I grew up reading about robots. Asimov, Heinlein, and Bradbury all had stories about robots. Over the last twenty five years I have designed many work cells and welding cells that were centered around robots. A few years ago I first seen and heard about Roomba robots that were robotic vacuum cleaners that switched themselves on at a predetermined time and gracefully glided around your house vacuuming all the carpeted areas of your house, and if the onboard battery started to get low, the Roomba could find it's way back to it's docking port and plug itself in to recharge the batteries. (The latest Roomba models can even sense if your dog or cat has made a mess on the carpet, and will steer clear of it). Today, for the very first time, I seen a lawn mowing robot. There is a fairly rich sub division up behind my house, and I drove up there on something totally unrelated, and there was a lawn mowing robot, doing it's thing. It wasn't very big, looked like it might have been only cutting a 12" or 14" wide swath of grass. It would mow right up to the side of the driveway, stop, turn around, and then mow back the other way towards the far end of the lawn. I looked around to see if there was a man with a radio controller driving this thing, but there wasn't. In fact, it looked like there was no one home at all. I know big dairy farmers in south-western Ontario who have robotic milkers that milk their cows for them without any human involved. (I didn't believe this until I was taken to a dairy barn and shown it working.) After the cow is milked the robot sprays the cows udder with bag wash and the cow happily walks out of the milking stall and the next cow walks in. Each cow has a chip in their ear so the robot can identify which cow it is, what their average yield of milk is, and can also automatically check for mastitis or any other cow diseases that affect the quality of the milk. If I live another fifteen years, I may have to change my name from Rupnow to Jetson!!!
