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Robotics

Marian The Robot Librarian 147

Posted by michael
nusratt writes "BBC reports on robotics researchers in Spain, who have developed a prototype which can retrieve books from library shelves while patrons are present. 'When it receives a request for a book, its voice recognition software matches the titles with the book's classification code to identify which bookshelf stack to go to. The robot navigates its way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scans books within a four-metre radius. Once the book is located, it has to grasp it and take it off the bookshelf, which is not a simple as it might seem. For this, the team had to develop special fingertips like nails, with one nail longer than the other. 'For me that was the hardest part. All the other things were current state of the art technology,' said Professor Pobil.' The article also discusses using robots to assist in digitizing library materials."
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Marian The Robot Librarian More

Marian The Robot Librarian

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  • how lazy have we become? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Saturday July 24, 2004 @10:22AM (#9788864) Homepage Journal
    I can understand the tech behind this that's cool, but is it something we really need? What will the humans be doing, drinking cokes and eating some pizza? we're big enough already, I'd rather see tech going to improve the antiquated dewey decimal system.

    HFCB$
    • I suppose we don't need it, but there's a lot of things we don't need. What remains to be seen is whether this techno-toy will actually end up being used or not. And besides, if a robot takes over a human job, the human will find some other task to do. Used to be people had to do huge math problems by hand... now there's computers and calculators. Doesn't mean the scientists get to just sit back and have a few cold ones, though. <g>
      • In fact, we could find ourselves heading for something like when robots started to help in auto-assembley, with the humans who used to do the jobs simply being fired, because it was more efficent to use machines.

        So on one hand, I'm interested to see things like this, but on the other, it does worry me a little.

        Of course, people will still be needed to create and maintain the machines, but the numbers will be less than were orginally employed.
        • Should humans have to do manual, repetitive tasks that can be automated?

          If a robot can do it better, that frees up the human to pursue its happiness.

          A serious re-orientation of the "work ethic" and economic thinking is necessary.
    • They're probably busy updating the DDC ... it's not going away any time soon. The 22d edition came out last year.

      DDC [oclc.org]

    • What we will be doing (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What will the humans be doing, drinking cokes and eating some pizza?


      I'm sorry, no food allowed while on-duty in the robot servicing area. What was your question again?

    • it saves time of human workers, time being money, money being resources(I'm sure you could find a level of pay for the workers where they would be cheaper than using a robot but that would be pretty darn low). arranging books takes time of human workers which is expensive, it's mostly mechanical work too so I can't imagine it being all that fun either.

      what's wrong with drinking cokes and eating some pizzas or with having more free time to do what you want to do instead of what you have to do?

      why do you th

  • Marian... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doomrat ( 615771 ) on Saturday July 24, 2004 @10:22AM (#9788865) Homepage

    "The robot navigates its way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scans books within a four-metre radius. Once the book is located, it has to grasp it and take it off the bookshelf, which is not a simple as it might seem. For this, the team had to develop special fingertips like nails, with one nail longer than the other.

    So basically, Marian is equipped for both finding and killing.

    I find it hilarious the robots are always made with features which would help them to kill humans if they were to turn evil.

    • much like human babies, if they were to turn evil.

      for a robot to turn 'evil' first you have to have genuine AI, and then you have to define evil for robots.
      is evolution 'evil'?.
      if species A overwhelms species B it's not EVIL.. even if one is mechanical and one is organic.....

      • if species A overwhelms species B it's not EVIL.. even if one is mechanical and one is organic...

        don't you know that evolution only applies to nonhuman species? surely you don't suggest that humans, most favored of God's creations, came from apes?

  • Archives (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrWim ( 760798 ) on Saturday July 24, 2004 @10:25AM (#9788879)
    This sounds like it could be really useful for managing archives. I know in Oxford they have a library called the Bod which has several miles of bookshelves underground as it has a copy of everything that has been published in the UK, but if you want somthing that isn't in the publicly accessable parts you need to order it and wait for the old bloke to take the bod train underground and get it for you, which can take a while. I envisage an underground colony of these little robots going about, organising things, retrieving books with a great increase in efficiency.
  • May be an ape might be a better librarian? ;)

  • A good use for RFID? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by oostevo ( 736441 )
    (watch this get modded down to 'troll' ...)

