TechStuff Does the Robot

from Android Authority. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And you know what, I enjoy your your lonesome man routines, so I'm just glad that I can contribute. It's it's great. Uh. I have gotten very good at doing that tennis ball thing from stillag seven team. That's a film reference. All you youngsters out there, go check that out. But it's nice to have someone else to chat tech with and just some

background guys. Adam reached out to me heading into ce S. Originally we had hoped to record a podcast at c e S itself. That didn't quite work out, but for Cess nuts, you've heard me talk about it, And so how many ce s s have you been to? Was this your first one or had you been before? This was my second one, but there were three years apart.

So my first one was in two thousand sixteen, and then I was supposed to go in two thousand seventeen, got canceled last minute, two thousand eighteen I just couldn't swing it, and two thousand nineteen, blamo, here we go. So you've been twice, I've been. I've been ten times. And that's not the summi bragging. There are journalists who have been covering ce s for longer than I've been alive, so not. But you know, is is a chaotic busy.

You know, you're constantly running from one point to another experience. Nothing is close to anything else. So many ubers, so many and and you think you look at a map of the Las Vegas Strip and you think it can't possibly take very long to get from there to there? Oh boy, can it take a long time to get even just a few casinos away? You might you can probably walk into about the same time, but you're going

to be exhausted when you get there. My favorite story to tell regarding the distances between places in Las Vegas. Was this year. I was at the Flamingo Hotel attending a robotics conference which we will undoubitedly talk about shortly, and from there I had to go to Pepcom, which was in the Mirage Hotel. Now, if you look at a map of Las Vegas, there's only it's only about

a ten minute walk from the Flamingo over to the Mirage. However, once you hit the front door of the Mirage, you have to walk another literally ten minutes from the front door of the Mirage to the ballroom in the Mirage where Pepcom is actually being held. You just you hate yourself by the time you get there. Yeah. Part of this is because of the design of casinos, right. The whole idea is to try and entice people into gamble

and to spend more money. So there's no easy direct path for a lot of these these sort of journeys you go through. You have to go through an entire casino floor and there's usually like that means diverting around

some centralized area. Usually it's the high rollers suite or whatever in the middle, or it's a restaurant or something it's it's just it's not They don't make it easy to get around, and so we didn't get a chance to meet up during C E S. But you were covering robotics at c E S. It's a subject near and dear to my heart, which still remains human. Don't worry, but I thought we would talk. Yeah, it's well, you know, I gotta take that that test every now and then.

But we're going to We're going to talk about consumer robots because I've covered robotics quite a bit on tech stuff, and I've talked about robotics from prototyping and military robots that did the episodes about Boston Dynamics and how many years they spent just trying to get a robot to hop in a circle properly. We're going to talk about the consumer side of things and what you saw at CES because you were right there in the thick of it, whereas I was. I was in an ivory tower next

to a Claude bathtub next to my bed. For reasons I still don't quite grasp it's it. It's you know what. It gives me a wonderful mental picture, though, so I really appreciate that. So it didn't take a photo of me in the tub, but I was fully clothed and there was in the water in there. It's just just I was like, I've got to I've got to experience this, right, Oh, totally, totally. So yeah, just a little background. You know, I work for Android Authority and we're all things, you know, smartphones

and tablets and whatnot. But I was asked by my editors, you know, if you could take a look at, you know, anything else aside from you know, smartphones, because ce us not really huge for smartphones, to be honest, so you want more about the Mobile World Congress or something from the right right, which is coming up in just a month. But so they asked me, you know what else would you like to take a look at. Would you like to look at robots? And I said, sure, that sounds great,

let's do that. Because you know, I'm I'm a big Jetsons fan. I love Rosie, I love you know, from from Lost in Space, the robot you know, I love all that stuff. So I figured, let's go take a look at that. And then I realized just how broad the robotics industry is, and it's everything from autonomous cars too, you know, personal robots to room Buzz to everything in between. So I sat down with my editors and I said, we need to focus, we need to we need to

narrow this thing down a little bit. And they said, well, what do you want to look at it? And I said, I want something that will bring me my beer. Can we do that? And they said absolutely, let's do that. So that's where I kind of ended up, was looking at the robots that not not so much the ones that you snuggle with to help you to sleep, but the ones that will, you know, do things for you. Yeah.

