Neato Robotics sent Andrew the D7 robot vacuum to try. He promptly named it ‘Archie’ and shares his thoughts in this review.
robotics
Neato Robot Vacuums Can Be Controlled With Siri Shortcuts
Neato Robotics announced today that it added support for Siri Shortcuts within its app. This means you can start controlling your robot vacuum with your voice.
By connecting your Neato to Siri Shortcuts, Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, you can simply start cleaning just by using your voice.
I’d love to get a robot vacuum some day. In the meantime, if you have one of these products, try controlling it with a shortcut on your HomePod, Apple Watch, or iOS device.
PETA Wants to Replace Punxsutawney Phil With AI
Animal rights group PETA wants to replace famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil with an animatronic AI.
The way the group sees it, not only would an AI be better at estimating when the winter will end, but it would also attract an entirely new generation of visitors to the western Pennsylvanian town. “Today’s young people are born into a world of terabytes, and to them, watching a nocturnal rodent being pulled from a fake hole isn’t even worthy of a text message,” Newkirk said. “Ignoring the nation’s fast-changing demographics might well prove the end of Groundhog Day.”
The Anki Vector Robot is Coming Back
Anki built little companion robots like Vector and Cosmo. But in early 2019 the company ran out of money and shut down. But the CEO of Digital Dream Labs announced it had purchased Anki’s assets and will continue to develop the Anki Vector robot.
1) We will develop an “Escape Pod”. This will, safely, expose settings and allow the user to move and set endpoints, and by doing so, remove the need for the cloud server.
2) We will develop a “Dev Vector”. Many users have asked us for open source and the ability to do more with their Vector even to the point of hosting him on their own servers. With this feature, developers will be able to customize their robot through a bootloader we will develop.
The Case For Apple to Make Home Robots Just Got Stronger
The profitability of cars is low. And Apple is a mass-market consumer electronics company that maintains high margins. Seeking Alpha argues that Apple should use its AI tech for home robots instead.
Robotics Video: Evan Rachael Wood Meets Sophia
Mashable writes about an upcoming short film featuring two famous robots, one of whom is an actress and one is real.
Unless you live under a rock, you might know of the world’s most famous real-life humanoid, Sophia, the robot…
An enticing trailer for has recently come out for a short film called SophiaWorld starring HBO’s Westworld actress Evan Rachael Wood…
Television’s most famous Robot, actress Evan Rachel Wood, and arguably the world’s most famous real-life humanoid, Sophia the Robot, have a chance encounter in a swanky NY hotel bar…
The short film will premiere on September 4 on Futurism.com.
Neato Robot Vacuums Can Use Siri Shortcuts
Neato robotic vacuums can use Siri Shortcuts and HomeKit, like starting, pausing, and stopping cleaning later this year.
Zone cleaning lets you deploy the vacuum to specific, targeted areas of your house so they get cleaned more readily, and it sounds like you’ll be able to set up Siri shortcuts for specific zones. That should let user use voice commands to send the vacuum to different parts of the house, a pretty handy feature. And if you’re not so much into the voice commands, Siri Shortcuts will enable the Neato app to learn and suggest times to send out your vacuum with lock screen suggestions.
Future Historian Steve Carper - TMO Background Mode Interview
Steve Carper is a Future Historian, researching how the dazzling future that dominated the Golden Age of science fiction was created—starting with the technological frenzy of the late 19th century.
Steve writes a bi-weekly robot column at BlackGate.com and his latest book, published in June 2019, is Robots in American Popular Culture. This book examines society’s reactions to robots and androids such as Robby, Rosie, Elektro, Sparko, Data, WALL-E, C-3PO and the Terminator in popular culture.
Steve and I discussed his new book, covering some of the most famous robots of fiction and then all aspects of robot technology in our culture: robots as servants, enemies, lovers, children, successors and doubles. Where will the evolution of robots take our society next? Klaatu barada nikto.
An Example of How Robots Will Augment Not Replace Jobs
From FastCompany: “A hospital introduced a robot to help nurses. They didn’t expect it to be so popular”
That means nurses don’t even have to remember certain tasks that used to be part of their daily job, which is a meaningful way to reduce their cognitive load. “They don’t have to think about telling the robot to do things,” says [Vivian] Chu, who has a PhD in robotics from Georgia Tech.
This kind of optimized offloading will help workers focus on being even more productive. That is, if employers figure that out. [Image credit: FastCompany.]
Rico Zorkendorfer Left Apple to Join Bumblebee Spaces
Rico Zorkendorfer left Apple in April where he worked in the industrial design team. He recently joined startup Bumblebee Spaces.