If you have live pets, and sometimes they are alone, then maybe the robots
could play with the cats and dogs. Some people play the television or
otherwise provide input to their pets. There are fish feeders to feed fish for
a week or two at a time, other pets require more interaction.
Max More wrote:
> Nothing new here, but a good summary of several recent domestic robots from
> Japanese manufacturers. One info nugget I hadn't seen before was the fact
> that the majority of buyers of the home robots are older folks.
>
> http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=461094
>
> Max
>
> Max More,
> max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org
> www.maxmore.com
> President, Extropy Institute. www.extropy.org
> Senior Content Architect, ManyWorlds Inc.: www.manyworlds.com
I know older people that have a little statue of a dog or cat. A robot would
be a good thing to have, they have ones to run the vacuum and otherwise. One
time there was an online chat with Hans Moravec and we talked about it. My
idea was to use mobile software agents so one agent would be able to interface
the vacuum cleaner and other plant machinery or that many could use it.
Humans are pretty adapted to getting around, but a robot should be able to get
a round an ADA building in a not so difficult way. Some robots move around
detecting the walls and make a map and then use global positioning. I was
watching this on television, they also detected any people or other objects in
their path to stop or move around it.
It would be a good task for a robot to be given a random group of objects and
have it pick them up and carry them around. Computer vision has progressed as
a field in ways I know not. Giving the robot stereo or even tri-scopic vision
would allow it to see from various perspectives, as would access to wireless
networked local intracams. So, it could identify something without picking it
up, and then pick it up.
On this list there is various talk about robots in the archives. Robots could
be very small, or very large. A software robot is a program that performs
repetitive actions.
Ross
-- Ross Andrew Finlayson Finlayson Consulting Ross at Tiki-Lounge: http://www.tiki-lounge.com/~raf/
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