Tech Trends

2020: The year of the robot.

Dave Skorepa

You may have been distracted coming into the New Year by the threat of World War 3 trending on Twitter, so it’s totally understandable if you missed all the cool tech headlines that came out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) out in Las Vegas. Don't sweat it, getting drafted to fight in the end of the world is a big deal.

When all that settles down, make some time to learn about all the crazy robot stuff that's going on at the moment. That's right, we're just weeks away from a real-life Micheal Bay Transformers sequel.

Here's a roundup of some of the wackier, yet still very real, robo-headlines you can see this year.

The headless robot cat company has made a headless robot kitten. Yep. You could already buy a robo-cat that doesn't have a head for some reason, and now you can buy Petit Qoobo, a kitten version of Yukai Engineering’s same freakish design decision.

Speaking of robotic balls...

Samsung’s new Ballie robot is like a real-life mini BB-8. Picture the love child of your Alexa and a tennis ball. Now your Alexa can annoyingly follow you around until you step on it, fall, and end up crippled from your strange new robo-assistant being underfoot. Probably not a great purchase for people with dogs either.

Robot-made pizza goes head-to-head with the best Las Vegas slices. Wait, so we finally get robots and this is what you want them to do? Make… pizza? Do they cook it with shoulder-mounted laser cannons at least?

Charmin debuts a toilet paper robot and a bathroom smell sensor at CES 2020. I... I'm sorry about including this one, but if I have to know about it, so do you. I just hope he doesn't do double duty as the pizza making robot (ha, I said "doodie").

The Boston Dynamics robot dog has joined a bomb squad. Okay, this is more like it. I would maybe rewrite that headline to say "Badass robot dog given appropriately badass robot job."

This walking package-delivery robot is now for sale. This is tame by comparison, but the "now for sale" part intrigues me. This robot is shaped like a humanoid, walks upright, and can carry stuff. Let's be honest, this is just a DIY Terminator robot kit. Honey, it's time to empty the 401k!

Roomba’s robot vacuum could grow arms in the near future. Again, it was the wording of the headline that grabbed me. I know robots can't spontaneously mutate and evolve new mechanical parts, but this headline does sure conjure a picture of this little bastard hiding under my bed, building itself shoddy arms from junk it found lying around my garage, reaching up, and choking my unsuspecting throat while I sleep. Or yours. Sleep tight.

This article is sponsored by Aztek, a web design, development, and digital marketing agency located in downtown Cleveland. aztekweb.com

I-XPLORATION continued from page 24

behind the plant was a test track that is now Hopkins Airport.

Mary had the foresight to keep literature and maps from inside the plant during her time there. In speaking with Mary, the most amazing thing was the feeling of community she says was all throughout the Plant.

“It was a great job,” she says. “We would have department parties, we would gossip in the ladies locker room. We all worked so closely together that it was like a family.”

“They never let Mary drive a Walker Bulldog. They said it might ‘damage her innards.’”

The ‘50s were dark times. Racist rhetoric and inappropriate office interactions were not uncommon. However, Mary was fortunate not to experience such acts.

“In my years there not once was someone inappropriate to me or anything like that,” she says. “It was like we [the office girls] were their sisters. We were very young.”

As for racism, Mary remembers Hellen, a black woman they worked with who was in charge of the locker room area as a shoulder to cry on for all the office girls. Hellen and all the girls came to Mary’s wedding. When you have tanks to build, race and harassing women fall to the wayside.

The community inside the tank plant was an incubator for tolerance... most of the time. They never let Mary drive a Walker Bulldog. They said it might “damage her innards.” Talk to your elders and see if they have a lost Ohio story. The stories tied to the I-X Center are different for everyone.

Us younger Ohioans have a duty to seek out the disappearing past of these places and people. As the older folks with first hand knowledge of a forgotten Ohio age, they forget and eventually pass on. Find some history on your own, talk to your grandma – unless you want the only stories about the I-X center to involve teen warfare and poorly assembled carnival rides..