The Idea
When you work backward from the idea that workers should own rather than fear robots, you end up making different choices.
We started down this path in 2016 after repeated disappointment that the tech industry was hell-bent to replace all workers without even the slightest moral concern.
The idea is built up from a new kind of robot control motor that is a USB 3.1 Type-C Android peripheral.
Plug them into Android and they get data, 100W power and cloud control over the USB cable.
And because they're Android-based, they're inherently mobile, cheap, secure and sensor-rich.
The robot behaviors live in the cloud, are communal and shared through remixing.
We don't have all the answers, but after a bunch of work, we have a good start:
- Ultra-simple
- Inherently cloud-controlled
- Inherently communal with effortless remixing just like Scratch
- Primarily Javascript (with options for any language)
- 100% open: software and hardware
- Mix-and-match parts that are cheap, and user-reparable
- Based on "previous generation smartphones" to keep the cost down and deal with the environmental problem
- Durable and rugged
- Owned by the community