Robots and autonomous tech

Industrial (repeats a path, caged), service (works among people), social (interacts with people as its purpose).

Internet of things, autonomous vehicles, drones, virtual assistants.

The da Vinci system is teleoperated — a surgeon moves the instruments through a console. It augments rather than replaces.

How much the machine decides for itself, from a caged arm that decides nothing to a vehicle deciding continuously.

Sensory inputs for spatial, environmental and operational awareness; reasoning with machine vision and learned models; acting physically; some degree of autonomy.

Spatial (where am I), environmental (what is around me), operational (how am I doing).

A machine cannot react to what it has no sensor for.

A recommendation can be ignored. A movement has already happened and cannot be un-made.

Mechanical automata → caged industrial arms (1960s) → sensing robots → service robots among people → autonomous systems deciding.

By separation — keeping people out of reach — not by the robot noticing them.

Sensing. A machine that can detect a person can slow down or stop for them.

The pedestrians and cyclists sharing the risk never consented, where a factory worker did.

Anthropomorphism and the uncanny valley; responsibility for harm; safety; employment and displacement; surveillance.

Comfort rises as a machine becomes more human-like, drops sharply when it is almost-but-not-quite, then rises again.

Treating a machine as though it has feelings and intentions — which people do readily and designers encourage.

What is the machine funded INSTEAD of? It turns a technology answer into a social one.