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reader poll

While the past decade has witnessed the emergence of various prototypes and research projects involving bathing robots, the public acceptance of the concept seems to largely depend on one socially sensitive topic: privacy.

As our homes become increasingly automated, will we eventually be living inside what is essentially a robot? Given that smart homes can collect data and learn about your daily habits, and come up with the optimum time to turn on/off different devices in the home, what should this giant robot optimize for?

While vacuum robots continue to dominate the ‘robots at home’ market, with Jibo taking on the role of the top 5 most funded Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign, and Pepper expected to arrive at stores in Japan in early 2015, there’s a lot of excitement about interactive, social or ‘companion‘ robots entering our homes.

Looking into the near future, what do you think about robots being developed for your home or being present as a companion? Share your thoughts with us now; we’ll report our findings in two weeks.

Will autonomous cars take away our jobs? Will we be better off with the cars even if they do? According to our latest poll results, most people think autonomous cars will be a net positive, even though more jobs may be displaced than created.


The idea of autonomous cars that can communicate with each other and organize themselves to better control the flow of traffic sounds interesting and possibly scary. Our results indicate that the majority (85%) support such technology.

Imagine the future where your autonomous car can talk to other cars to decrease traffic flow perhaps. How would you feel about your car being a part of such network of autonomous cars?

How do people feel about autonomous cars driving around the city streets without a passenger? What if the passenger is drunk or under the influence of drugs? Our poll results find that more people are supportive of a drunk or high passenger riding in a fully autonomous car (one that never requires human input) than having an autonomous car roam the streets without any passengers.

Should an autonomous car be able to drive around by itself? What if it’s carrying a passenger who is drunk?

A significant percentage of people today take pleasure in driving and a sense of control it provides; on the other hand, many of us are ready to shift gears to a safer and more efficient passenger experience.

We’d like to know what you think. Will you miss driving your non-autonomous car? Why or why not?


Given a choice between crashing into a motorcyclist wearing a helmet vs. a motorcyclist who isn’t wearing one, which one should an autonomous car be programmed to crash into? What about the choice between crashing into an SUV vs. a compact car?

These are some of the dilemma situations Professor Patrick Lin brought forth in his WIRED article, The Robot Car of Tomorrow May Just be Programmed to Hit You.

Our latest reader poll prods at the intricate challenges and implications of developing collision optimization algorithms for autonomous cars.

If you were around in the ’80s you probably remember Michael Knight talking to his car KITT in Knight Rider. How do people today envision interacting with the autonomous cars of the future? Find out in our reader poll results.

Last week we looked at the results of our reader poll on the Tunnel Problem, a moral dilemma that explores an unavoidable life and death scenario involving an autonomous car. Now we’re going more in-depth, to provide you with some insight into the qualitative responses we received.

RoboBee’s Untethered Flight
May 20, 2020

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