After driverless taxis, where next for robots?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/06/driverless-taxis-robots

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Driverless robot taxis are set to be trialled in Fujisawa from March next year, which is either an irreversible stepping stone on the path towards the inevitable robot apocalypse – our destruction coming not from Skynet launching a nuke at us while we all play innocently in a playground surrounded by a chain link fence, but instead from a load of cabs turning en masse and ramming into us until we’re ground down to nothing but mince and bone debris – or, less importantly, just one step towards wiping out cabbies altogether.

Related: Driverless robot taxis to be tested in Japanese town

The year is 2020, and the beaded seat cover industry is absolutely on its arse. It’s been five full years since anyone had to hear an alternative 9/11 theory shouted backwards at them through a plexiglass driver shield. Men with unofficial England-branded polo shirts sit around in cafes together looking confused. The cabby is no more. There is some mourning. Not much.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Because with robots now being in charge of taxis – armed with GPS, radar, and stereovision cameras, as well as human override controls in case the robot goes full cabby and starts heading to Fujisawa by way of Clapham – it makes you wonder what other mundane tasks we might outsource to them. With machines doing the work, people will have time to think – imagine what great philosophical debates we’ll be having when our minds are unburdened from the lurking reality of “probably having to get some ironing done” or “checking to see if the yoghurts in the fridge are still good”.

Loads. We’ll be having loads of philosophical debates. Anyway here’s the robo-future:

Put the Bins Out Bot

Does any household chore elicit anything even close to the whole body sigh of despair that realising the binmen are coming tomorrow does? Always at 11pm, always when you’ve just washed your face and done all your other ablutions. And then you have to find your other slipper and try not to get baked bean juice on your hands while tying a clumsy knot at the top. The worst.

Put the Bins Out Bot changes all that. Special gentle robo-hands programmed for wet bin bags, a small speaker system that says rote dad-phrases such as, “Of course, buying cheap bin bags is a false economy”, a special function that only remembers the recycling needs doing as well at the exact moment it’s pushed a wet bin to the kerb and got all rainy bin water down its onesie (they’re working to fix that last function). Also: Put the Bins Out Bot becomes the first machine to pass the Turing test after furiously phoning the local newspaper to complain about the council not collecting their bins that week because of some minor transgression with the lid not closing.

Go For a Wee 9000

Sometimes the most mundane task a human can undertake is getting up and going for a wee, which is why Go For a Wee 9000 was invented – essentially, a Henry hoover with a long, self-guiding catheter on the top. You sit on the sofa, watching your Grand Designs, and use an Uber-like app to summon a piss robot to come and wend its way harmlessly into your urethra without you having to miss a minute of some couple from Surrey wildly underestimating how much a roof costs and how long it takes to build it.

Watch The Wire For You Bot

In the future you won’t have to have pub conversations with some bloke who really, really likes The Wire – edging you ever further into a corner, away from your friends and away from the party, getting close in your face and saying things like, “You mean you haven’t seen it? Oh, mate, you have to” and “What’s it about? It’s sort of about … everything” and “Idris Elba’s in it” – because you’ll have a giant-eyed robot at home that comes with its own spindly DVD-changing hands, and sits alone for the requisite 60-odd hours eating crisps and slowly starting to imagine it can do a job in the police force. Scientists haven’t yet figured out how this translates into you being able to hold up an hour-long conversation about Omar. But they will.

Walk the Dog Bot

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It’s basically just a self-guiding Segway that has a cagoule on it and is capable of either shouting, “Come on, Roy, Corrie’s almost starting and I need a waz an’ all!” or a tight and emotionless “Ey up” to other dusk-time dog walkers. Also comes with an outstretched fingers-plastic bag type arrangement for daintily picking up poos.

Robo-Phone

If the calls telling me I’ve been missold PPI are anything to go by, we’re already getting to the point where the only people who use phones these days are robots, sex line masturbators and anyone who wants to book a badminton court at their local leisure centre. That’s it. Everyone else is wise to email. Which is why robo-phone is inevitable – outsourcing every remaining use-your-mouth-and-actually-speak phone call to robots, chattering on an infinite loop to one another across our various criss-crossing phone lines, eradicating the need for a whole sphere of human interaction forever. Doesn’t the future sound nice?