I mean I remember a couple of years ago one of the robots I've got a lot of buzz on the floor was a close folding robot and it didn't look anything. People when they hear the word robot, I think more often than not, they're thinking of an anthropomorphic figure, right, some humors vaguely human shaped, and unless there's someone who's owned things like room Buzz and that sort of stuff where they think, oh, no, robots can come in all

shapes and sizes. This thing looked like it was a box. Uh. It looked like just a box that you put clothing in and it would bring you folded it would you know, spit folded clothing out And I was there this year too, So that's that just tells you that robots come in all shapes and sizes and for all sorts of functions, and a lot of them are dedicated functions, like a

very specific one function kind of robot. Because as you learn more about robotics, you learned that the more things you want your robot to do, the harder it is to design the robot to do any of them. Well, you have a development community behind you that will build all these different skills for different robots. But I could be referring to another podcast that we might have just

finished recording. Yes, you you will definitely have to listen to that episode over at at Android Authority because we talked a lot about the Misty robot platform, and we won't go over that material here because I think it's really important you guys go out and check out that episode. It was a great episode. I really enjoyed being on it. Thank you by the way for inviting me to be

on that show. And I think you guys out there tech stuff fans, you should definitely go check that out because that will be a nice compliment to this episode, I thought, I thought something that'd be fun to do. This is just I'm just gonna run down a quick list of some of the famous consumer robots that have come out over the years and kind of give you an idea of the the evolution of consumer robots over the past decades. So, Adam, I don't know how old you are. I am not going to ask you that

question unless you feel comfortable mentioning it. I am of the tender age of forty three years old. And you got me all right, there we go. So you remember the eighties right vaguely? Yeah? Yeah, it was a crazy time for all of us. But so in the in the eighties, I remember distinctly there there was one thing I really wish I could have asked for as a

Christmas present, but I just I knew it was. It was beyond my star, as Shakespeare would say, it was something that was to be wished for but never owned. That was the infamous Omnibot. I don't know if you ever saw an omnibot or you know what I'm talking about.

The original Omnibot had of a dome like head. It was tiny, it was it was you know, maybe two ft tall, maybe three I don't think it was three ft tall, probably two ft tall, and had a cassette tape player built into its chest, and you could actually put programming on cassette, you know, record a program onto magnetic tape on cassette and put that into chest and

it would follow it. It would also just play in regular audio cassettes if you wanted, So, if you wanted to have your robot shred to a C d C, you could, and you should I think, you know, and for those for those about two bot, we salute you, and uh. You could also program it with a remote control. You could do voice commands over the remote control, and it was it was done as like a programmable robot that you could own. And I thought it looked phenomenal.

These days, if you look at you're gonna think, wow, how quaint. But that was an early example and and by all measure of today's robotics, it was certainly a primitive example. But to a kid in the nineteen eighties, this was the next best thing to having your own R two D two in your house. Oh for sure. Absolutely. I was gonna say, amnibot did kind of look like Artie D two's idiot cousin at the time, but yes,

for sure. So this kind of leads into the next robot I want to talk about, which was the Robotic Operating Buddy or rob. Rob was a justification to sell Nintoto entertainment systems. So when the NES first came out in the United States, stores did not want to carry a video game console because the video game crash in the United States had totally decimated that that market actually decimates the wrong term, that's just reducing it by ten. That market was gone. Uh so no one wanted to

carry a video game console. So Nintendo, in an effort to make it more attractive to toy stores in the United States, had developed this successory, this peripheral called rob that was a robot and I used big air quotes on that that would go along with the console. And it had maybe two titles that worked with the robot, and that was enough to get toy stores convinced to carry it because robotics was starting to become a thing, even though video game consoles no longer were really thought

of as being marketable. And then and it worked. And then as soon as Nintendo saw it was working, they dropped rob because there was no reason to keep making this very expensive peripheral when they could just sell the video game console. Uh yeah, I was in Atari family, so we didn't really get into the whole Nintendo thing until much later. Same here, Buddy, I was Ayer, and later on I inherited and in television that was Those

were my early consoles. Uh and then we're skipping ahead a lot here, more than a decade, actually, I guess I could argue was also when we saw an amazing robot in the uh incredible documentary film Rocky four. But the less we say about that, the better it's. It wasn't really a consumer robot that anyone could just go out and buy unless you had a quarter of a

million dollars on you. So Lego introduced mind Storms, the modular design system that allowed people to play with concepts of robotics and programming as well as robotic design, which was kind of cool. Sony released the first Ibo, robotic Dog, which it continues to iterate upon, so we occasionally see new IBOs that look more I don't know if the word is realistic. It doesn't really look more like a dog, but it looks less nineties robots style, which is an improvement.

