kaberett | further adventures in robot ownership

Things this robot has:

"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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alexseanchai

blinkers made of tinfoil

*giggling*

davidgillon

Consider, said reddit: blinkers.

Considering it's reddit, I'm surprised the advice wasn't to spraypaint the rug black!

hilarita

Awww. Your robot is close cousin to a horse!

tei

Oh my god, this is hilarious. A tinfoil hatted robot!

passingbuzzards

i have oft remarked that robert a. heinlein would be most appropriately disappointed with our modern-day technological progress, given that instead of fully autonomous maid robots all we have is rotating vaccuums that text us to say they've fallen and can't get up. *g*

calissa

This was such an entertaining post to read. Thank you for sharing.

Also, my own pet robot has made life so much easier when it comes to cleaning the floors.

ilyena_sylph

This absolutely cracked me up and I thank you for that so very, very much.

aldabra

How excellent. Perhaps I need a robot. Does this mean it would now fall down the stairs? I guess I could make a barrier. Perhaps out of the books I would have to move so it could get to the floor.

meneltarma

I am bizarrely charmed by this account of the strugles of being a roomba.

frith_in_thorns

If our robot is run in the late afternoon when the sunlight hits the window and throws a big square of sunshine onto the hardwood floor our robot absolutely won't go on it for the same reason and it is very funny.