DeeKnow’s Grotto

Whilst emailing back and fwd to a couple of mates about the evils of spam last week, Lord Plunket mentioned a spam on RoboSweeps (which are apparently a load of shit) and Vike responded...

RobosSweep?  LOL.  hmmm, I wonder if there are any robots lurking around my house?  I'd love to have one!

I've always been fascinated by the robotics thing, and love the idea of a mechanical domestic slave (real-life slaves just arent quite PC any more), and suggested to Vike that we could build one in his garage...

Could turn your garage into a mechatronics workshop, be a nice summer project over a few beers. Could build a 'bot that fetches beer from the fridge, and is able to discriminate between labels, ie smash the DB-Draught stubbies, but be careful with the Chimay's

Vike's response was...

Good idea.  However, if it found a DB Draught in my fridge it would be programmed to destroy the beer and the fridge, and disinfect the house!

If it found Chimay it would get an upgrade.First thing to do : clean out the garage! Second : get power into the garage. Third : build robot army and take over the world...

Lord Plunket not being quite behind the 8-ball, but very creative once he does get up to speed, chipped-in with...

i missed the intro to the robo thing. i get the picture tho. can robots look and feel like playboy bunnies yet?

I like his thinking, hygeine issues spring to mind though. Of course some robots are cooler than others. The hunk-of-junk on Lost-In-Space for example ('the Robot') was just a friggin nerd, whereas meks like the ABC warriors are definatetly the shit. Dont mess with those metalic mothers.

Cooincidentally I'd just been reading a discussion on SlashDot about a recent United Nations report into numbers of Industrial and Domestic robots. It turns out that the domestic bot thing is about to really take off...

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) just released its 2003 World Robotics survey. The original press release by UNECE has 15 pages in PDF format, while the full report represents 380 pages. Here are the three essential findings:

1. robot orders in first half of 2003 were up by 26% to the highest level ever recorded
2. worldwide growth in the period 2003-2006 will reach an average annual rate of 7.4%
3. household robots are starting to take off

It is projected that sales of all types of domestic robots  (vacuum cleaning, lawn-mowing, window cleaning and other types) in the period 2003-2006 can reach some 638,000 units.

8:52:44 PM