Recently Musk claimed that there could be a 100 million, or even a billion, humanoid robots in five years. Maybe. Maybe not. But I am seeing more videos of robots on my social media feed.
Rise of the robots
Last week Figure AI held a "Man vs. Machine" challenge. The test was to see who (what?) could sort the most parcels in 10 hours. The human and the robot had to arrange parcels on a conveyor belt so that the barcode was face-down for scanning.
Even with bathroom breaks, the human won by 192 packages. Yay, human! He had an average speed only 0.04 seconds faster than the robot. But the human also suffered from blistered fingers and an injured forearm. Ouch, human!
Then there was the GD01 from Unitree. This is a 3‑metre mech suit, piloted by a human, that comes straight out of an Avengers movie. It is designed for heavy lifting and industrial tasks. And it can punch through a brick wall.
Some data centres in the US use robo-dogs to protect their sites. That got me thinking.
Rambo the Rooi Hond
The SA Defence Industry is well regarded in the global arena. I’m not talking about our defence force, which is not so well regarded. I’m talking about the engineers who created equipment like the Rooi Valk helicopter.
Imagine if they created a South African robo-dog to guard Eskom power stations and telcom towers.
MTN and Vodacom could use the Rooi Hond to protect against theft of batteries. Buy South Africa!
The Rooi Hond would be designed for our realities:
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It would need an anti-load-shedding feature. So it would have a solar-powered option.
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It would have a multi-lingual warning system.
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It would need advanced terrain-handling capabilities to handle potholes. So it would need the kung fu skills of the dancing Chinese robots.
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It would need its own anti-theft mode. It could deploy anchoring spikes if thieves tried to lift it. Or, in true South African fashion, it could go into attack mode. With fire-arms built into its body, so that they can’t be stolen.
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That attack mode could extend to the ability to conduct civilan arrests.
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The anti-corruption mode would send videos of attempted crimes to the cloud and journalists.
The Ruffles version
You can buy a robo-dog toy on Takealot. Some of them are cute, fluffy toys. Others look like toy versions of the AI robots. I did a quick search on Amazon.com, and found two interesting differences:
- Amazon has cute, fluffy robo-cats as well. Takealot doesn’t.
- Takealot has a robot pitbull dog. Amazon doesn’t.
Unlike the global average, pet owners in South Africa are three times more likely to own dogs than cats. That might explain the lack of cat robots.
One reason why dogs are so popular is that South Africans see dogs as a security measure. Which might explain the pitbull robot dog.
Given my (minimal) research, there should be a market for a mini version of Rambo. Some of the Rambo features could be optional add-ons for farm owners. An extra community feature would post messages to the neighbourhood WhatsApp group.
Ruffles could come in different sizes. With a cute pitbull face and a deep Rottweiler bark.
What do you think?