    This might actually be a good use for RFID, or something similar.

    It seems like once the robot gets to the bookshelf it needs to look in per the database, it does a very, very inefficient search book-by-book.

    Could this perhaps be a good use (imagine that) for RFID? It seems that some sort of radio tags on books would help the robot localize the book a bit more and speed up the searches.

    • how about those nifty 2-D bar codes? Maybe a little less scary than RFID, but just as effective...
      • Yes, but with barcodes it has to look book-by-book. With a couple of radio tag receptors, it can triangulate the signal and think to itself "Hmm ... I need to go up and right" instead of "Is this the book? No. Is this the book? No. Is this the book? ..."
        • RFID isn't long range, so triangulation in a large building is out. Besides, if you are in a library the books get filed by author if fiction, or duey decimal if not. The robot knows where to look.
    • Nono, don't jump to conclusions...what makes you think the robots won't be able to access a constantly-changing database recording, among other things, the locations of the books? They just need to give every book slot numbered

      I'm wary of using the term RFID...I think it gives the American government too many boners.
      • "what makes you think the robots won't be able to access a constantly-changing database recording, among other things, the locations of the books" The article ... "Because the database will only give an approximate location, the robot will navigate its way to the bookshelf, using its infrared and laser guidance system, and scan books within a four-metre radius."

    • Re:A good use for RFID? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The point of these systems is to work in an unenhanced environment, one which humans can use just as effectively. For example, robots used to drive around on "virtual" tracks (markers on the ground). That worked fine but it meant that someone had to deploy the markers and whenever something moved, the markers had to be changed accordingly. A robot which can use the same information by which humans navigate a library can be deployed without preparing its surroundings and without the potential of a mismatch b
    • Actually thats a great idea, but I'd go one further. This is my 3 step plan: 1 Have the robot as it is now get the addition of a sticker printer and the ability to tag the books with RFID tags as it works with them, and have it work through the inventory in it's spare time. 2 Make a cheaper bot that uses the RFID to locate the books and have it handle requests for all tagged books. 3 When all your books are tagged, you trade in the deluxe bot for a regular one and get a cash back thing from the manu

  • OCR? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by general_re ( 8883 ) on Saturday July 24, 2004 @10:30AM (#9788905) Homepage
    "Once it is in there, it starts using its cameras. By moving the arm with the cameras, it takes an image of the bookshelf," said Professor Pobil.

    "It can read the labels and the position of the book using its image processing and optical character recognition software," the professor said.

    Wouldn't it be easier just to RFID-tag the books, or give them barcodes on the spine, or otherwise modify them in some way to facilitate the robot's work? I have a sneaking suspicion that either of those would be faster and more reliable than trying to OCR book titles or call-number tags, albeit less "clever". "Clever" solutions that are less functional than more straighforward solutions don't particularly impress me, and I doubt I'm alone on this.

    • It would be easier for the robot, but not easier for the people, and that's what really counts. In large librarys where this would be really useful it is inconcieveable to RFID all the books by hand, so if you were to actually implement this you would need this robot or a simaler one to go round and do all the groundwork first. I think it just wouldn't be worth it. Instead of having to change millions of books, it's easier just to have a more intelligent robot.

      • Re:OCR? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by general_re ( 8883 )
        Well, you wouldn't have to do it all at once - you could just tag books as they're returned by patrons, for example, as part of the reshelving process. Slow, but it would work. Alternately, most large libraries already barcode books on the inside cover, in order to scan them for checkout and checkin - why not put the same barcodes on the spine where the robot can read them? All you'd need is a second copy of the same barcode you already use.
        • That's all well and good, but the robot isn't most useful for books that are taken out regularly as these will be the most accessable books and the borrower can get the books themselves. It shines when a book hasn't been taken out in years/decades and it's hidden far away where people seldom visit and is not open to the public.
          • It shines when a book hasn't been taken out in years/decades and it's hidden far away where people seldom visit and is not open to the public.