I think we can all argue. I think so. Two thousand two was when we first got the room BA. I didn't even realize it was that old. But yeah. I Robot, which had been making military are robots up to that point, introduces a consumer vacuum cleaner robot in two thousand two. I'm pretty sure that's the that's the the actual plot to Terminator, but I could be wrong about that. Have seen its mapping out all of our

houses and sending them over. Yeah, and so we have essentially like the Google Maps, except it's everybody's home because like rumbas, like this is a particularly tricky corner. I get stuck in this corner listen because the way they have the chair set up, and you just want to be aware of that. That's why I live in a split level house. Yes, yeah, I've got lots of stairs in my home. There's no chance for a rumba in

my place. So I don't I don't know anyone. But then two thousand five they came out with the Scuba, which was the mopping robot. Version two thousand six was a robot that didn't it no longer is in production. It's called the Dirt Dog. It was a robotic shop back, but it was discontinued. In two thousand seven, they introduced the Luge gutter cleaning robot, which was actually a remote troll device, and then the Vero pool cleaning robot was

also released in two thousand seven. And I remember this because I was at the c E s was when Parrot drone first showed off their their first quad copter at c then that I would argue is more of a radio controlled device, but it it kind of figuratively and literally launched the consumer drone craze, which later on developed into models that we saw have some at least rudimentary robotic elements to it, things like being able to

follow a person around right, have facial were condition and following. It seems some pretty cool ones. STO was first shown off inven I remember that as well. Two point o came out in and there are no shortage of robots at ces past and present. They range everything from the incredibly sophisticated we're talking like autonomous car type technology too, things that are called robots but aren't really robots. They're more like fun little toys or sometimes just diversions like

I think of like the Little Dancing Flower. It takes audio and it starts to move like. There are a lot of those as well. Sure, it's such a broad field. Like we mentioned at the at the beginning of the show, there's just so much that you could consider robotics. One one robot that you actually left out of your list, if you don't mind, this was. This is my robot when I was a kid was the Radio Shack Armatron.

I don't know if you remember that. That was a little robotic arm It set on a pedestal, had two little joysticks that you could use to manipulate the claw and the end, and it came with like a little little balls in a little box that you could open up and put the balls in the box. It was. It was. It was tons of fun and we used that thing for days and days and days. Yeah, I mean I remember I never owned one, but I remember those as well. I remember when that came out, and

I remember thinking that was a really cool looking devices. Uh, from that same from that same sort of era of my childhood. So these are these are really we've seen an evolution of these products over the years, Like there's certain ones that are always going to be in that sort of diversion toy category, and they're never they're never gonna get particularly sophisticated, and that's fine because that's not

their intention. They're meant to be toys. They're meant to be these fun little things that are not terribly expensive that can do something vaguely entertaining. Hey, guys, Jonathan here, Adam and I have a lot more to say about consumer robotics, but before we get into that, let's take

a quick break to thank our sponsor. We've seen a lot of advances in other areas of consumer robotics technology, and uh so, I'm curious what was your experience covering robotics at c e S. What were some of the things that you saw that really either stood out to you as being particularly interesting or even if there was something that was maybe confounding or you know, you're just like, I don't I don't even get what they were going before with this, because sometimes you run into that too.

Oh sure, Oh, definitely one of the I think one of the coolest robot One of the things that just overall impressions that I came away from c e S with was I was kind of surprised how far we already are because I saw legitimate consumer products that someone

could go out and buy and have driving around their house. Now, you'd have to be rich, you'd have to be a lot more rich than I am, but you could still have this robot driving around your house and you know, following you with music or bringing you drinks things like that. One robot in particular that stood out there were two really that I think we're really kind of creme day

la creme. But the one that really stood out to me as being a little bit more realistic at this day and age would be the Temi robot, which was kind of like um, kind of like a rolling serving trade that could could roll around. It would in theory, it would meet you at the door when you came in. It would not play Stone called Steve Austin's intro music. Unfortunately, big, big, but big check against that robot, but a right, So that's the one that's one box that didn't get checked.

But it did have an integrated wireless charging doc that you could set your phone down on it and start charging your phone as soon as you walked in the door, and then it would follow you It had a tracking software where you could turn away from it and walk away from it and it would follow you around. And what was really cool was if someone walked in between you and the robot, it didn't freak out. It was able to pick you back up and keep following you.

And you could ask you, you know, various Alexa type things, how's the weather outside, how's you know, what's my jewel for today? Stuff like that. It had a screen so it could show you what was what you wanted to see. It could play videos for you things like that, and it had a tray on the back so you could, you know, set things down and have it carried around

for you. I don't know if you're particularly lazy, but this this robot kind of stood out to me just because it was the type of robot that I could see myself using if I had a lot of money. Um I don't, so I won't, but it was That's what really kind of stuck out to me, is this is something that I could see in two thousand nineteen a home actually having in it and not being stupid. If that makes that's that's that's a legit thing. Though.

