James Dyson

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The problem with robots understanding us is that they’re going to figure out what complete assholes we are. That will suck. Vacuum magnate James Dyson is promising a new wave of silicon servants that will see to our household needs. From Adam Withnall at the Independent:

“The British entrepreneur Sir James Dyson has outlined his vision for a new era of household android robots that will be able to clean the windows, guard property – and, presumably, vacuum the carpet.

This week the inventor will announce the creation of a new £5 million robotics centre at Imperial College London, and he says a technological revolution is coming that will soon see every home in Britain filled with ‘robots that understand the world around them.’

His team of British-based engineers are locked in a race to build the first multi-purpose household android with scientists in Japan, where researchers at Waseda University have already unveiled the Twendy-One robot that can obey voice commands, cook and provide nursing care.”

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Press demo of the Twendy-One:

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Vacuums needn’t look as good nor function as well as James Dyson makes them, but for decades he’s been creating dust-busting appliances that rival Apple’s greatest designs. He probably won’t stop, even if you ask him nicely. From Shoshana Berger’s new Wired Q&A with the inventor:

Wired: 

Now that Dyson is a sprawling, multinational corporation, how do you keep the spirit of innovation alive?

James Dyson: 

We try to make the corporation like the garage. We don’t have technicians; our engineers and scientists actually go and build their own prototypes and test the rigs themselves. And the reason we do that—and I don’t force people to do that, by the way, they want to do it—is that when you’re building the prototype, you start to really understand how it’s made and what it might do and where its weaknesses might be. If you merely hand a drawing to somebody and say, ‘Would you make this, please?’ and in two weeks he comes back with it and you hand it to someone else who does the test, you’re not experiencing it. You’re not understanding it. You’re not feeling it. Our engineers and scientists love doing that.

Wired: 

Do they ever fail?

James Dyson: 

Absolutely. It’s when something fails that you learn. If it doesn’t fail, you don’t learn anything. You haven’t made any progress. Everything I do is a mistake. It fails. For the past 42 years—I’ve had a life of it.”

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