            Well, yeah, but those books have barcodes too - however they got the first barcodes on them, that's how you put barcodes/RFID tags on the spine as well. Obviously, it takes an investment of some time, but I'm suggesting that the investment is worth the payoff, especially if we get a chance to sit down and see just how reliably this OCR robot can actually find a giv

        • Or, instead of new bar codes on stickers, RFID chips in stickers. Just slap them on the inside of the cover. You could hit both bases by using new barcode stickers on the spine with RFID chips in them.
      • Libraries have already barcoded millions of books (and some, though probably quite few, use RFID too), so they've shown they are willing to do a hard job one time if it will considerably lower workload in the future.

        One could argue that RFID tags are not succifiently big advantage over barcodes, but that's something that depends on several factors, and may or may not be true depending on the library.

        RFID tagging should also be actually easier than barcoding, since it can be anywhere in the book and doesn'
    • Have barcoded boxes on the shelves. Put the books in the boxes. No need to rfid or barcode the actual books. It could be done with existing technology.

      • Right, exactly, but either way, it's very likely to be more efficient if you slightly modify the enviroment to better fit the robot than if you try to fit the robot into an environment built exclusively for humans - it's not human, and you're better off playing to its strengths and weaknesses than you are in trying to get it to be a human.
      • What's the point?

        Barcoding/RFID tagging books is easy, there's no need to have any special "identification boxes" gobbling up valuable shelf space, and you still need to get and barcode those boxes and put all the books into them so it doesn't save you any work either.
    • It might be more practical to reduce the problem to a simpler one by sticking RDID tags in all the books, but this is research and the point is to do something new. A robot that can find books on the shelf is one step closer to a robot that can find anything you want in a jumble of stuff. A robot that can find RFIDs is 1990's technology...
      • ...but this is research and the point is to do something new.

        No, the point is to solve some problem that humans want/need solved, in which case elegant non-solutions are decidedly inferior to inelegant, brute-force solutions. Sorry if it offends your sense of aesthetics, but if the idea is to put these things out into the public so that they can do things for us, which is what the lead researcher claims to be interested in, then it hardly seems unreasonable to insure that they do, in fact, perform the ta

    • Yes. Considering how hard OCR is to do properly even when you're reading well-written text, recognizing some of the more ornamental scribbles in book spines is going to be simply impossible. Heck, it's hard for human to read those flowery scripts.

      Even barcodes would be vastly better than nothing, but RFID beats them handily.

      Some number of libraries around the world already uses RFID as well, there's one (http://www.tietoenator.com/default.asp?path=1,96 , 135&hid=948209 [tietoenator.com]) in the next town. It's pretty n
  • We're now that much closer to making Space Quest I a reality. Anyone remember that robot at the beginning of the game, when the ship's falling apart? I bet they had that game in mind when they were designing this robot.
  • Out sourcing is bad, therefore, the government should ban robots to protect us from robots taking our jobs. Oh wait, robots are taking librarian jobs and since it doesn't affect most slashdotters, they should go ahead and replace the librarians with robots. The government should hold off on banning of the robots until they do a massive take over of IT jobs since it will cause unemployment of the geeks and cause major economic harm.

    • Oh wait, robots are taking librarian jobs and since it doesn't affect most slashdotters, they should go ahead and replace the librarians with robots.

      I'm a librarian, you insensitive clod !

      However, considering that the mess that most library shelfs are is often difficult for human eyes to parse, I doubt that I'm in great danger of losing my job anytime soon. Not only are books at different depths in the shelf (shading each other), but they are sometimes purposefully hidden when someone finds a good boo

      • I've worked in my college's library and I have to agree. Since this system is designed to still allow patrons to browse shelves while the robot is working, this means that should a patron accidentily push a book so far back that it goes behind the other books, then the robot would be unable to find it.

        This would also cause a problem with libraries like the one at my college which use the Library of Congress system instead of the Dewey Decimal System. At my library, we've asked most patrons to not reshelve

      • Yeah... wake me up when they have a robot that can put books back on the shelf when people are done reading them. And put them in the proper place, oriented correctly, and without damaging the adjacent books.
    • Value Added Profitability genius.

      The economy benefits more from someone who gets paied to process wheat into flower than it does from someone who's paied to harvest wheat.

      Extrapolate that to librarians and robots. Which has a greater net benefit to the economy, people shelving books or people designing robotic systems to shelve books?

