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Ask HN: How can your robot protect itself while going on errands for you?

5 points by amichail ↗ HN
It might be stolen or maliciously damaged while outside. Will robots be allowed to protect themselves somehow while outside by themselves?

Maybe it could have an alarm and real-time video that is sent directly to the police?

14 comments

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samketchup
Glock 19 works well for me, I suggest glock-bot
roey2009
What errands? Is it going to do shopping, as opposed to a home delivery by the shop? Go to the bank,as opposed to online banking?

In this hypothetical future, our online culture would mature. I do not see when we would send a robot when things could get to us. Just doesn't make sense to me

amichail
The robot going on errands would be cheaper than having items delivered to your home.
archi42
How so? And under all circumstances, or only for some cases?

We already have mail delivery systems, which scale pretty well AND can be augmented by bots and other technological advances. I have a hard time seeing how your claim holds besides some corner cases like "need fresh tomatoes for cooking in this evening".

johntash
I could see it happening as an intermediate step, before everywhere has automated delivery.

Similar to how there are smaller stores that don't accept credit cards yet, most shops probably won't support any sort of delivery either. This is already being addressed by services like doordash/grubhub/postmates/etc, but it'd be cool to have your own personal doordasher that you (presumably) could pay normal store prices with.

I do think the more likely scenario though would be somebody like doordash firing their human delivery drivers and just having robots/drones do it instead though.

archi42
To me this still sounds a lot like "everyone buys private helicopters before affordable flying taxis are a thing".

An autonomous robot suitable for generic (or even a few select) tasks is rather complicated and/or requires non-trivial infrastructure at the site of service (e.g. grocery store).

For example a carrier bot following the delivery person is much simpler in comparison and can increase the efficiency of the mail delivery system without putting new infrastructure in place everywhere. With standardized mail slots some deliveries could even be automated (still less complex than a robot at every shop the fills up your robot or your robot having picker capabilities; plus your robot might need your car to get around).

rdtwo
Nah if you are rich enough to afford the robot some percentage of the time it’s just going to get jacked by the drug addicts. Thats just going to be something you accept like having your windows broken or being yelled at by a drugged deranged person in the city.
johntash
You could probably spend an extra $100/mo on RobotCare+ so that you could pay your $1200 deductible and get a brand new replacement robot.
cyanydeez
UberBot: bot damaged? Order a UberBot to fetch your stuff for you
jesuscript
The same way people protect themselves now. Don’t live in neighborhoods where stuff like that happens. Don’t buy an expensive robot in the hood, the same way you wouldn’t buy an expensive watch.
minhmeoke
If the robot has the ability to fly or move, then perhaps just hop (up or over) out of arm's reach when someone comes too close?

Real-time audio and video might be very bandwidth (and therefore battery) intensive to transmit over a cellular connection. Instead, it might be more efficient to include a heartbeat signal that transmits the last GPS coordinates, and maybe a static image transmitted every second. When you stop receiving the heartbeat, that indicates that the robot's battery died or it is in trouble.

imtringued
I thought about this as well but I don't need to go as far as malicious actors, imagine if your robot simply fails to navigate and gets stuck in a loop. If you only have one it's not a big deal but if you have a hundred you are going to need some sort of callcenter and robot towing company that takes care of the problem.