I mean, like we're getting to a point where the technology is reaching a level of sophistication where we can actually see applications beyond that very singular approach. Every time, every time you want a robot to do something, in addition to whatever it's primary function is, you've just to increase the complexity of the build, the complexity of the

software sometimes the complexity of the interface. And obviously you can only do that for so long before it gets unmanageable and uh or the robots just crappy at everything, right, It's just you can't, like sure and in theory can do all these things, but it doesn't do any of them well, and it's more frustrating to use than if I just did them myself. That that's it's a hard barrier to get past because it requires so much sophistication

from multiple perspectives, from multiple starting points. It's funny you should mention that because since c E S. Since I was covering robotics at CES, I was particularly interested in robotics, and as part of my daily tech news roundup podcast I Report, I reported on a hotel in Japan who was retiring half of its two hundred and THIRTIESO robotic workforce. Mainly because the people required to keep those robot bots on task basically were made it kind of silly to

have the robots themselves. So people would like walk up to those robots and say where can I catch a cab? And the robot would be like, I have no idea what you just said. And then people would say, well, where's a good place to eat? And the robot would

be like, I have no idea what you want. And so they ended up having to turn to a person to answer those same questions because once again, these the people that were coming into the hotel had this expectation that a robot will be able to answer whatever questions that I should have. Personally, I think they should have just replaced it with a Google Home and called it a day. But you know what, beggars, camp be choosers,

I suppose. But they actually had to retire half of their They actually had the term used in the article was laid off their half of their robotic workforce because they had to have so many people supporting those robots that it was it made it silly to have the

robots in the first place. This this is the robotic equivalent of using a vacuum on a car pit and you're running it over a piece of fluff that's on the carpet, and the vacuum runs over it, and you pull the vacuum back, and the fluff is still there. So you push the vacuum over it again, you pull

it back, it's still there. You've been down. You pick up the fluff, you put it back down on the ground, you roll it over with a vacuum cleaner, and you're just you're you're spending so much time just trying to get the thing that does the thing to do the thing that you could have just done the thing yourself. I was really hoping that you were going to talk about picking up the fluff and then putting it back down,

because it's exactly it's a universal experience. I think just about everyone who's ever used a vacuum cleaner has done this thing where they've you know, it's not just pick up the fluff and throw it away. It's no, this vacuum cleaner is supposed to do this thing, and I'm gonna keep at it until it works. Uh. Yeah, we've all had that experience. So seeing that with robotics, it's it's absolutely the same sort of thing, just on a

different application. The thing that really impressed me by what you were saying was the idea of a robot that can follow us specific person and not be able to not lose its way if something breaks its line of sight, like if someone else comes in between it. And the reason why I say, I find that really interesting. I went to a talk at south By Southwest a few years ago and the person giving the talk that it

was all about robotics. The person giving the talk was talking about how they were teaching a robot how to open a door. And this is a non trivial problem because we don't have a single standard for doors in the human world. They are all the different kinds of handles. Some of them you have to push something specific so that the door will unlatch and you can open it. Or you have to turn a door knob, or you have to press down on a little thumb leaver or

whatever it may be, and there's pushing versus pulling. There's all these sorts of different features that could be in place for any given door, and so we humans, we in on her this once or twice, we can then extrapolate in other situations and very quickly figure out how to use a door, even if we've never gone through that that specific door before. Robots. Robots are not good

at this. Robots typically can do what you program them to do, and even with machine learning, they have to go through lots of training in order to actually learn what the the quote unquote correct approach is. And so she talked about how they had this robot and they were training at how to open doors, different doors, and the robot would sit motionless, staring at a specific door they had in this one hallway in their research facility, and it would just be processing this image for hours

at a time, just just staring at a door. One thinks, wistfully, perhaps, but that's projecting and before it ever makes an attempt. And the problem that one of the many problems, was that if someone were to walk down the hallway and break the line of sight between the robot and the door, that would confuse the robot and it would just effectively increase the amount of time it would require to study

the door before it can make an attempt. So someone just walking down the hall could mess up an entire experiment, or at least make it go on twice as long as they had intended because of that unexpected interruption and line of sight. So to have a have a consumer robot that is capable of following a specific person even if that line of sight is broken is a phenomenal achievement. It doesn't sound like it because we to us the humans that's easy, but two machine, that's very hard. But

think about it. You're spending all this time trying to teach a robot how to open the door. That's also very simple. It's something that we do dozens of times every day. And the thing about technology, or at least this is how I am with technology, is I will get a new piece of technology and I will start pushing those limits because I want to know actually where

