Drone Delivery Service

Automated transportation systems in the sky are the next step from automation in the warehouses and on the highways



With all the excitement about robotic inventory management in warehouses (pioneered by the giant amazon.com's $775 million purchase of Kiva Systems) and creating distribution fleets of automated delivery trucks, it is easy to forget about the 3D frontier right above us.

Previously, I have noted that automated passenger and cargo blimps in the future obviously benefit from direct point A to point B travel. These would be robotic transport solar panel covered airships that land on water to convert H20 into hydrogen fuel and then proceed to make scheduled stops unhindered by traffic or friction with hard surfaces. The renaissance in airships is mostly led in advances in superstrong yet light nano metamaterials, military's need for transport and perpetual high atmosphere surveillance, and the bourgeois desires for a return of long distance luxury travel that is different from either large yachts or a private jets.

However, on the inevitable road towards automation in many aspects of industry, there is a simpler and quicker route to automated air transport on a mass scale. Quadrotor quadrocopters delivering bags of goods straight to your door, roof, or even your window. This is the ultimate foot in the door towards highways in the sky for much heavier vehicles transporting objects such as people, refrigerators, etc. There is already a joke service (?) about the taco delivering quadrocopter in the San Francisco bay area.  However, consider the amazingly versatile, high speed, and highly maneuverable capabilities of quadrocopters as demonstrated here, here, here, and below:

There are also Hexacopters capable of incredibly fast lift off and return. Watch it lift a Coca-Coca bottle around 9:30.

It is obvious that a larger version with a cutting edge battery can make a jump across the city rapidly to deliver a package and come back for recharging. Whether delivering fresh organic vegetables from a vertical farm in town, a pizza from a much larger automated pizza plant than the current pizza vending machines, or a certain size package from the postal service, possibilities for smooth rapid transport are endless. The booming private drone industry isn't going away. It somewhat reminds of the early popular rocketry and airplane experimentation in the early 20th century. Elon Musk equivalents are bound to come along to pull drone businesses together and cut out large swaths of the delivery human proles out of the equation. Clustering quadrotors vertically with a central cable for extra lift allows heavier object transport without taking too much horizontal space. We don't want a silly unwieldy looking contraptions like this just to deliver a television. Of course even that is preferable (along with quadrotor/small sleek blimp integration) if it saves on driver and energy costs and is able to deliver packages to rooftops of apartment buildings in a much more timely manner.

Here at The Pragmatist, automation is regarded as the greatest social disrupting force of the 21st century. Within automated production and distribution systems we see a total merger of the industrial and information age with corresponding questions about the problems it causes and potential long term consequences of these problems. As such, the faster automation and mechanization develops, the faster it forces collective thought on how to create a bridge between society of today and society of tomorrow. 

Consider the neighborhood pizza place. IF quality Brooklyn oven style pizza (or whatever foodie preference of the day) is mass produced by an automated pizza making hub according to the standards of some new food equivalent of six sigma quality control and the finished product is hopped across the city in minutes by a quadrocopter, then, if history is any guide, a lot of service jobs go out of business. And that is the point. The beauty of automation is that even the demeaning service sector is rapidly encroached upon. This begins a massive social dialogue on what to do next as a species. Many in United States for instance don't realize that when manufacturing companies return factories back from China, these factories are massively automated. Even recent manufacturing villains like Taiwanese FoxConn now have plans for replacing their suicide prone proles with a massive investment into 1 million robot units.

But back to quadrocopter delivery systems. Besides delivering lunch to iron cutters working in high rise construction buildings, these quadrotor wonders can actually aid in the construction of skyscrapers themselves by delivering building materials rather than continuing reliance on standard assembly of cranes on the upper floors. Of course these quadrotor craft would be dramatically larger in scale. Considering they are more aerodynamically stable and reliable than traditional heavy lift helicopters, large industrial quadrocopter lifters (modular so they can link up and form geometric chains when flying) appear like the they can aid in logistics for rapid construction efforts as being pioneered currently in places like China. We're familiar with the incredibly fast relay postal service that existed within the Mongol empire where a chain of race horse outposts was operated. One race horse rode to exhaustion and another picked up the package. A similar relay system for large automated industrial quadrotor vehicles can be implemented very rapidly and cheaply. Any parking lot can be a relay and a recharge station. Once again, the distance between relays is only limited by nanotechnology within best available lightweight industrial batteries to power these machines. Pools and ponds providing hydrogen for fuel cells are other potential rest stops.

You find it demeaning that a foreign immigrant drives a bicycle through the rain to deliver your food for a 2 dollar tip? Then call your lame do nothing congressman and ask for investment in automated quadrotor air delivery. 

Kiva Robots that are replacing thousands
of  warehouse workers daily help US 
narrow the robot gap

Western Reindustrialization: Science Cities

When certain countries rediscover the political will to engage in macro level high tech industry and infrastructure building, they should keep in mind a few simple things. Physical architecture to spur creativity and plug and play integrated chains from concept to industrial production.




