Rosie the Robot was inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003.
A prognostication by the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics is that robot usage will increase sevenfold by 2007.
They predict such a boom after the United Nation’s annual World Robotics Survey reported record orders for industrial robots. The report indicated that
“607,000 automated domestic helpers were in use at the end of 2003, two-thirds of them purchased that year… By the end of 2007, some 4.1 million domestic robots will likely be in use.
I was unaware that a past project of William “Red” L. Whittaker was a Robot for Decontamination and Dismantlement (Rosie), a different robot than the domestic robot that worked for The Jetsons, which was a futuristic family that appeared in the animated television series of the same name written by Hanna and Barbera.
Did you know that “robot” is derived from a Czech word meaning “menial labor”? See the AI Magazine web site for more information about robots.
Hop the Bus, Gus
I have thought about a use for a robot, not as much as a domestic robot, even though I have an increasing need for a Helpmate such as Joseph Engelberger envisions, rather as a robot traveler that could make those visits that I no longer am able to make. I thought of this application after two events:
- My mother became ill and I wanted to and was unable to visit her
- My sister’s daughter died in an automobile accident and I was unable to attend the funeral
Imagine an ASIMO-like robot boarding a bus in Upstate New York for a 14-hour trip to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. When transported to an event such as one above, it would enable me to have a virtual presence, similar to what real-time video conferencing now offers. The robot would be like a roving, “full-featured”, cellular camera phone. Would this make an interesting science fiction story? The bot’s adventures could include how it negotiates three changes: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Wilmington, Delaware and Salisbury, Maryland. It is a fairly believable scenario since courier robots are in service already. The story could focus on the human perceptions when they encounter a courier robot utilizing public transportation while on its mission.
For instance, what would happen when the robot meets an angry, inebriated human that recently lost his job to a robot? What would happen if there were bugs in the robot’s navigation / collison avoidance systems?
Can you see a character in the story asking, “Just exactly how autonomous is this robot, Mr. Smith?”