      The shelving committee will find something else to do with its time. When all is said and done though, the economy will be stronger because of changes like this.
      • Replace the word librarians with "IT workers" and the slashdotters would sing a different tune. But it's not suprising because people like you don't really give a shit if someone else may lose their jobs as long as it's not yours.
        • Everyone looses jobs. The world economy moves on. People adapt. Admittedly, we pay a price for the national prosperity that this forward motion brings, but that price is well worth the standard of living we enjoy because of it.

          Think about it this way. 100 years ago most Americans farmed for a living. 50 years ago most Americans worked manufacturing jobs. 25 a tiny percentage of Americans worked in the IT industry....

          As we move up the scale those who worked the jobs that we replace find new employmen
    • I didn't really see anybody embracing the robots as a way to reduce the number of librarians that are employed. If these robots were intended to do some of the work of IT professionals, I suspect that the discussion would be very similar in tone. Given time, it may be possible that librarians and IT professionals may have some reason to worry that a robot may take their jobs, that day is not here. Unlike the robots that assemble widgets, the repetitive manual work that these library robots could do is li
      • The problem is that during the 80's a lot of blue collar jobs in manufacturing were starting to be outsourced to the third worlds with much cheaper labor. Many of the white collar workers thought that their jobs were safe back then, but look at what's happening now?
  • Couldn't they have just outfitted the fingertips with a vacuum just powerful enough to be able to pull the book so that safer, rubber fingertips could be used, instead of 'nail' fingertips?
  • ... such robots could help children and people with handicaps and paralysis find the books they want to read or can't reach on the shelves. Would be better if it didn't have to go check the data base every time a request was made though. For example if you could point to a book or tell the title of one you're looking at on the shelf, but can't reach, it would be better if the robot could just grab it for you, than have to access the data base, and scan, and all that other stuff.
    • What about having the robot access the database with a wireless connection?

      Moll.
      • Even still, the robot would have to run through all the titles, authors, whatever, until it found the selections that matched. Another problem is, what if they mispronounce the title, or have an accent or something? The robot would have to scan its entire database until it popped up with an error message, or a bunch of possible titles, or whatever, for you to scroll through and select.
        • It's not like the searching of the database in a regular library would take more than a second (and I assume the robot will have to have some good hardware inside anyway in order to be able to do all the movement calculations in real time, OCR fast etc). Still, I can agree the "manual navigation" mode would be useful too.

  • I heart books (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsklnkv ( 532866 ) <rsklnkv@hPOLLOCK ... rg minus painter> on Saturday July 24, 2004 @10:38AM (#9788938) Homepage Journal
    I work at Powells, a massive bookstore in Oregon. Some of us make light over the fact that we are slowly becoming an extremely corporate entity, and that we are reaching a horrid level of 'Barnes & Nobelization'. At this point someone always chimes in and makes a joke about how we will soon have automated bookstore employees, and maybe a drive-through window. Not so funny anymore.
    I have to admit that this sounds cool. I just wonder what this thing would do with the masses of people who come in and say "Yeah, I'm looking for that big red book...You know, the one that was mentioned on the radio this morning...I think it has 'God' in the title..." Hehe. Good luck. I can't tell you how many times people come in and have no clue about the book they want, they have some concept of maybe the size, or the approx. year, or maybe simply a small bit of the plot. I don't think the communication that takes place between a knowledgeable book geek and a person looking for just that right book can ever be fully replaced.
    • I just wonder what this thing would do with the masses of people who come in and say "Yeah, I'm looking for that big red book...You know, the one that was mentioned on the radio this morning...

      You know, if there was some kind of online service that listed all the books that were mentioned on NPR, the NYTimes, and (bleh) Oprah, and included keyword searches on the plot and main characters, that would be pretty useful. It could provide a ranking, with the most likely hits at the top, so booksellers/librar
  • "New library robot will help patrons find books, Sarah Connor"

  • I need to browse (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GrEp ( 89884 ) <crb002@NOSPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday July 24, 2004 @10:42AM (#9788959) Homepage Journal
    I hate automated systems like this. When I am looking for a book on a certain subject I like to browse through all the adjacent books to see what I may be missing.
    • Librarians - whether machine or human - are there to help you in case you don't find whatever you're looking for by yourself. Shouldn't stop you from browsing any more than his flesh-and-blood colleagues do.

