The Robots I Love (and can afford) UPDATED

70+ years of robots in science fiction have failed to yield anything
similar in real life. Our movies and books feature human companions,
even substitutes. The robots we have today still resemble machinery
and are best suited to completing singular tasks. Even in the field of
academic robotics we see robo snakes for inspecting pipes and other
non humanlike robots.  It is clear that people won't be "copied" or
replaced anytime soon.

But we do have simple robots that can do work for us which ease our
burdens. These are the robots that are taking hold, filing niches and
being built by the millions. Their simplicity and mass market
application make them affordable.

Our first robot (or the first one I recognized) was the cruise control in our car, able to maintain a constant speed while driving, suitable for ensuring that long road
trips stay on pace and that flatland travel uses fuel efficiently.

Our second robot was the motion sensor light which would faithfully
watch to see if light was required, and then turn it on, ensuring the safety
of people and even the occasional cat.

Our next robots were a pair of dehumidistat that could detect when air
In our house was too moist and activate a fan to vent the humid air. This allowed
fans to run automatically ensuring the health of our house's air
without running too long. This balance helps prevent venting too much
heated air during the winter. So they help us be healthy and save us money.

Perhaps the most obvious robot we have is Roomba a vacuuming robot
whose enthusiasm for vacuuming more than makes up for its wandering
approach. Roomba may only get 85% of the dirt but that is
85% I didn't have to clean, and it isn't always the same 85%, meaning
that repeated runs achieve a higher rate of cleaning. Apart from the
cleaning, Roomba puts itself away when it is finished and recharges
itself so it is ready to clean at the next scheduled time.

Maybe The most primitive of robots is the alarm clock which counts the time
And could wake you up at a predetermined time. Something that is difficult to do yourself while sleeping.

The washing machine is a robot with muscle, vigorously scrubbing our
clothes, rinsing the soap out and then squeezing out most of the water
by spinning. Along with its partner the dryer, these two machines
process many pounds of clothing each week, making our lives cleaner
and healthier.  I regret that in over 50 years we have not observed a
variation on these machines which would allow the dryer to eject its
load into a waiting basket in order to receive a load which would in
turn be ejected by the washer.   I think we have an opportunity here
that we are missing. A laundry processing system where the clothes
enter the chute upstairs and appear clean and dry in the basket
downstairs.


The dishwasher saves us countless hours by washing and rinsing and
drying dishes we would otherwise have to pile and wash by hand. There
is still the trick of getting the dishes in and out but overall it
saves human labour.

The automated lawn sprinkler system can obey restrictive watering
restrictions while keeping your lswn green and in some cases by
monitoring rainfall. Ranging from $100 these systems allow you to
remain on schedule (or in bed) without performing mundane
"hose management".

Thermostats - central or "zone" keep the temperature "right". This
May not be apparent until you try a wood fire and feel the room heat and then
cool beyond the range of comfort.

These robots take an incremental approach to serving us, often unnoticed and understated. These are the robots I love (and can afford)..

Update; lights lights lights lights. 

 Home Depot sells a $30 Leviton light switch that has an astronomical calendar in it. In a nutshell it can accept latitude longitude, time zone and more in order to accurately determine when the sun will rise and set so that your outdoor lights turn on a few minutes before sunset and turn themselves off again when the sun rises. 

And on a slightly sheepish note when wiring the lighting for my garage I didn't put the light switch within reach of the door.  So I installed a $20 motion sensing light switch that "sees" when I am entering the garage and switches on the lights. 

Ok, if you are like me you detest banging your shins in the dark. So I took a radio shack sound activated wall plugin, attached a string of white LED Xmas lights and threw them under te bed. Now when milt feet hit the floor in the morning I am greeted by the soft bite glow from under the bed illuminating my path safely. 

And finally when I get up in the dark winter months, I get dressed in the dark so I don't wake my wife with the light. IKEA sells a wonderfull $18 motion sensing light I have mounted in the closet above the door. When the door opens the small led light comes on for 15 seconds which is just long enough for me to differentiate the different shirt colours in the closet so I make a better choice!

Cheers I hope that helps someone. 

Automation is not always an improvement

“I’d go crazy listening to that all day” my coworker said today. She was referring to the repetitive recording that was being ’spoken’ by an electronic motion detecting device at the door to the Sushi shop where we were sitting and consuming sushi. Yes, I added, there is an example of something that doesn’t need to be automated.

Someone who is greeted feels good because you took the time and effort to greet them to extend them courtesy and respect. So greeting is good. The greeting itself may have some value, but it is significantly less value than the reasons or attitude behind the greeting. But, some bright guy thought, hey all this greeting is a lot of work, I need some help, I’ll build a machine to concentrate on making the customers feel good, so I can go on with whatever I’m doing. So you walk in and the machine (decorated as a cat or some such friendly apparition) says “Hello”, and when you leave it says “Welcome” or “Hello”. I tried to determine if the greeting was directional (one greeting upon arrival and a different greeting upon departure), but it wasn’t. In fact if you had thought that the initial greeting was cute, leaving reminded you that it was a ‘dumb’ machine that didn’t care whether you were coming or going never mind pretending that it cared about honouring guests with a suitable greeting. So you can imagine that by the time guests finished sitting on the patio next to this, they were quite clear that their “greeting” was only one of hundreds that day, not special, not meaningful, not even cute.

You like cute? fine, like cute. Go cuddle with your kittens and shake the dust off of your crocheted poodle toilet paper roll cover. Cute has its place, but it needs to stay clear of annoying in my opinion. I think there is an important lesson here that we have the opportunity to grasp. Automating something doesn’t necessarily make it better, particularly if it undermines the very reason for undertaking the activity in the first place.

Thanks for reading.
Greg. 

When I’m not solving problems and thinking about my world, I’m working at improving the Liberty Workorder Management System from Greentree Software which has been cutting our customers manufacturing costs since 2002. We automated the parts that made sense (math) and left the customer the flexibility to make their own decisions about how they work with their data. For example, there is no interface with your accounting system, allowing you to keep the two seperate, relying on clear accessible reporting to provide your staff with the production management and costing information they need without handcuffing you to a 10,000 pound gorilla who will kill you if you make a mistake. No, we don’t like accounting software we use very much either. Liberty is available now to be deployed within your organization. We support the configuration and deployment of our system from start to finish so you can be up and running sooner with the benefits of a work order management system that can help your sales staff quote more effectively. Visit the GreenTree Software website to learn more., we’ll take good care of you.

<re-posted from www.greentreesoftware.ca/blog>