Silicon Valley Hotel Features Robotic Butler

At Your Service....
(Image: money.msn.com)

Guests at Silicon Valley's Aloft Hotel will soon experience butler service from a robot. According to a Mercury News blog post, the unnamed device will complete training and begin live action next week. It's not clear what the bot's capabilities are. In all likelihood, routine deliveries should be anticipated. Just don't expect the machine to clean, do windows, or freshen the toilet. That work remains quite human.

California Legislature Considers Bill to OK Robot Cars on Public Highways

Google's "driverless car"
(photo from Edmunds Inside Line)

Would you get into a robot-driven car? How would you feel if you shared the road with such a vehicle? If you are a pedestrian, would you feel "comfortable" knowing robot cars are sharing the intersection you're about to cross?

Well, the California legislature is currently considering a motion that would permit robot-driven vehicles to travel on the state's public highways. The measure has already passed the state assembly and is expected to reach a state senate vote soon, according to a story in today's San Jose Mercury News. Governor Jerry Brown is expected to sign the measure.

The notion of robot-driven cars is not far fetched. Google engineers and their Stanford University counterparts have each created and tested vehicles in which computers do the driving. There does seem a sense of inevitability about humans taking a figurative back seat. According to the Mercury News story, humans can intervene during the drive. I suppose that offers some comfort, but computers don't handle "watch out" warnings very nimbly.

The story also raised a number of intriguing issues, such as insurance liability and legal culpability in the event of an accident. The possibility of issuing a moving violation to a computer was great fun to contemplate. Finally, the article raised the question of a computer crash leading to a vehicle crash. And, despite the smug assurances of electrical engineers, computers do crash, sometimes with disastrous results.

If I were a hitchhiker, I would view computer-driven cars with distaste. The chance of a robot vehicle stopping to pick up someone with their thumb out are nearly zero. Driverless hitchhikers, along with other extraneous "human elements," just don't add up for a computer-driven vehicle.

"Father of Java" James Gosling Says "Good-Bye Android, Hello Robots"

James Gosling (photo), widely respected for his key role in the development of the Java programming language, has left Google for the greener pastures of robot development. The detailed story about Gosling's departure appeared in today's Mercury News.

The robots are not tin men. According to the Mercury News story, they are seven-foot-long machines resembling surfboards, designed to collect and transmit data from the ocean. Liquid Robotics, the firm that manufactures the bots, makes about one-third of its money from selling the data mined from the robots. The balance of the firm's income is derived from selling the robots and from research and development.