      Automated systems rock, perhaps not this - I doubt it'll work, since both OCR and voice regognition are HARD - but loaning automatons for example, no need to bother librarian when I can just drop a pile of books and my card to RFID reader (yup, they already use it in some libraries) or trough barcode sc
  • I can't help but be reminded of this episode of Dexter's Laboratory, where Dexter is placed in charge of the school library.

    After discovering an out of place "Green Eggs and Ham" book, he creates a fleet of flying robots to manage the library. When these robots can't find a particular book, he has to look for it himself, destroying the library in the process.
  • ... for those who want to have time to read a novel while the robot librarian goes in search of your requested book. Fetch rover! Give it a challenge like War and Peace.
  • has to grasp it and take it off the bookshelf, which is not a simple as it might seem.

    Well, considering how long it takes for a child to learn to take out a book from a bookshelf, without ripping out all the pages, I hope there's some understanding of the complicated process of learning a machine to handle physical objects. Not just mechanically, but adapting sensor data to the real world can be really hard.
  • I think it would be more useful to have a robot that put the books back.
  • that robots are being made wimpy like this.

    What an embarrassment to the robot community to go from finding Sarah Connor to finding some twits copy of The Cat in the Hat.
  • > ASTRAL BODY

  • I still don't see the need to put perfectly capable orangutan librarians out on the streets. And it's so cool to watch them flying around the shelves like they were in the treetops.

    P.S. Oooook!

  • Could it scan all the pages and send a eBook to
    me in a remote location? Stored in eLibrary for future requests of course. /sorry a robot ate my homework/
  • But only if you're unwilling to retrain when a robot takes your job. Lets say these robots learn to stock shelves at grocery stores in the wee hours of the morning. Prices of food are going to go down a bunch because one robot working tirelessly through the night will be able to do the job of many people. I really think this could happen after the strikes we're recently had in California. So people lose jobs, check out luddite on wikipedia. It's going to get weird when a giant corporation consists of o
    • The funniest thing I see in the UK is people striking because their department is under threat of relocation to India. Like that's really going to score the option of keeping you well.
    • Having done a bit of shelf-stocking I can confidently say that without a revolution in food product packaging humans will not be in any danger of replacement any time soon. Just try and count the different kinds of packages in your store, you will be there all day. In fact, you will need to adopt some sort of classification system just to keep track. Then consider that slightly damaged packages are not discarded, you just have to be more creative about placing them on shelves. The short form is that it's go
  • ...would have been "I, Librarian".

    I know, I know, *Groooooan*. Fine, that wasn't very funny.

    But then, neither is the fact that these will be the main characters in future librarian-based sexual fantasies. Frightening...
  • Sure. But, as Will Smith has shown us, all robots are inherently evil and will eventually turn against their masters in an orgy of blood and violence. It'll start simple: You'll request William Gibson, and it'll bring you DebbieGibson. Then, you'll request "Through the Looking Glass" and it THROWS you through the looking glass! It'll happen!
  • That robot is not a librarian... It should really be called a "Robot Page" since that is title of the position who puts the books back on the shelves. For this to really be a librarian, it would have to know how to find you that rare quote you wanted for your thesis, or suggest a good novel for you to read next.

    I get so irritated when people dissect my career and believe that all we do is put books on shelves. I don't do that. I do a million other things, from research to coding web pages in PHP, but I do
  • Hmm, you'd think that Nails would damage the book, eh? Or at least scratch it up some. Unless, of course, they are used for something else.

    I find it very interesting how far our robotics have gone so far. Many people think that it could have gone a lot further, but I'm not really sure. After all, we do have that automatic oven now. Sure, it's not a robot, but I think I'd rather have it over a robot that grabs my book for me. I have legs and a card catalog! But I'm not a senior citizen... so I guess they'

  • automaton (Score:1, Troll)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
    These "librarians" can fetch your books, but they can't translate your research premises into the language of the stacks, or stand up for your privacy against the Patriot Act. These robots will be good for automating human librarians, freeing more of their time to talk with us about facilitating our research, and innovating ways to improve our society's access to our offline data layer.
    • My (parent) post states the truth about librarians being more than book fetchers. And the Patriot Act being more of a threat to your privacy. So it gets modded a "Troll". Good thing I listened to my elementary school librarian about the irrepressable power of free speech.
  • When I am looking through the Stacks for something; I like to scope out the other books in the Sections.
    Will the Robot be attracted to books by their shapes, fragments of glimpsed Titles, or other Human and Individual filetering techniques. I have found the most interesting books, quite by accident. Sometimes you are cruising through the stacks and see a big, dusty old Tome, and you cannot pass it by. You pull it down and leaf through it. Maybe you do not check it out, but it causes a train of thought, and
  • But I don't think it's so good for the regular Joe. Looking up the Dewy number on a PC is fine, but getting the book should be a 'live' experience.

