Domestic Robots Within Human Culture

In the last 50 or so years robots have been in the human subconscious mind. They have been weaved within science fiction stories, movies and television series seen by billions.  In the ten years this idea of a robot working in your home has slowly become a reality for many of you.  Many are able to clean up your floors, pools, gutters and even cut your grass successfully while others teach humans on how to create future versions for new tasks.  It is in the home that technology finally takes root and becomes second nature to humans within their every day lives.  Domestic robots will close the gap between science fiction technology and the everyday "appliance".  Enjoy this nice commercial from General Electric showing just that!

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Indistinguishable From Us

At the current pace of domestic robot technology, within a human generation or two, your domestic robot will be indistinguishable from your fellow human being. Sooner or later genetics and robotics will interleave each other to create a new cyber-genetic life form and a future Steve Jobs-like entrepreneur (like Peter Weyland from "Alien" Sci-fi universe) will announce such a technology. Your typical domestic robot will be not much different than you. Sci-fi in the likes of the New Battlestar Galactica, A.I., Blade Runner, Alien, Star Trek and Bicentennial Man (to name a few) have predicted that humans will reach a level of technology to create such God-like wonders. The issue to ponder to such wonders is how will human species react to their equal? enslave them? destroy them? or work together for the betterment of both against the face of the universe? Many would say that if these robots were able to acquire self awareness that they in turn enslave and/or destroy their creators.


These are hard and disturbing questions to make, questions that require to be asked and answered accordingly. Currently it appears that your trustworthy domestic robot floor cleaner, lawn mower, sentry and pet will not be a cause of concern but in the time line of your immediate decedents it will be very different. Here is a nice computer generated short (created with a Sony PS3 as a tech demo from QuanticDream) about a Domestic Android called "Kara" caught in a very tough situation when her human creator finds out that she is self aware. Will you react the same? Welcome to the future.

A Self Aware Domestic Robot

Intelligence is something that Homo sapiens takes for granted but it is a very unique gift to all self aware beings no matter if they are carbon or silicon based. Take "The Corpora" Qbo example of a very primitive but interesting leap forward in domestic robotic artificial intelligence. They were able to program their lovely little Qbo domestic robot to know the difference between seeing itself in a mirror (a very unique trait only shared by nine carbon based species) or a fellow Qbo robot! They were able to accomplish by using OpenQbo (a Linux distro exclusively dedicated to robotics) and a few signal feedback tricks.












This opens the path to more intelligent domestic robots that can collaborate as a work force for your home. Imagine, if you wish, any of the floor cleaning domestic robots knowing each other and communicating which areas of the home require cleaning without overlapping efforts! Better yet, would be a domestic robot like Serge from Caprica (Sci-Fi show) that is able to communicate with humans and interface with your home with ease! This is all possible and it is just within the grasp of your own human lifespan. Here is a short demonstrating this great short leap into domestic robotics artificial intelligence. Keep up the good work Qbo!

Samsung Navibot S - Cleaning on The Right Path

Yes, Samsung could very well be the technological love child between Apple and Sony. The great designs and technological wizardry of both but not limited to just LCD Televisions or mobile phones but spilling over into domestic robotics territory for the past few years. Samsung is walking the path which I have been suggesting to all domestic robot companies! It appears that Samsung engineers have been reading DomesRO posts all these years? I really hope so. Soon, within weeks (almost smelling it), Samsung will start selling their Navibot S / SR8980 model (approx. MSRP US$1000) in Korea. What makes this particular model unique? How about a semi-autonomous floor cleaning robot that can:

A - Map out your room, so it can efficiently clean it
B- Take all the collected floor debris and dump it into a bag-less docking/charging station!
C- Has dual side brushes to clean better
D - Lower profile to fit under furniture much better
E- Great sexy looking design (as if the designers went to Apple and Sony schools to receive their PhD)

It has taken almost a decade for a domestic robot company to improve over Karcher's RC3000 great idea! Now, let us wake up from that Matrix-like dream and come back to this reality. Samsung floor cleaning robots has a couple of issues to address immediately in order to create the ideal floor cleaning domestic robot. First, they will need to improve dramatically on the cleaning mechanism that they are using in their Navibots. The cleaning mechanism is anemic at best, it reminds me of the Infinuvo Cleanmate QQ series that has poor suction and lack of counter rotating brushes. Humans get these robots because they need to effectively clean their floors! Humans can't do much technological wonders (a.k.a. Bells and Whistles) if it can't even help collect the dust bunnies effectively! Second, the navigation system requires improvement. Yes, it is efficient but not effective. Roomba with its aging cleaning mechanism and algorithms is able to effectively clean floors better compared to any current Samsung robot. Samsung currently has the best design and idea but requires to back it up with effectiveness, if they do then and only then will they have THE ideal domestic floor cleaning robot! Here is a short video of the Navibot S model taken at IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) - September 2011. If you understand Italian then you are a better android than me! Enjoy.