Internet Marketing Blog

Self-Aware Robots: Hod Lipson Demonstrates Learning Robots

On Tuesday, I asked whether Robots would be the new Internet marketing platform. Now that I'm paying closer attention to robotics, I came across this short video of a presentation that engineer Hod Lipson gave at the TED Conference demonstrating some of his robots that can learn, understand themselves and even self-replicate:

I know, it's not necessarily directly related to Internet marketing but increasingly we'll need think about things that are aware of themselves that are not human. If machines and software become aware of themselves and their environment and are able learn, then the manner in which they interact with humans will have just as much an effect on marketing as it will on anything else. I don't know how but I do know we'll need to understand the communication that occurs in that environment.

Robotics - The New Internet Marketing Platform?

To date, serious, practical robotics have been the domain of industry and the military:

Ultra-cool stuff but it doesn't do much for me professionally, unless my target market is infantrymen or reconnaissance units.

And until recently, consumer robots have been mainly clever, cute, and expensive toys:

Now companies like iRobot Corporation are selling affordable, practical domestic robots to the consumer market. iRobot sells products that sweep, vacuum,  or wash your floor; they sell robots that clean your pool or gutter.

But it is their new product that has piqued my interest beyond my normal fascination with robots. For less than $500, consumers will be able to buy the iRobot ConnectR, a virtual presence bot that essentially attaches a two-way video to a mobile robot and slaps on a broadband wireless connection so you can visit virtually:

If such products take off, and I'm confident they will because think the ability to use robotics for social purposes has great consumer appeal, then consumer robotics deserves scrutiny as an online marketing platform.

The larger social question is whether such products, by taking over our annoying daily chores, will produce our long-awaited domestic utopia or the sci-fi dystopia we all know and love:

Or perhaps our humanoid companions will simply prove insufferable: