I don't think enough people understand
that Roomba, the vacuuming robot produced by iRobot Inc., is more
than just a gadget, it is a navigating robot that consumers invite
into their homes to partake in family life.
It's remarkable that Roomba can
maneuver – with occasional errors, of course – any home without
prior exposure. Just like a human inhabitant in your home, it can
“see” the room around it so it does not make a fool of itself
tumbling into the couch.
But Roomba is not just a houseguest,
it's part of the family. Roomba and other domestic robots, for
example, its mopping counterpart Scooba, adopt family roles by doing
chores. A high-end, non-autonomous vacuum, which costs around the
same as Roomba, doesn't do the work for you. Why, then, hasn't
every home purchased a robotic helper?
Jodi Forlizzi in the Human-Computer
Interaction department at Carnegie Mellon University observed
a group of families with new Roomba vacuums. She reported that
families were able to free their routines, and some families had
truly adopted Roomba, even giving it names and treating it like a pet.
Roomba has the capability to be an ally
by giving family members more time to manage other parts of their
lives as well as more time to spend together. Granted, this depends on how
much time it takes to vacuum your house, but as more domestic robots
enter the home, that time saved doing chores robotically will increase.
Why not befriend something that could
make your life more relaxed and fulfilling?
I think our capability to develop relationships with machines, like roomba, is really interesting but possibly detrimental. We saw today how easy it was to anthropomorphize the robots at Willow Garage, saying that they displayed emotions and treating them as we would treat people. After spending enough time around these robots, I think it would be likely that we'd grow attached to them, referring to them as if they were conscious in some way. But because robots are meant to be no more than machines, and are even made to be disposable when used in dangerous situations (i.e. mining), is having an emotional attachment to these machines a good thing?
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