those borders are. So if you have if you have a device that can watch Netflix, fine, I'm going to ask for a very specific episode of a very specific show on Netflix. And if you can't serve that up to me, okay, I know that that's my limitation. I can have you open Netflix, but I can't ask or you to play episode three of season two of Stranger Things. I'm going to know that so and and that's the thing is, if I get a robot in my house, Oh my lord, I'm going to be pushing so many boundaries,

like go get me a beer. Okay, you can't do that. Okay, so go to the refrigerator. Okay, you don't know where the refrigerator is, Okay, follow me, and then we're gonna figure out. And then the problem is is that you're eventually going to get down to a point where you're just like, well, why do I have this thing? It can't do anything? And that's the that's the biggest obstacle that robotics and roboticists are facing, especially when it comes

to consumer applications. Sure. Yeah, there's so many things that go into designing good robotics in general. Uh, everything from just the mechanics of how the robot moves that is that's a that's an art form unto itself. People spent years trying to do things like replicate the way biological leg works in order to have a robot that can walk on two legs. The Grand DARPA Challenge of a few years ago, where the robots were doing a rescue mission, simulated rescue mission as if it were in the wake

of a Fukushima disaster. They they had they were using legged robots that the reason they did was because the robot had to be able to do multiple things that humans can do, including operator vehicle, get out of the vehicle, open a door, go through the door, pick up a power tool, use it, all this other stuff. So the that that meant that the robots had to fall into

a certain area of design. Well, building a robot that can move the way a human can before you even get to the software part, just building the complexity necessary in the robotic limbs is incredibly complicated. That's why we see a lot of robots that rely on things like wheels. That's much easier to implement than limbs. And you know it also and when we talk about easier to implement, that also means it brings the price down, which makes

it more accessible as well. You can't you couldn't have a Boston Dynamics big dog style robot on the consumer market. It would cost a million bucks at least. Uh, so you go much more simple. We've got a little bit more we're going to say about consumer robotics. Really excited

for you guys to hear this episode. But before we get into that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor so anytime you're making a consumer robot, you have to start with these considerations, like how complicated is the machinery going to be? That alone has going to impact the price I'm gonna have to charge for this thing if I want to have even if I just want to recoup costs, that's before I even think about profit. Sure, then what is it supposed to do? How am I

going to make sure it does that really well? Well enough so that justifies the purchase of the robot? These are these are all tricky things. So you saw this, this robot that could follow people around. I know what I would use it for. If I could program it, I would program it so that it would hold my phone in the morning. And my phone is what it uses, my alarm clock. So having my alarm clocks set on

the robot. When my alarm goes off and and the robot sees me stirring in bed, it knows to just slowly back away so that I have to get up to go after the phone, because that guarantees I actually get out of bed and get on my way and that so so it's the opposite of what it would normally do. Instead of following me it's retreating a little bit. That's a pretty crazy niche case, but we'll go with it, you know. I mean it's to me, it's like it means that I actually get started in day. So really,

when you think about it, my time is invaluable. So there you go. That's hounds justify it to the I R S exactly. Yeah, And as long as I counted off as a work expense, everything's cool, right, right, Yeah, I king robot. So what else did you see at C E S So actually getting back into the concept of walking robots and as opposed to wheels, there was a robot there by a company called ub Tech, which is actually appropriately named Walker. And it's called Walker because

this is a robot that walks around. It's similar to that Sony robot whose name escapes me, that fell down on stage famously back in back in the late eighties early nineties. Similar look to that, but this is a robot that's about I want to say it was about four and a half feet tall, so it's a pretty big robot too that can walk around. And they put on a demonstration for me where and granted this is a very specific set of steps that were set up

to demonstrate the robot's capabilities. But basically what it did was it came to the door to greet you, and it took your coat, hung the coat up on a wall, and then, oh it should I should also mention it opened the door before before you walked in. Then it followed you to the middle of the room. The demonstrator

went down and sat on the couch. So it went and got a tasty beverage out of the refrigerator, opened the door of the refrigerator, pulled out the pulled out the cannon I think it was soda or whatever, and then closed the refrigerator. Went over and picked up a can of chips that come into can that will go nameless, but it rhymes with flingles, and then brought it over and then brought it over to the guy in the couch, and it said, by the way, you have a hot

date coming up tonight, but it's supposed to rain. Can I get you your umbrella? And said, yeah, I'd love to you get your my umbrella. So then it walked over and picked up the umbrella, came back and handed over the umbrella and shuffled him out the door. So I mean it was a lot of very complex motions that it had to get down. Now, you could tell

