Dobot@CES
Mostly a ho-hum year for robots at CES. Lots of bipedal humanoids, $600-800 for tabletops and $20K+ for the same over promising service droids we've seen for 20 years. I did like this DOBOT Magician from China, a small solid arm which sells for $1000 which includes multiple end effectors for 3D printing, laser engraving and obviously a gripper too. Huge work envelope. http://dobot.cc/dobot-magician/product-overview.html
Comments
Too bad! I'd like to have seen what your hands-on testing of it would have revealed!
http://www.keyirobot.com/
http://roboticsunderthestole.blogspot.com/2017/01/2017-ces-via-erco.html
The Grillbot guys handed out a neat promo, a business card with a flip-out USB mini thumbdrive, containing the attached PDF with their whole marketing campaign, a textbook example of shameless self-promotion and overpromising. There's even a Bluetooth APP!
I had to edit their PDF a bit down to fit the forum limit of 2MB, I used http://www.pdfescape.com for the first time which worked great.
We see the same things year over year. Some just plain miss the mark. A grill cleaning robot? That's from like three years ago, but my complaint is the same: we *like* to clean the grill because it's part of the routine -- besides, no grill should be so clean you can see the original enamel or chrome. Tasting a bit of last summer's picnic is part of the fun.
OTOH, who likes to follow fido around and clean up after his little outdoor doos. There should be a robot for that. And how about one that helps you fold your polo shirts so they look like they came right off the sales table at JCPenney. A robot to find my lost remotes. I could have really used one of those last night. Instead I had to turn off the TV and read a book.
Seriously, what I'd really like to see is a new push for robots that actually help people to live normal lives. Adaptive assistive robots for the old, injured, or infirm. An application of the vision portion of self-driving cars to help blind people become truly independent, including places they've never been -- a seeing eye robot, if you'd like. And so on.
Yes, I know these have been demonstrated, but where are the commercial, consumer products? Will personal assistant bots only be popular in Japan? Everyone is still trying to be Charles Link. Let's remember a big shelf fell on him, killed him, and caused his wonderful self-aware creation to be blamed for murder. It's okay to aim a little dumber in the AI-scale and make things folks can actually use in their lives.
It's def wise for us to plan ahead and build bots to take care of us when we get (not much!) older. I don't think millennial kids will give a hoot about taking care of their elders.
After a summer of grillin, I throw away the grill brush. Not something I want to recharge, just too greasy.
EDIT: Throw away the whole grill, it's easier than cleaning three inches of fattss from the tray underneath.