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Bonfire stories
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Telexistence, a robotic startup with a clever name, wants to reduce human to human interactions for supermarket employees and make sure putting back sugar drinks on their shelves is more complicated than it looks, but that’s what capital wants.
[S]he ran over to the park’s police robot to push its emergency alert button.
“I was pushing the button but it said, ‘step out of the way,’” Guebara said. “It just kept ringing and ringing, and I kept pushing and pushing.”
She thought maybe the robot, which stands about 5 feet tall and has “POLICE” emblazoned on its egg-shaped body, wanted a visual of her face, so she crouched down for the camera. It still didn’t work.
[…]
Amid the scene, the robot continued to glide along its pre-programmed route, humming an intergalactic tune that could have been ripped from any low-budget sci-fi film.
(source)
The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes.
Instead, people in Colombia […] plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go.As with other offshoring arrangements, the labor savings are huge. The Colombia workers, who can each handle up to three robots, make less than $2 an hour, which is above the local minimum wage.
Kiwibots win fans at UC Berkeley as they deliver fast food at slow speed
Of Course Citizens Should Be Allowed to Kick Robots
In one incident, office workers bullied an HR chatbot so terribly that management wondered if the workers should be fired.
This tiny robot that looks like an insect can be stepped on and still continue to run afterwards.