Rejoice! We have a new addition to the Relucio/Swan household: a robot vacuum! I’ve been obsessively vacuuming our new home every other day because of the floor. Our kitchen/bath tiles are a lighter color, which is showing dirt like crazy. Right off the bat, I think, “this will save me time!” Except … it doesn’t. Instead, I watch the vacuum suck in both ways things can suck. It sucks the dust on the floor and, stupidly, it runs into things and then sucks the same parts of rooms over and over. I giggle, but Kyle thinks our vacuum is dumb.
This brought me to a few thoughts. The first is Uncanny Valley:
“In aesthetics, the uncanny valley is a hypothesized relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. “Valley” denotes a dip in the human observer’s affinity for the replica, a relation that otherwise increases with the replica’s human likeness.
Examples can be found in robotics, 3D computer animations, and lifelike dolls among others.”
There’s a part of me that expects this robot vacuum to know where it’s going and where it’s been. While not showing extreme human likeness as the above excerpt explains, there’s still emotionality attached to how it moves and responds. When it bumps into things or cleans in a circle for a few minutes, sometimes it’s funny or frustrating, or I think it’s an idiot (a humanizing quality).
The second: A Compilation of Robots Falling Down
I don’t know about you, but I could watch these all day. There are tons of compilations like this, and again, while more human-like than the robot vacuum, there’s probably even more emotionality attached to this type of robot-fail.
Bonus thought: VR Soccer
These are humans wearing VR glasses trying to play soccer. This is definitely my favorite human/tech combination.