503-325-8600 JoeDiBartolomeo.com
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1139 Exchange St. Astoria, OR 97103
What’s Inside
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Life Lessons From ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’
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The Benefits of a Digital Detox
The Facts on SSDI and Mental Illness
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5 BBQ Grilling Safety Tips
Easy Vegan Baked Beans
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Are Household Robots Within Our Reach?
Forget the Flying Cars — Where Are the Robots?
For decades, science fiction has been obsessed with the concept of a household robot that can ease the burdens of our daily lives. We now have smart speakers, televisions, and vacuums, but we’re still a long way off from robots that can understand and cater to our every whim. But technology advances all the time. Could it put you closer to your own Rosie from “The Jetsons”? Movies have given us high expectations that are currently impossible to replicate. There’s a reason why almost all household robots on the market only perform one task, like mowing the lawn. Even these products require highly advanced technology to “visualize” a space and competently complete their job. It gets a lot more complicated when a robot needs
the versatility to respond to a host of commands or the dexterity to retrieve and pick up any object. And that’s before we even consider security concerns. Virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri make many people’s everyday lives easier. At the same time, they allow corporations to compile our data and are at risk of being hacked. No one wants strangers listening to their private conversations, and they want a hacked robot to allow a stranger into their home even less. Still, household robots are slowly becoming more capable. In 2000, Honda created ASIMO, a humanoid robot that can recognize faces, sounds, gestures, and objects. But crucially, it did not perform any tasks beyond interaction with humans, and it
was never available for sale. Another robot, Buddy, was designed to provide human companionship to isolated people. But it still won’t make you dinner or wash your laundry. In September 2021, Amazon unveiled Astro, its home-monitoring robot that retails for $999 and is still only available by invitation. It’s much smaller than a human and patrols your home for security threats. It also offers music, a digital assistant, and a touch screen, but not much else. It will most likely be years before we see a domestic robot similar to those on television — and even longer until they are available at affordable prices. Though you’ll still be doing your own dishes for some time, there is a silver lining: You won’t need to worry about a robot uprising anytime soon.
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The Di Bartolomeo Law Office, P.C. 1139 Exchange Street | Astoria, Oregon | 503-325-8600 | www.JoeDiBartolomeo.com
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