Robotic smart buildings under development in Japan, J.G. Ballard says 'told ya'
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Feb 6th 2009 1:34PM
posted Feb 6th 2009 1:34PM
Think of it as home automation but on a far larger scale: The Small Robotics Building project is a joint undertaking by Shimizu Corp and Yasukawa Electric Corp in Japan. Utilizing smart infrastructure technology and robotics, the companies are creating an automated living environment that can handle such duties as reception, deliveries, cleaning, and security, without the need for human intervention. Instead of relying on individual robots to perform functions like human detection and device control, all this is handled by the building-wide network, which then dispatches robots to perform various tasks. Sure, this all sounds very High Rise, but don't start mulling over notions of postmodern alienation yet: all we have right now is a demo called the Smart Showroom, where visitors are greeted by an adorable robot, who gives a little presentation while involving spoken explanations and a projector. Sounds innocent enough, right?
will they mop out the men's room at the end of the day too?
THIS IS IT! Its the end of the world, their going to start by taking over our skyscrapers, hotels, restaruants, and laundry mats, theyll start running businesses, things will be all nice and perfect and then BLAM! Terminators come and snuff us, I dont like it one bit Roomba not one bit. Hey wait a minute whats that your beeping noise, oh nooo suicide roomba bomber! AHH! *BOOM*
Everything sounds good until robotic spiders crawl into your place, get all up in your face, and scan your eye. If you resist, they shock you.
Was that a Gremlins 2 refference?
Let's eliminate even more jobs and take out all daily human interaction. We might as well just tear everything down and ship ourselves into the sun.
I don't agree. Why do people need jobs? Because they need money. Why? They need food and basic supplies. If robots take over most of our daily lives, money will become increasingly obsolete. And what interaction are you talking about? I don't think that "HEY EARL, MOP UP THE GODDAMN TOILET!!!" counts as a fruitful piece of social interaction. Robots take over the dirty jobs (sorry, Mike, love the show) nobody really wants. If robots were made to grow our food, it wouldn't be expensive at all. And then comes the immortal question where should robots stop and humans begin. Because the easier our lives, the more of us survive and reproduce. We're looking at probably 15-20 billion people by the end of the century. And here come robots to help us colonize. But for now, I'm content with them wanting to clean my house and we'll see where that goes from here.
@Vicada - And where exactly are these 15-20 billion people going to live? Seeing the way our space program has been crawling, I'm not confident we'll be settling other planets by then.
And there is much more social interaction that goes on at work than being ordered around. There's also the need for a human to feel useful. Which, admittedly, some of us are starting to forget...
Jointed robots with electrical power don't do to well around water. Where would we really need robot labor? Farms. Food and water are the real necessities of life, not toilets or secretaries.
Forget about other planets. Forget about the moon. They could not be made self sufficient in the next 10,000 years. Forget about robots, even. Humans could have made Earth into a paradise several hundred years ago. We didn't. We won't.
I, for one, will welcome our new robotic overlords. And also, do they do windows?
More Batteries, Sire?
No, they run it!
Unless and until they gain self-awareness...which isn't even technologically possible at this point...all of these worries about robots taking over is kind of silly.
I smell Event Horizon.
Welcome to the past... Here in Oslo, Norway our latest hospital is already automated with robots doing the deliveries and messaging. They even stop for people, so they don't add to the number of patients ;)
Kind of reminds me of toys from the 80's, the Robbie Robots sold at Radio Shack or The NES Robot
http://www.theoldrobots.com/robiesr.html
http://www.robietherobot.com/art/RobieBank.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B.
As long as I can own a dumb robot to kick around my house and my son to throw down the stairs, and better yet - they'll keep comming back for more!
@Andrew - Are there laws against "robot cruelty"?
It'll be people like you that'll cause the robots to kill us all once they become sentient
:)
Looks like the Burj Al Arab on the right.
http://images.google.com/images?q=burj%20al%20arab