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by neitherboosh
1831 days ago
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This looks really cool and I’m sure the tech can be used to do all kinds of interesting things, but I’m struggling to think of an actual use case for the product. From the marketing and price it seems to be directed towards consumers—is there anything this can do for me that a backpack can’t do? Still want one, anyway. |
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I agree it’s early enough that the tangible uses for this type of tech are still a bit blurry to us. But I also think this is a bit like saying “is there anything a car can do for me that my legs can’t do?”
It depends on what criteria you evaluate it on. Yes you can move from A to B on your own steam, of course. But automation is incremental. These things aren’t a significant obvious benefit, until they are.
Scalability is one thing. Comparing writing notes in my iPad to writing them on paper, at first glance doesn’t look much different, apart from that the iPad can effectively store a lifetime worth of notes, easily searchable, shareable, linkable etc. Its scalability potential (for this use case) is almost infinite.
When evaluating these sorts of things it’s worth bearing in mind the “leverage” that the tech might give us, that we didn’t have before. This scalability/leverage benefit is often not immediately obvious until you look a little bit below the surface.
This robot dog might start off by carrying your water bottle but later it might be able to also carry a foldable chair, a waking stick, food and water, and a communications device, suddenly meaning that someone with limited mobility can actually go out for a walk on their own and have everything they might need carried alongside them as a mobile support system. That person just gained a little bit of extra freedom. At the enhancement end of the spectrum, an athlete could use this “support robot” to extend the possible range of their training runs.
I do wonder about the near term use cases for this sort of tech (at this price point) for people with disabilities of various kinds.
Often leading edge tech starts out in the realm of compensating for disabilities for a smaller audience before progressing to being looked upon as an “enhancement” for a wider audience (because it becomes affordable enough and useful enough to start to appeal to people who don’t need to compensate for any particular issue but see it as a net convenience worth paying for).