Are you old enough to remember the hype around VPDs? In the two-thousands there was an idea of being safe by having a remote vehicle carry your likelness and do your chores. They would represent you in the office and even go out socialising, for you. Somewhat of an ironic sentence, the fact that they aren’t mentioned a lot, now, it testement to their lack of use. I imagine that the technology isn’t there and working-from-home has made it void for work practises. Doing searches, there are companies still designing them, so maybe there is a future with them in it.
As an inventive teen, I was passionate about having a robotic support system. Not to represent me, but to protect me. What is clearly now Autism, of sorts, was not recognised, so it was just my 12 year old eccentricity, taking over. A lot of my ideas came from Robocop. I was obsessed with him at this age; frankly, I love him just as much, now. But all of my humanoid designs were in the image of he, later turning to R2-D2 styles. Essentially a barrel on wheels. Robotics was my choice for GCSE, even though there was no sign of them, I still had a dream!
So, where are they? The Japanese build huge Gundam representatives, facturies have workable arms and ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) is getting better by the day. (Another dream is to meet him!) Will there be a day where we see people living the iRobot lifestyle? Bring them on, they can’t do much worse and might help us see the need to save our home, not pollute it to oblivion!
