this is my week of debriefing. CES has a kick-and-scream way of kicking in the new year, and it can be hard to find your bearings when you come out on the other side. Once the dust has been cleared, one thing is very clear. No two people have the same concept of what constitutes a robot and what does not.
It’s not a problem per se. Languages evolve, technology evolves. Appearing on the Equity Podcast this week, one of his hardware reporters, she spoke with Haje about her CES. He hypothesized that many, if not most, technologies are currently robotic in nature. The argument that “robot” as a term is much broader than how we tend to deploy it can be made quite credible. is pervasive in ways you never imagined.
The advantage of casting the widest possible net is that you can argue that ubiquitous robotics is not the vision of the future. It’s already here and perhaps that’s encouraging. tending) involves a degree of autonomy and awareness. Just like us, we take in information from external sources and make decisions accordingly.
I’m not sticking to this definition, which makes it impossible to cover other stories in the space that don’t match exactly. Also, not all are necessarily within my scope. For one thing, he has two automotive reporters who are good at their jobs, and they’re quick to cover everything about self-driving cars. In fact, our definition of what qualifies and does not qualify as a robot is also driven by editorial decisions. It can also be made porous.
This could easily be a newsletter about 8 billion lidar startups, but I don’t want that, and I don’t think most people do either. At least for me, there isn’t much value in strictly adhering to pedantry or orthodoxy in determining what makes sense and what doesn’t on these pages. However, it would be nice to have guardrails.
It may be the first time I’ve seen a “smart” washing machine in this newsletter, but I’d be (understandably) annoyed if I suddenly started hogging a washing machine every week. Robot vacuums, on the other hand, meet the requirements of a robot for many or most people, including myself. I’m covering them completely here, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know that covering every robot vacuum on the market is a good way to make the reader bleed. rice field.
Image credit: Robosen
All of this bleeds together at shows like CES. For example, I spent time with Robocen’s very good Transformers his robots. But I think it’s a win-win if you try to compare those toys to things like industrial fulfillment robots that are on display at trade shows. I suggested, somewhat cheekily, that robots are “cool technology used for uncool stuff.” This is clearly not a guiding principle, but it shows something worth discussing here.
Weird and quirky robotic toys will make headlines at trade shows like CES. understood. They are good for transportation and fun. I’ve written about them a lot and will continue to do so in the future when really interesting things surface. It’s similar.Robot toys show how we think of robots should do it look. No matter how we ultimately think about the impact science fiction has on public perception, it is important to realize that it will never go away.
But as robots become larger fixtures in our everyday lives, their impact will become more and more interactive. I paid an amount that was not What struck me, and probably so did you, was how similar Pandora’s US military robots were to robots that exist in the world today. Want to annoy your date? Point out where each robot in the sci-fi movie gets its inspiration.
Frankly, pretty much everything I’ve done this past week has revolved around CES, so predictably my robotics writing this past week has largely revolved around CES. It has been. No one said it would make a hardware editor’s life easier.
But the 2.5 newsletter is more than enough coverage of the show, so let’s round up some of the top non-CES stories.
Image credit: mineral
Another company graduated from Alphabet X’s “moonshot” lab this week. Two years after his departure from Stealth, Minerals is now its own Alphabet company. The robotics aspect revolves around data collection here, monitoring crops to provide farmers with deep, rich and actionable information to grow more sustainably and efficiently.
CEO Elliott Grant said: “Our mission is to help expand sustainable agriculture. We help collect, organize and understand previously unknown or misunderstood information about the plant world. We do this by developing platforms and tools that make it useful and practical.”
Image credit: i robot
File this down: not the best looking. Home robots and privacy issues are inevitable. MIT Review finally compiled the images of the Roomba that made it onto social media. iRobot responded that all photos were taken with the user’s consent. This will become an increasingly important discussion as robots and camera sports technology are brought into our homes. And that would likely be pointed out as a compelling argument for Amazon’s acquisition of the company.
One user called it a “clear breach of contract on their part” […and] It is also a betrayal of trust.” The big question that immediately comes to mind here is what are the reasonable expectations for privacy when introducing this kind of technology into the home?
Image credit: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
That’s it for this week. It’s a little short, but I’ll do my best to sleep through the weekend and be back with you around this time next week. In the meantime, if you haven’t subscribed to Actuator yet, subscribe here please.
