What do you think is a robot? "Robots are everywhere: construction, garages, aerospace LABS, car companies," Keay says. "The robots we're talking about today are much more sophisticated than they were in the 1980s."
You probably wouldn't admit it if I told you that your regular ATM, GPS navigation, and Nest thermostat are all robots. So the automatic sweeper is a robot, right? Since I got a pet, I can't live without it, but what about ATM machines and GPS navigation?
The idea is that robots should look like C3PO, the clowning, intelligent, humorous characters from Star Wars, or at the very least, they should spin around vacuuming themselves. If you think about it this way, thermostats are no different from them, they can control their environment; The mopping robot doesn't have the ability to learn automatically. The Nest thermostat does, remembering the user's sleep schedule and temperature preferences and automatically adjusting the temperature of the room. Functionally, it's no different from the C3PO going to the thermostat and then manually adjusting the button.
What is a robot?
Now every day we drive cars, airplanes are in fact automated equipment, but also a broad sense of the robot. "People don't think that way," says AndraKeay, founder of Robot Launchpad and general manager of Robotics in Silicon Valley. "In my opinion, the better the technology for autonomous devices is, the more 'invisible' it is. Automatic sweeper, lawn mower, all invisible robots."
Keay moved to the US in 2011 from Australia, where she was learning about the behaviour of various automated devices. After hearing that robotics startups were having a hard time raising money, she decided to head to the United States to find out. Once in Silicon Valley, Keay found out that robotics companies actually had money, but the robot was nothing like the three-headed, six-armed robot that the masses had envisioned.
According to Dmitry Grishin, a venture capitalist, once automation is widely used for a particular job, people will no longer think of such things as robots. Dishwashers and ATMs are in the same category as thermostats and sprinklers in people's minds.
"When we talk about robots, most people react with humanoid robots." Grishin said, "It's interesting that what we call robots, most of us don't know what to do with them, and when robots actually serve humans, we immediately banish them from the robot community." ..) . Have you ever seen someone mistake a vacuum cleaner for a robot?"
The future of Robotics
Grishin thinks the inhuman robots will gradually turn into something of a unified product, much as the digital compass is already integrated into mobile phones. Companies like Unbounded Robotics, Keecker, and Knightscope are already working on this, but it's not going to be a day or two before such a shift happens, and the technology hasn't evolved this far.
On the other hand, this is also a commercial activity, the robot has to post a reasonable price. But it is better to be good at one task than to be good at nothing.
"You want the robot to solve problems and answer questions," Grishin said. "The central question is, at what point do we really call a computer-controlled autonomous device a 'robot'? It really depends on our relationship to the automatic device. We are only likely to call it a person if it has social attributes, such as a robot butler."
