Hardly Working
Today is garbage day. I brought the garbage and recycling outside so that the Garbage Robot can pick them up and dump them into its mouth. It’s a cheap thrill to watch the Garbage Robot at work, but I hate to miss it. The anticipation builds when I hear the brakes squeaking at stops on the route ahead of ours. It arrives suddenly at the end of the driveway and launches a giant two-pronged gripper from the side of the truck that grabs the container and heaves it up in an arc into the large bin mounted to the front of the truck. The contents slide and tumble out into the collection bin with some miraculous percentage of effectiveness. Windy days can diminish that effectiveness by blowing some items out of the container or the bin, but the Garbage Robot cheerfully continues either way, unceremoniously replacing the now-empty container back on the ground. The lid is usually left hanging open; the container usually upright.
We recently got a Vacuum Robot. (not a Roomba; another brand) I check on it periodically while it’s working, not only because it’s amusing (it can be), but because it’s a little clumsy and ignorant. It needs a little minding. Occasionally it needs to be freed from confined areas it’s gotten into but isn’t clever enough to escape from, and its bin needs to be emptied about halfway through. It can be a source of interruptions and puzzlement, especially when I hear unfamiliar sounds from the next room. It can be a little frustrating to watch sometimes when it struggles to navigate a room or negotiate an obstacle: the right maneuver in any given situation seems so obvious to me. But Vacuum Robot hasn’t developed that level of sophistication and common sense quite yet.
You could watch a spider build a web and never quite grasp why it does it quite the way it does, but you’ll never be in doubt that it is confidently pursuing a plan. You’ll never doubt that there is a pattern being created with techniques that are highly developed. I watched someone build a brick facade around a chimney once, and was left with a similar feeling: wonder at the way a structure can emerge from easy, rhythmic and almost inscrutable movements. There is satisfaction in watching someone (or something) skillfully perform a task. You can begin to feel the movements and pretend to understand how it might be to do it yourself—the beginnings of learning a new skill.
Vacuum Robot is more like a mosquito trying to penetrate a window screen than a spider building a web: it often looks like a simple pattern projected onto the floor using a pseudo-random application of a single, blunt tactic. But that discounts the victories it often wins over chair legs and tight corners, and the subtle way that it hugs the wall for maximum effectiveness. It has its share of triumphs away from the open plains and clear corridors. And to be fair, Garbage Robot owes all of its success to the fact that it is piloted and controlled by a human, though it’s difficult to see into the cab of the truck to confirm this.
In each case, we might tell ourselves a story about what the person/animal/robot is “doing” as we watch them. “Doing” feels a little fraught: it implies a goal and I feel a little self-conscious that I don’t have one. I’m just watching other things do their work.