Alphabet Puts Prototype Robots To Work Cleaning Up Google's Offices (theverge.com) 31
The company announced today that its Everyday Robots Project -- a team within its experimental X labs dedicated to creating "a general-purpose learning robot" -- has moved some of its prototype machines out of the lab and into Google's Bay Area campuses to carry out some light custodial tasks. The Verge reports: "We are now operating a fleet of more than 100 robot prototypes that are autonomously performing a range of useful tasks around our offices," said Everyday Robot's chief robot officer Hans Peter Brondmo in a blog post. "The same robot that sorts trash can now be equipped with a squeegee to wipe tables and use the same gripper that grasps cups can learn to open doors."
These robots in question are essentially arms on wheels, with a multipurpose gripper on the end of a flexible arm attached to a central tower. There's a "head" on top of the tower with cameras and sensors for machine vision and what looks like a spinning lidar unit on the side, presumably for navigation. As Brondmo indicates, these bots were first seen sorting out recycling when Alphabet debuted the Everyday Robot team in 2019. The big promise that's being made by the company (as well as by many other startups and rivals) is that machine learning will finally enable robots to operate in "unstructured" environments like homes and offices.
These robots in question are essentially arms on wheels, with a multipurpose gripper on the end of a flexible arm attached to a central tower. There's a "head" on top of the tower with cameras and sensors for machine vision and what looks like a spinning lidar unit on the side, presumably for navigation. As Brondmo indicates, these bots were first seen sorting out recycling when Alphabet debuted the Everyday Robot team in 2019. The big promise that's being made by the company (as well as by many other startups and rivals) is that machine learning will finally enable robots to operate in "unstructured" environments like homes and offices.
Tell me more (Score:3)
I'm writing a detective novel involving a crew of robots that killed people in a hit squad, this is fascinating.
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I'm writing a detective novel involving a crew of robots that killed people in a hit squad, this is fascinating.
Here's your homework [imdb.com].
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5.9/10??? I remember it as being a descent movie.
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5.9/10??? I remember it as being a descent movie.
people don't like a realistic ending
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cool.
how about having it dust the rest of the room
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5.9/10??? I remember it as being a descent movie.
Yes, it descended rapidly.
a multipurpose gripper (Score:2)
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Relax, someone has to schedule the robots, maintain the robots, maintain the tools and supplies the robots use. You'll just do less manual labor and more managing the labor. They'll need someone when one of those things get stuck in a cubicle because something fell. You are not going anywhere, you are getting new job skills.
If robots do all of the work and there are no humans then we don't need robots that clean up after humans.
I don't know about you but if I were to live in some bizzaro world wh
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Re: This is why (Score:2)
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Relax, someone has to schedule the robots, maintain the robots, maintain the tools and supplies the robots use. You'll just do less manual labor and more managing the labor. They'll need someone when one of those things get stuck in a cubicle because something fell. You are not going anywhere, you are getting new job skills.
Let me play devil's advocate for a second. My office contracts with an agency for custodial work that hires disabled people exclusively. Many of the custodians are doing this work because they're unable to do other work, such as maintaining robots, maintaining tools, etc. Even if some of them could do these tasks, you could probably keep one of them (the most capable, lets say) and replace the others with these robots. Where will the people we let go work?
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The robots have already won, we should all just kill ourselves now. In what world is your scenario anywhere near reality?
We've had the UBI thought experiment, and some even claim to have tried it (but none of those was actually 'universal'). If we were to hit a reality that actually required UBI then I'm sure we would pull the trigger, take a look at all the 'stimulus' in the last year or so. Our lives are still filled humans, no robot pumps my gas or serves my lunch or cleans my office.
Which economic the
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Current level of AI is specialist. The AI can do much better job than a human in a limited sector of work. Deepmind has already some plans about how to make general AI. Next version is not general AI, ,but it is AI that can learn new tasks faster by using old things it has learned. It can also specialize in multiple areas at the same time. It would be something like a perfect assistant that you can ask to do pretty much anything for you, but it won't do anything unless told.
But we actually already have tech
If Google's robots are taking out the trash, (Score:3)
I suggest that they start with the whole C-suite and then work their way up to the Board of Directors. Then maybe what's left of Google could lend the robots to FaceMeta. That would truly be technology in the service of humanity.
I played that game! (Score:1)
Re: I played that game! (Score:1)
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Marvin (Score:2)
Are they personality prototypes too?
Gross Example (Score:2)
FTA:
Eww! The trash-sorting robot is the same one that cleans the table I eat lunch on? And it will serve me my coffee? And smear the muck all over door handles?
They really came up with a disgusting use case there.
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They really came up with a disgusting use case there.
Robots can be cleaned in ways that would melt off a human's skin in at least three interesting ways; they also never lie about having washed their hand(s).
Re: Gross Example (Score:2)
Hopefully it does a better job (Score:3)
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I could use one of these.... (Score:1)