    I believe a very rough approximation of this (automated book retrieval) was tried in that big-ugly library in paris.

    It sucked.

  • Cool (Score:1)

    by bkhl ( 189311 )
    It's almost just like that thing in The Confusion.
  • It's a good robotics problem. As with most industrial robot applications, they've had to develop an end-effector specific to the task. (The term "end effector" covers more than grippers; an end effector may be a socket wrench or a paint sprayer.) This one really is a gripper, one composed of two flat plates, one longer than the other. The problem is structured enough that a relatively simple gripper will work, but requires good force feedback to pull out one book without disturbing others.

    Putting books

  • Why grasp the sides of the book? I thought the easiest way would be to grab the top of the spine and pull back and down. Maybe a forklift on the bottom and a sort of hook on the top to grab the spine at the top and bottom.

    Grabbing the sides seems frought with problems, ie. Books too tightly packed, pincers cant get in between books or pinch books either too hard, dimpling the covers, or not hard enough, dropping books.
  • My wife is a librarian of the human persuasion. Taking books off the shelf is an insignificant part of working the public service side of the library. Does the robot librarian deal with patrons that urinate/crap in the elevators, lay down in the aisles to look up women's skirts, kick twelve year old boys off the Internet terminals for looking at porn, kick fifty year old men off the Internet terminals for looking at porn...? More importantly, how does a robot librarian deal with a patron that wants a boo
  • and I suggest we all read Kurt Vonnegut's, Player Piano, again.
  • Ok something off-topic is being dredged up from my deepest earliest childhood memories. Some children's reading show on PBS with Marian the Librarian. She had a machine she'd put objects in and a book would come out the other end.

    "There took place this curious chase through meadow, tree, and flower. Til at last they ended up right at the witch's tower. So now Marian the Librarian, a prisoner she'll stay, until the witch is happy and lets Marian go away."

    WTF am I thinking of?
  • In case you aren't aware of what librarians actually do, why not check out this profile [bls.gov] provided by the U.S. Department of Labor. Here's one salient paragraph:

    The traditional concept of a library is being redefined from a place to access paper records or books to one that also houses the most advanced media, including CD-ROM, the Internet, virtual libraries, and remote access to a wide range of resources. Consequently, librarians, or information professionals, increasingly are combining traditional duties

  • Good point about digitizing, you could unleash a team of wifi enabled autonomous robots into a library and come back a few days later and everything would be digitized, saved and put back where it was found. The CIA should also develop this technology to allow them to covertley and remotley scan sensitive meterials and put them back exactly as there were found and leave little to no evidice behind.
  • jebus, this is a waste of tech. Why invent things to keep the dead tree format alive? Take all the money and time and just digitize all the books. Plug in terminal and let people read all the books at will. Hell for the ammount of money it costs to buy dead trees, ship and store them you could just print on demand DVD's and save money in the end. Using Tech to keep us in the 15th century is just lame.
  • Once I went to a library (like this one) that wouldn't let you look at the books...you had to tell a person what book you wanted, and they got it for you.
    When I goto a library, I am not always sure the title of the book I want...usually I just go to the appropriate section, and look through the books until I find one that is good. Seeing the title in a card catalogue is not enough to help me decide what I want.
    In that library, I really annoyed the workers because I kept asking for books, then retur
  • As one of those anarchist librarians mentioned yesterday, I'm not worried about this robot. As another librarian said on a list yesterday, "Calling a robot a librarian makes as much sense as calling a pill-dispensing robot a doctor."
  • "I'd like a book on Birds of England, Please."

    Robo-librarian grinds away and comes back with something like .. English Birds [englishbirds.com]

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