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Home Robots Come of Age |
Internet & Technology
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Home Robot at Work |
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When the Internet first entered R&D and University locations, deft hackers had a field day. One friend programmed the pop machine on the next floor to cooperate. Addicted to diet coke, he added a microprocessor to the beverage machine. He gave it an internet address like any network device and the rest was fun. The next time he wanted a coke, he would signal the machine to have one ready soon after he clicked 'dispense'. By the time he went down the stairs it was popping out of the machine. Since the machine was free in the R&D organization, everyone thought it was great fun. Now we are seeing real robots appear in the home and with the new breed of operating systems like Microsoft's System 7, you will see more of them come online. A remote phone could launch robots to do any number of things. I saw it in action at a friend's home the other day. It just took off on it's own and started to move about the room. Nobody seemed to pay it any attention except me. The dog did not even sniff. I was impressed, however. I expected it to move around, get tangled up in chords or under the couch, but it did not. It moved around slowing down before it bumped into anything fragile and picked up things as it went like dust, dirt and pet hair.
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It's still not as good as a deep cleaning Hoover or an old Electrolux, but it's very good for pet hair floating around and normal dust and dirt. What's more important than what it now picks up, is the fact that it does not lose it's way very easily. If it does get stuck, it sends out a distress call. When it 'feels' it cannot pick up any more dirt or it is full, almost out of charge, it returns to its docking station and recharges itself. It can be programmed to work on up to 7 missions a day or so. Stay tuned
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