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Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

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Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#231
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should pity the human delivery workers who they are helping to put out of a job?

Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation, flung their wooden shoes, called 'sabots' into the machines to stop them. ...Hence the word 'sabotage'.

There was also a large group of textile weavers, who belonged to an organisation named after Nedd Ludd[0], that engaged in this practice of sabotage. Hence the term Luddite.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#232

A couple of years ago, I was attacked by a Kiwi bot near a UC campus. This is my story. The bot and I were moving towards each other on a sidewalk, and when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them. But there was an awkward moment as I tried to go around it and it repeatedly jerked forward an inch as its motor kicked on and off. Maybe I was walking around the very edge of its radius…

I don't know why they don't parametrize momentum with certainty. In any confusing situation, go into ultra slow environment scanning and when confidence increases, allow for a bit more.. rinse / repeat.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#233

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

Scooters are awesome. Scooter companies intentionally not installing parking for their new scooters and encouraging people to abandon them in walkways is not awesome. Robots are awesome. A bunch of robots creating a hazard for people whether on foot or wheelchair is not awesome. It is tempting as a company to subsidize your "great idea" by making other people pay the cost. Capitalism is great, but abusing people and…

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Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#234
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the new infrastructure cost is less than the old manual labor cost, you can bank on the infrastructure being built. Truckers holding out on "only humans can handle last mile" are in for a surprise when we start rebuilding the last miles.

I want one of those pneumatic tubes that banks have installed that runs from the local Chipotle to my house ... I'd even pay for it. I think even random citizens would be happy to adjust to it.

I cannot seem to find the right words to google, but you’d enjoy reading about (Chicago maybe?) a city that had a long rotating pipe running under the city. Instead of using electricity, or maybe prior to electricity, factories could attach a strap to the pipe to power machines.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#235
post #219
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> future is awesome and we're living it This sentence which I keep seeing again and again always confuses me, because it makes no sense whatsoever. Is this something new that people have started using to defend and assign value to things when they run out of logical arguments in their favor? I see it being used to support crypto a lot.

I mean, I’ve felt that way since the Commodore 64 and the feeling has mostly only increased. When I was a kid, I assumed video phones would look like desk phones with a TV on top. I couldn’t have imagined they’d be wallet sized, and include an encyclopedia.

[deleted]

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean do we really need the scooters at all in a country with 71.6% of adults overweight? A walk would do some good.

Let's be real, no one's going to walk. If they scooter instead of driving, it's a win.

Exactly. Where I've gotten the most benefit from scooters is in cities like Dallas and Phoenix. It's impossible to walk around those cities because they're so big and spread out, but a scooter means I don't need to drive constantly.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them The security robots at one of the big skyscrapers down the street from me do not stop for people. My wife got knocked into by one when we were standing in the plaza looking up something on her phone. (They're not little delivery robots. They're about five feet tall.) Good thing she was confused by what happened, because she's also the ty…

And shoving it into traffic - or at least calling the police and pressing charges - would have been the right thing to do! If you want to use robots, fine. You are still responsible for them and any people they bowl over!

Probably. This seems like a public space so almost certainly. However if this was private space sometimes the rules are different. Once in a while I have to go into our factory (not even once a year, but sometimes), and they always make it clear that forklifts have the right away so watch out. (forklifts have poor visibility, so by giving them the right of way they ensure nobody expects them to stop - in practice a forklift driver will stop if they see you, but this way they are not expected to see something that is impossible to see)

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are "security robots" for the uninitiated?

This is one I've seen in the wild. The K5 rocket-shaped model is heavy, 400 lbs (180 kg) https://www.knightscope.com/

"rocket shaped" is sort of a generous way to describe it.

My first exposure to security robots was actually a company marketing a repurposed remote-controlled lawnmower platform. It was nearly the size of a Smartcar but low to the ground and designed to cross difficult terrain. Even so, a similarly designed lawnmower tumbled down a hill and killed its operator around the same time frame (I don't think from the same company). That all makes the KnightScope design rather surprising, it seems like these things falling over and injuring people is an inevitable liability. But at least my outside perspective is that the companies using these things don't seem to have much of a head for avoiding liability issues as they're often fielded in ways that end up in negative press coverage at least... not even really due to any kind of fault per se but just the user's lack of consideration of the optics of deploying a large, er, rocket-shaped robot to programmatically harass homeless people.

Some might remember the decade-ago jokes about "do not enter elevator with robot" signs and other artifacts of robots coexisting with humans. It sort of feels like the situation hasn't really advanced that much, we're just getting used to it and actively making use of the present inability of robots to coexist in polite society.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#239

It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome and we're living it and these people just want to be downers about it.

Ignorance is bliss I guess. Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money (and usually not pay tax in said country) rubs me the wrong way to be honest. Not talking about the fact that users don't give two shits about where they park: in front of my building door, in the middle of the sidewalk used by old people / pregnant women, in the middle of the bicycle path Then we can talk about the newspeak term…

>Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money

That's what the infrastructure is there for. To be used. The food you ate today was probably transported on the interstate.

The rest of what you said comes off to me like the ancient Greeks complaining books make you not have to memorize everything. Technology marches on and things become more convenient.

Re: Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’…

I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.

> I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved.

There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a huge positive effect on safety.

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