that this was a very specific demo. Um. There there were targets all over the floor, like barcode looking targets that kind of told the robot, this is where this item will be. So it didn't really have to know where all this stuff, or I should say it didn't have to find all this stuff. It already knew where all this stuff was. So you know, you know, the soda was putting a very specific place that Pringles were putting a very oh I said, the name, we're put

in a very specific place. Um, the umbrella wasn't a specific place. Yeada, YadA YadA. So but still, the fact that this robot was up and around and walking and talking and not falling over did a little dance at the end of a demo, so that was kind of cute. It was It was very apparent that first of all, this was going to be a very expensive consumer model

when it does when it does come out. I was talking with one of the PR guys and they anticipated that as the technology involves, the cost will eventually come down to a place where it's reasonable for I don't know, not me, but people fluid but right. But the fact that this is on legs means that it can handle stairs, It can handle you know, my split level house wouldn't bother it all that much. And it has you know, fingers, you know, manipulatable digits and the thumbs, so it can

pick up things and carry them around. So it's a lot more potentially farther down the road useful than something like a temmy, which is basically a rolling serving tray. But it's also because it's that much more complicated, you know that the cost associated with that are going to be huge at least the start Yeah sure, yeah, absolutely, And and the idea of having the barcodes there to give the robot the points of reference it needs to in order to do the demonstration that is not surprising

to me. It is incredibly challenging to create a robot that is capable of not just sensing its environment. That part we've got that down. You know, we've got amazing sensors out there where robots can tell when they're getting close to say, an obstacle of some sort, but to be able to do pathfinding that's far more challenging and requires a lot a lot of artificial intelligence. You may remember Azumo, the robot that Honda made years and years ago and fantastic. It was the first robot that could

ever run. And by run, it means that a part of its gate both feet are off the ground for a split second, so it's run actually looks like it's doing a weird, little hoppy jog, kind of like I always thought that it looked like Ozomo really needed to use the facilities that maybe there's Yeah, you've never seen me run either, So not so much passing judgment as I'm just making an observation. I wrote how Ozumo works, so I had to watch a lot of video of it.

And but but as amazing as the robot was, and it truly was remarkable, it required programmers to work very closely with it so that it would follow pre programmed routes. It could climb stairs, it could descend stairs, it could run, but it had to have all of that environmental information programmed into it ahead of time so that would know what route to take. It could not make that determination

on its own. You couldn't put it at the entrance of a room on one side and say exit the room on the other side, you would have to program that route into the robot. And you know, we're slowly

moving beyond that. We're moving to the point where artificial intelligence, machine learning, pathfinding technology, all of these sort of things are getting more sophisticated to the point where we might be able to have robots find numerous ways to get from point A to point B, the most efficient or most effective ways, the most power efficient ways, whatever it may be. We're getting. We're getting to that point, but it it's a very difficult problem to solve, not just

for robotics but for artificial intelligence in general. So so I give a lot of Slack two companies for these sort of demonstrations because they typically are saying, here's one element of this technology that has really come a far away, and here's how we're envisioning it in the future. And meanwhile, you have this other set of of challenges you still

have to overcome before that's truly achievable. But you want to be able to show something off right right exactly, it's important to recognize the advances that have been made while recognizing that you know, there's still a long way to go. Exactly. It's like it's like concept cars at

a car show. You know, when you see a concept car that is not what you're going to see on a show floor at your car dealership down the road, you're most you're almost certain not to see that exact same design, but elements of that are going to find their way in two cars down the line, hopefully, and that you'll get the best implementation of those ideas in future models of cars. Same sort of thing here. These demonstrations we see, they're meant to wow people, and they're

meant to show off. Yes, we've come a long way in this particular fashion. We still have ways to go, but we want to make sure we're inspiring people because that helps drive the development process. Otherwise, if if there's no interest, no one, there's If there's no interest, there's

no money. If there's no money, there's no development. Well it's also it also should be mentioned that a lot of the capabilities that robots have today are also contributing to other advancements that have been made outside the field of robotics. So you know, for example, the software algorithms that a robot can use to find the path from A to B that can also be used in autonomous driving.

