{"id":789,"date":"2020-01-14T10:40:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinkingcat.com\/wordpress\/?p=789"},"modified":"2020-01-14T12:09:59","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T17:09:59","slug":"how-to-make-ballie-the-robot-a-successful-consumer-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkingcat.com\/wordpress\/2020\/01\/how-to-make-ballie-the-robot-a-successful-consumer-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Make “Ballie”-the-Robot A Successful Consumer Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During his keynote speech at CES 2020, Samsung consumer electronics division CEO H.S. Kim introduced \u201cBallie\u201d, a ball-shaped robot that tracked him around the stage. Subsequently, Samsung released a cute video outlining their aspirations for Ballie \u2014 a \u201cBB-8\u201d-like robot to help with pets and house chores. (See https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=c7N5UDZX7TQ<\/a>).
CES is all about excitement in consumer electronics, so it\u2019s a good time to stop and ask: what\u2019s are the hardest parts of making Ballie a success for consumers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

No doubt the expected technical answer here is: revving up the AI so that the robot can correctly identify when it is appropriate to project its view of the yoga-practicing woman onto the screen so she can perfect her pose. I\u2019m not going to suggest that would be easy (though I might argue that \u201cnever\u201d is the right answer, or at least, \u201cnot unless I ask you to\u201d, but maybe that\u2019s just because I\u2019m constantly battling current technology\u2019s efforts to try to get a step ahead of me). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather, one of the hardest parts about making that video a truly useful reality will be: interoperability. There\u2019s no denying that it looks like a really cool robot, just as it is \u2014 making us think of our favourite scifi robot characters. But, to be actually useful, it would have to work (interoperate) with other manufacturers\u2019 window covering controllers, robot vacuums, and video displays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aren\u2019t you already tired of having to check potential IoT purchases to see if they\u2019re compatible with your existing ecosystem? Are you trapped in your smartphone choice because you\u2019ve got a couple of apps that only exist on your current platform, preventing you from making the leap to the other (iOS or Android)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenges of interoperability are only partly technical; they are mostly motivational. Product technology developers don\u2019t want it \u2014 it\u2019s a lot easier to get stuff done if you control the entire ecosystem in which the product will work. (Who wants to wait a year and spend time debating whether or how to add a message in a standardized control message protocol?). Product marketers certainly don\u2019t want interoperability \u2014 they want you to buy only from their company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, consumers like interoperability, whether they say the word or not. Interoperability means you don\u2019t get locked into the brand you happened to select five years ago when you bought your first thing. It also means that small companies can get in the development game, potentially creating your dream home support tool that\u2019s not going to make the cut for development at a large compny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another hard problem challenging Ballie\u2019s consumer success is: privacy. While our favourite movie robots act as independent, sentient entities, we shouldn\u2019t anthropomorphize any current robot offering. Given today\u2019s state of the art technology, Ballie may have the on-board smarts to follow a human on stage, but to carry out many of the other actions implied in the promotional video, Ballie would probably have to communicate with a master computer somewhere. And by \u201csomewhere\u201d, I don\u2019t mean the server rack in your coat closet, I mean computing resources at least nominally under Samsung\u2019s control, not yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of us already overshare information about our household diurnal patterns (smart thermostats), and our sleep schedules (smart watches, health trackers). But, do we really need to invite spies into our lives to follow us around and video our every move, the way Ballie does?
Keeping personal data under your own control is technically challenging. Apart from a few parlour tricks, making the kind of AI-based inferences needed to appear sentient does require significant compute resources and access to lots of training data. And, again, companies have no motivation to try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not suggesting anything about Samsung\u2019s, or any tech company\u2019s, intentions in handling such personal data. Sadly, it\u2019s too easy to find examples of failures in execution when it comes to stewardship of such personal data to date:<\/p>\n\n\n\n