Blog archive January 2023
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10.01.23 / 02 / robots in cambridge
In Cambridge two Co-op supermarkets are trialling delivery by robots called 'badgers'. Place an order via the app, humans pick it and put it in a badger, and it navigates through the streets to your address.
It's more an exercise in machine learning than a robust delivery service - the robots are learning how to navigate an urban environment and would struggle in a more complex location. But it has great novelty value.
Note that the robots are cute - this means that humans are likely to assist them rather than harm them. They can ask you to press the crossing button for them, and say thankyou. And you can program music for when it opens, as shown.
It's like something from 'Tomorrow's World', one of those 'we are seeing the future' moments. People follow them around with cameras and try to interact with them. We've been waiting for this since the 1960s. In ten years' time they will be everywhere and we will be blasé.
10.01.23 / 01 / catch-up
The blog fell victim to its usual enemy, overwork. On exhausting and stressful projects that have non-disclosure agreements so I can't talk about them until they are finished (and sometimes not even then!). My health is almost back where it was when I quit my last job, which is not good. In addition, my mother's mental and physical health has declined to a level of concern. I really haven't had the energy to report on anything.
I did get a long-overdue holiday in early December. It was a gift from God. A wonderful apartment in the centre of St. Ives, at a reduced rate. Weather like summer (apart from the temperature). A bird came and sang to me. I cut myself off totally from work. After leaving the Hepworth studio on the Thursday I felt wiped clean. I wondered how I would retain or access that feeling when I got back. Certainly I could not have handled the horrible work situation that followed, without the break.