That can also be used in even something like you know where house picking, you know, finding various products within

within a warehouse. There was another robot that I saw, also by ub Tech that was designed to be more of a retail presence where it would greet you at the door and you would say, you know, you're at home depot, I'm here to get a hammer, and then you would push the hammer button and it would take you over to where the hammers are and then it would show you a video on why this hammer is

the best. So a lot of that stuff that is integrated into that robot is also going to be used in you know, various AI applications and location finding, you know, who knows. It might even be used to implement like in a sort of indoor GPS type system. It's it's, it's it's. One of the great things about technology is

that everything helps everything. So so if you make it, if you make an advancement in you know, A, it will also help in B, C and D. And as you get more of these robots out in the real world and you're able to get data on how they're doing, then obviously that can go into the design process to make the next generation of robots better or more effective, or to do firmware updates to improve the operation of

robots that are already out there. Um, did you get a chance to see the Samsung robot that takes your pulse and tells you if you're healthier or not or dead? Or I saw the demonstration at the press conference, I didn't actually get a chance to go face to face with it as it were. Usually usually things that are

at that level are normally hands off, I found at Yes. Yeah, Typically it's like you might see a couple of of friendly, semi approachable handlers who will be happy to answer questions as long as you keep your filthy mits off of it, and they'll be happy to put their figures on the fingerprints. Yes, exactly, exactly, But you don't the thing about Samsung, and you know Samsung released I want to say it was four different

bonts ads at c at CES this year. They had the Samsung but Care, the butt Retail, the Bot Air and I want to say there was maybe it was only three anyway, But one thing that I thought was really interesting about the fact that they introduced three different robots was there kind of tacitly admitting that right now. This robot is designed for your health, and that's it. This robot is designed for a retail experience, and that's it.

And this robot is designed to test the quality of the air in your house or filter the air in your house, and that is it. So it's one of the biggest complications, especially when it comes to consumer robots, is finding that robot that can do a hundred different things, because you don't want a robot that's just going to back away from you when your alarms going off. You're gonna want a robot that will back away from you

when your alarms going off. Then it'll go get your toothbrush and your toothpaste, and then get the paper from outain front. I'm just kidding. Nobody reads papers anymore. But then you wanted to go, you know, make you start making your breakfast, turn on the oven for you, stuff like that. You want a robot that's gonna do all the those different things. And Samsung's robots were designed for

pretty much. You have one job to do. Yeah, and again, by focusing on the one job, you can try and make sure you're making a thing that does what it's supposed to do, really, really well, but as as you, as you point out, no one wants to sit down and say, yeah, but do I want a hundred things that do the one thing really really well and clutter up my house? And my house just becomes house of robots.

And really at that point, it just becomes how can I get another outlet installed so I can charge everything? You know, it gets to a point where you start to ask, well, is this useful enough to be worth the investment it would take for me to have it in my life? And we're we're still we're still at that level where that's still going to be a struggle. And uh, again it comes into play with how complicated

this whole approach is. In the sister episode to this one, the one that we did on on Android Authority, we talked a bit about Misty, and I'm really not going to dive into it here, but just to give a quick hint to my listeners what that's all about, Misty. They were creating a robot development platform, not just not just a robot, although they did build that too, They created a platform for developers two create different applications that the robot could potentially do, and thus open this up

to a much broader array of developers. It's no longer just an internal team that is part of a single company that is trying to, you know, suss out, well, how can we make the robot do this one thing really well or do this second thing just as well

as it does the first thing. Now it's opened up to an entire community with a sort of open source approach almost two to really see where the limitations are, almost like what you were saying earlier, thinking I have this this practically a blank slate in one of me, what what's the most out there thing I can make it do? And then you start seeing all these different

applications arise as a result of that. That could go a very long way into getting closer to the robot that can do a hundred things as opposed to the robot that does the one thing. And the overlying philosophy behind the Misty two robot was to take an almost Amazon Alexa type approach where you can download different skills depending on how you want you know, what you want your robot to do. And that was kind of the you could tell Misty was really taking a long view

in terms of that. So anyway, but that that was an indication of Misty taking the long approach, the it's a marathon, not a splint a sprint approach. So you could go buy a robot and one of the beautiful things, like you were saying before, is you know, you could take a robot and you can say, what's the most

out there thing I wanted to do? Well, Missy's approach is to send out five hundred different robots to five hundred different developers and have them each asked the question, what's the most out there thing I could imagine this robot doing? And then they'll build it on their own, and then you'll suddenly have a robot that's capable of doing five hundred different things depending on what you want to download. That's a really compelling thing about the Misty

two platform. Yeah, I I love that, uh that approach. It is something that I think it's going to take a few generations for us to really uh see what

truly stands out. I mean, I'm guessing that the Misty team, when they see these different approaches, they're gonna say, you know, when we develop the next the next generation of this particular platform, we're gonna change the design slightly because we've noticed a trend towards such and such, and we just think that by changing the form factor a little bit, we will facilitate that in a better way. And that's a really cool organic approach to developing con summer robotics.

And so we've seen we've seen both. We've seen the very focused approach where we're gonna go for something that's not going to be terribly expensive. It's gonna do one thing reasonably well. I mean, I would argue the roomba as a great example of this. It's, you know, it's it's not cheaper than a vacuum cleaner, but it does automate that process. And if you have the money and you have the right kind of space for it, my

house would be hopeless. I live in the town. Yeah, I'm just like, yeah, it would be nice to have, except for the fact that I have to own three of them and I like to have all my doors open all the time. Yeah, it just would. It does. It's not practical for my use but for the right type of home, you can see you can make the the use case argument for it. And I think I think that's I think that's fine, and we're gonna keep seeing those we're gonna see improvements of those over time.

But I like also this more almost experimental approach where we're going. We don't know what we're going to get yet, and that's the beautiful thing about it. It's great company embrace that it's a beautiful thing, and it's a scary part because you don't know, you know, it's the type of thing where it could very easily blow up. But I just think that based on what I've seen so far, and you'll have to listen to the first episode to like really get into what we're talking about in terms

of like the developer community that they're building. They've really got the right approach, and I'm very optimistic about what Misty is going to be doing in the future. I'm really excited to see as well. I uh I was thrilled to hear about it. Since I didn't get the chance to go to the the robotics parts of the show floor, my CES experience this past year was much more limited than it typically is, uh for for better

and for worse. The better being, I didn't feel like I was had been through a twelve round fight with a championship boxer every day, which is typically how I feel at the end of the day at c e S. But the bad part is I had a very limited amount of stuff that I got to see uh in person, although I got to hear about a lot of really interesting stuff while I was there. So and now you've heard about more of it. Yeah, I'm so glad you were able to join the show and to give us

your experience, your insight on this topic. And it was a pleasure having you on. It was also a pleasure being on on your show, Android Authority. So Adam, please please tell my listeners where they can find your great work. Well, thank you. Um I am I actually am a podcast producer over with the Digit Studios, which is associated with

Android Authority. Obviously, we've already talked about the Android Authority podcast, which I think would be a wonderful It would be wonderful for your listeners to come over and take a listen to. Um. I think even more appropriate for your more general look at technology in general is our Digit Daily podcast, which is a podcast produced by B and one other, one other awesome dude named Sam. We we do a daily podcast which is all the tech news that you need to know, and it comes out every day.

Right around noon Central time, because I live in Central Time and that's how I roll. So it's based on it is based on our newsletter, which is also really cool. They worked. We worked very well with the newsletter team. We worked together, We kind of prop each other off. It's really cool. So I actually think that with the more generalized nature of your audience, I think the Digit

Daily would probably be a a good fit. And I think the Android Authority would be an awesome fit for those who are interested in mobile technology because we break down the all the top news of Android every week. So it's a it's a pretty great uh, it's a pretty great thing. We've also got since you mentioned Parrot earlier in the episode, we also the third person on our Android Authority team is Jonathan Fist, who runs Drone Rush, which is also a sister site for Android Authorities, so

he's all drones all the time. I got to love it. It's a really it's a really diverse group that we have over there. Excellent. Yes, I I urge my listeners to go and check out those shows and those sites because it's always nice to run into other people in the field who have this same sort of passion for a tech, whether it's a very specific niche in tech or a general approach to tech. It's just great to find communicators who really love it and they love sharing

that enthusiasm and that knowledge with an audience. I value that quite a bit, so it's great too. Has been really fun. Yeah, we'll have to do it again soon and I'm gonna do that. Hey, please do. I mean, I'm always happy to have someone to chat with on this show, and goodness knows, I'm going to be having some fun episode topics coming up in the near future.

There's a great spy story, and by great spy story I mean a terrifying story about surveillance that I'll be covering pretty soon that doesn't even have to do with a FaceTime I'll be doing that one as well. So there's a couple of surveillance episodes. Oh, you're doing a FaceTime episode. That's great. Yes, yeah, I'll be doing one of those as well. But the other one is is unrelated to that, not now, at least not directly related

to that. But we'll get into it later this week when I sit down and and dive into this CD dark world of spies. But that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff. If you guys have any questions, or you have uh suggestion for a future topic, maybe there's someone you want me to have on the show. Maybe you're all thinking, can you please get Adam back on here. I definitely want to hear that. I know Adam would love to hear that too, So you can write me. The email address is tech stuff at how stuff works

dot com. You can pop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find the archive of all the old episodes there. You'll find the ways to contact me on social media over there. And also don't forget to check out our merchandise store that's over at t public dot com slash tech stuff. Every purchase you make goes to help the show and we greatly appreciate it. And I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com, wh