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further adventures in robot ownership
Mar. 27th, 2020 10:57 pmThings this robot has:
You see, A fell down an internet hole a couple of days ago and discovered... an entire subreddit talking resentfully about how the problem, right, the problem with light-coloured rugs--
[fx: pauses to look at the light grey rug on the living room floor]
-- is that they're light, right, so your tiny pet robot, it goes up to the edge of them -- and then it STOPS, because the ground underneath it has just got LIGHTER, and (I feel a great affinity here) it's kind of shit at depth perception, and therefore Suddenly Lighter means PROBABLY A CLIFF, ABORT ABORT ABORT.
Which is why it was managing to get up the rug if it started out half on a corner and half not, and actually just had a panic, followed by beating a considered yet hasty retreat, if it hit the edge any other way.
Consider, said reddit: blinkers.
(Why, said reddit crossly, isn't there a software setting, I live in a single-level dwelling, cliff detection is ACTIVELY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE, I know it's TRYING but can it NOT.)
Apparently they've got to be made out of something reflective, or it panics about that, too.
A started out by taping tin foil over two of its six sensors. This worked pretty well on the occasions when it approached the rug head-on: it was already on the rug by the time the side sensors started going ???????! and therefore decided that either It Was Fine or It Was Flying, as the case may be.
But, um, it kept hitting the rug edge-on. In particular, having got up the rug one way, and bimbled back and forth on the rug a bit, it would get back down onto the floor and then decide it wanted to go back and do a spot-clean of something On The Rug... and conclude that the shortest route between it and the spot in question was a straight line. Fair enough, you might think, except that this means it hit the edge of the rug on the diagonal; paused to take a deep breath and reassure itself everything was fine really; and then, because it was convinced it could Go On That Bit, because its internal map told it it already had been and It Was Fine, made its slow and cautious way along THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF looking for the Safe Route Back Up.
Which is why it now has blinkers on all six of its relevant sensors, like some sort of inverse tin foil hat, and also by the way I think we're keeping it.
- "cliff detection"
- that can't be turned off in software
- and, consequently, little blinkers made of tinfoil.
You see, A fell down an internet hole a couple of days ago and discovered... an entire subreddit talking resentfully about how the problem, right, the problem with light-coloured rugs--
[fx: pauses to look at the light grey rug on the living room floor]
-- is that they're light, right, so your tiny pet robot, it goes up to the edge of them -- and then it STOPS, because the ground underneath it has just got LIGHTER, and (I feel a great affinity here) it's kind of shit at depth perception, and therefore Suddenly Lighter means PROBABLY A CLIFF, ABORT ABORT ABORT.
Which is why it was managing to get up the rug if it started out half on a corner and half not, and actually just had a panic, followed by beating a considered yet hasty retreat, if it hit the edge any other way.
Consider, said reddit: blinkers.
(Why, said reddit crossly, isn't there a software setting, I live in a single-level dwelling, cliff detection is ACTIVELY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE, I know it's TRYING but can it NOT.)
Apparently they've got to be made out of something reflective, or it panics about that, too.
A started out by taping tin foil over two of its six sensors. This worked pretty well on the occasions when it approached the rug head-on: it was already on the rug by the time the side sensors started going ???????! and therefore decided that either It Was Fine or It Was Flying, as the case may be.
But, um, it kept hitting the rug edge-on. In particular, having got up the rug one way, and bimbled back and forth on the rug a bit, it would get back down onto the floor and then decide it wanted to go back and do a spot-clean of something On The Rug... and conclude that the shortest route between it and the spot in question was a straight line. Fair enough, you might think, except that this means it hit the edge of the rug on the diagonal; paused to take a deep breath and reassure itself everything was fine really; and then, because it was convinced it could Go On That Bit, because its internal map told it it already had been and It Was Fine, made its slow and cautious way along THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF looking for the Safe Route Back Up.
Which is why it now has blinkers on all six of its relevant sensors, like some sort of inverse tin foil hat, and also by the way I think we're keeping it.