My NYT Mag piece on robots

Cory Doctorow 10:24 am Sat Nov 15, 2003

I wrote a piece on home robotics for the New York Times Magazine as part of a section on Home Automation with contributions from James Gleick, Paul Boutin, Clive Thompson and others; it shipped today:

Home robots were the jet-pack future's sweetest lie: personal assistants working tirelessly and without complaint — companions, servants and pets. They would be nimble and able, and computers would be blinking omniscient behemoths.

How wrong they were. Just as millions of users defied the first engineers' narrow visions of what a home computer could be, and figured out how to make PC's bend to their will, the cheapness and flexibility of commodity computer components are now enabling a new hobbyist revolution in home robotics. C.P.U.'s — the brains of a PC — are cheap like borscht, and the sensors that allow computers to see, hear, feel and smell have likewise plummeted in cost. (Pinhead digital cameras, for example, are so cheap these days that it's hard to find a pocket-size gizmo that doesn't have one built in.) All it takes to turn these pieces into a robot is packaging the brains and the senses atop a mobile platform and stirring in some clever code.

(Thanks, Paul)

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