is genderless. It is is a robot that's like a little spaceman. Though does it kind of honestly, it creeps me out. I'm kind of sort of not okay with humanoid robots.

I mean, have you seen it run? I has this little hopping run because Asthma that was that was one of the things that was famous about Asthma was that was the first robot of that size to be able to run. And by definition, running is a is a method of conveyance where at some point both your feet are off the ground, and most robots had to have at least one foot in contact with the ground at

all times. In order to support over and uh, and it does mean that you have to program very sophisticated sensors in the robot to be able to have both feet come off the ground and when when a foot makes contact with the ground again, the robot has to be very carefully balanced so they can react in the right way so it remains upright and as Amo. They achieved that with Asimo, so when it runs, it it's really this little hoppy run that looks of comical when

you when you first see it. Um. But Asimo also had a lot more sophistication than uh than previous versions of robots did. And um I wrote a whole article about Asimo, and I got a chance to see Asimo in person, actually anyone could because Asimo was at Disneylands in oventions and uh it was it was interesting to see. Now again, Asimo is kind of like an example of what a domestic robot might one day look like. But it really illustrates how challenging it is to build a

robot that is bipedal and humanoid. It just doesn't it's not it's not the easiest design, all right, It doesn't necessarily make development sense. It's easier in the long run to to build these kind of small things the room by the window washer, etcetera, etcetera. If we're going to, I mean because we can either we can either build robots to interact with our environment, or we can build

our environment to interact more easily with robots. And that would involve, you know, having an extra entire space in our kitchen so that a robot can can access all of our food and cook for us, rather than you know, set it loosen there and just kind of see what it does. Yeah, yeah, it's it's There are a lot of challenges, and grant they're very smart people working on these challenges to try and and overcome them. There are

other challenges as well. There are emotional challenges, because the more humanoid you make a robot, the more likely you are to develop some sort of emotional attachment. There are people who find their room bas to be perfectly charming. There are people who have named their room bas. Apparently most people that name their room bas. Yeah, so it ends up becoming almost like a pet. Even though this is this is an object that has no sentience, there's

no emotion in this object whatsoever. But they seem because they are animated and this we move around and and go through an environment. They seem I used to talk to mine all the time, and you know it to be fair a long and you just talk to yourself all the time, so entirely fair, Yeah that was I mean, yeah, so of course you talked to it all the time. However, if it had looked I mean, you know, the way the way that I reacted to the videos I was watching of of the ASMAO, I'm kind of creeped out

by it. I'm not really okay with humanoid robot, which brings to the concept of the uncanny valley right where you start to The closer you approach the appearance of a human the more likely you are to make it an unsettling experience for someone to look at. Right. Um, now, if you were to ever get to a point where the robot is indistinguishable from a human being, you would bridge theoretically, you would bridge the uncanny valley and it

would no longer be an issue. But the problem is when you get really close but not exactly there, so that there's something that's off and it just really it unsettles you in a very Freudian itch in between your shoulder blades kind of way. It's it's it gives you the willies in the in the Americans sense the word please, Brits still right to me. I'm not being rude. We're

not trying to be anyway now I am ha ha. Anyway, Yeah, you get to these robots that look kind of human, but they're not quite right, and that definitely gives a comment on settling feeling. The example, I always hear that this isn't robots, this is computer generated uh imagery? Is the film Polar Express? Oh yeah, when the when the trailers came out for the Polar Express movie did the animated models looked very lifelike, but the eyes were not quite right and kind of gave the sort of deadlights

kind of thing that you get a little creepy. Now, as as we get better and better at that, there may be a time where we do bridge that gap. We get that that David from Prometheus kind of thing where all robots look like Michael fast during. That's pretty much okay. I was thinking back to AI personally, but because I want my robots like Jude Law. That's entirely fair. We're allowed to disagree on Okay, all right, I'm glad. I'm glad we've reached that that accord. Excellent. We've we've

kind of covered the whole topic here. The future of domestic robots. I think more likely likely than not, we're going to see more specification type robots, you know, robots made for specific use. Um, it will still be quite a while before we get robots that can be general

purpose domestic robots, especially the humanoid ones. I think that's easily more than a decade away, just because the the stuff that we could do now is incredible, but it requires so much computing horsepower and such a huge support system around it, it's not feasible for them. Yeah, the hardware is kind of getting their hardware is cheap enough these days that that I think that that part is on the feasible end. But it's really the software that we do not have the capa see yet, you know,

to run the programs necessary. Yeah. So I mean, if you if you had a supercomputer in your home that could run the robot for you, so the robot would not have to carry around its own superhuman robot brain, that might help. But I don't know a lot of people who have supercomputers. You know, just stored away and there their gaming room or whatever. Not not too many of us, Nope, I definitely do not number among them.

But anyway, that's kind of the low down on domestic robots as they stand now and how they may be in the future. I would love to see robots that come out that have this sort of adaptability, like the kind of stuff that Willow Garage is walking working on. Where You've got these robots that you know, depending upon what apps you download, they can do different stuff. And that wraps up another classic episode of tech stuff. Hope

you guys enjoyed it. Uh. It's one of those topics that I think is fascinating because the more I learned about the what goes into designing these robots, the more I appreciate how complicated is. Because you're not just designing the systems. You're not just engineering the robotics so that the thing does the thing you need it to do.

You also have to start taking human psychology into account, and once you start looking at how humans interact with robots, things change in ways you probably didn't expect when you were just trying to work out the kinks of the mechanical aspect. I find that fascinating. So this is a topic I'm sure I will return to in the future. If you guys have suggestions for future topics I should cover, email me. The address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook

or Twitter. The handle it both of those is text stuff HSW. You can go to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. There's an archive there of every episode that's ever published. It's searchable. Go check that out. And there's also a link to our online store where every purchase you make goes to out the show. And we greatly appreciate it, and I will talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I

Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.