Western elites have a short amount of time to jump start a new wave of industrialization (to avoid being humiliated at international conferences). DARPA and Naukograds provide hints of how this should be done in the 21st century.

It is well known that a creative mind works best in a novel cutting edge environment. Google has long provided offices that could fit in The Jetsons, Steve Jobs knew it with his spaceship office building design, and president Medvedev intends to rapidly construct a hybrid of silicon valley and MIT in Skolkovo (the way IKEA packages a complex table). Chinese authorities are already constructing scientific campuses with top notch imported factory assembly lines as built in extensions.

For Westerners to begin catching up rapidly, the science-factory cities need to be rethought from the bottom up. The effort should be as holistic as the Apollo program was since it would stimulate and push the best of the human herd's abilities. How would an even larger concentrated effort to churn out 21st century machines look like? The science-factory (SciFac) cities can take on a multitude of forms and sizes but the basic framework may take on this form:

1) Location: A brand new dedicated area to house up to 200,000 people has to be set up in a region that is not too polluted by toxins from prior industrial thrusts. The climate conditions should not be depressing, distracting, or prone to too many natural disasters. Scenery should be inspirational for those who get mental breakthroughs from activities like hiking. Elevation above sea level and air dryness are additional considerations. The SciFacs should not be in the suburbs of any old design city (even if this makes resource logistics more difficult and costly, it'll end up being a blessing in disguise). A right country can of course be a giant plus when it comes to rapidly acquiring the right machines for SciFac's functioning. One can of course visualize Germany or Japan and parts of United States as being good candidates.

2) Lay Out: The SciFac city is optimal if it has a shell within a shell within a shell Matryoshka doll set up. The city as a whole can be viewed as a giant biophysical assembly line. Even the working teams can be further arranged via "psychological assembly" and management to fully utilize abilities of different creative breeds.

__a) The inner most central "research-brain storm" core is a well known basic DARPA layout where fundamental science research is done to create a bridge between current breakthroughs and long term potential breakthroughs. Various fundamental science laboratory complexes are to be integrated with novel housing for quick foot travel and each lab complex to have an immediate proximity communal club area where egos of the researchers can play off each other meaningfully. Obviously both the labs and their attached clubs would be like spokes on a small wheel so interdisciplinary brain storming can be unleashed via individualized healthy one upsmanship and tapping into NT narcissism.

__b) The secondary "engineer and engineering research" shell would be a series of institutes for developing practical application of the fundamental research breakthroughs from the core. These institutes can be looked at as continuation of the spokes from the core. Same system of clubs and interdiscipline friendly architecture is present in this middle layer.

__c) Tertiary shell is to have a network of modular easily replaceable factory floors to build and test prototypes as well as tools to make these prototypes. Real working technologies conceived within the core (brief biking distance at this point) are to be made available to continually inspire the humans in the core and secondary layer.

__d) Supporting final shell where personnel that maintains the SciFac city lives and constructs needed supplies. This shell includes high tech automated vertical farm buildings, clothing factories, grooming item factories, security, raw material processing for tertiary layer assembly lines, etc. The reason why things like clothing, food, toothpaste, medicine are built/assembled on site is because it is incredibly easy to do so and because part of the tertiary prototype layer can actually continuously improve these facilities. In fact, a thin pizza slice of a given SciFac (extending almost to the core) can be tasked with just conceptualizing improvements and constructing augmentation of the actual SciFac itself.

This constant renewal is essential to avoid stagnation and to promote the efficiency, culture, and psycho-physical health of the residents. Modularization of the city's buildings and infrastructure aids in this. Additionally, a small city owning the means of production and distribution and providing for its own needs can rapidly become a role model even before first prototypes roll off the assembly lines. Everybody understands that human primates have essential needs like grooming and an automated small factory can easily stamp out enough haircombs, socks, hats, dental floss, slippers, toys, etc for 200,000+ residents. The SciFac can of course be given ownership rights by the public over certain regional mines and agricultural lands to ship the raw resources to itself and streamline the process. Vertical and horizontal integration would not be just for robber barons anymore. Industrial 3D printing even allows consumers within inner layers to design and order batches of unique goods (if a specialized nanolined jogging sweater helps somebody in the core think better by all means let the person have it).

3) Culture and governance: Obviously Soviet or Chinese style regimentation would be stifling for creativity and a substantial amount of social libertarianism is to be the norm. Compartments within each layer, each layer itself, and the city as a whole can easily have direct council democracy with today's communication technology. A scientific polis in action may be more inspiring for outside observers than any TED conference. As with DARPA, the red tape would not only be cut to the bone but scientifically reimagined. Non-hierarchal flat management structures and direct participatory democracy would of course further aid in psychological productivity by reducing damaging ego clashes, providing healthy feeling of autonomy, and even allowing invention of new more humane and efficient governance (within guiding limits naturally so the core city mission is not jeopardized by endless political infighting).

Besides helping in rapid reindustrialization of the Western world, the SciFac functions to groom future cadres of technocratic political leaders. The exclusivity of the SciFacs may seem elitist and scary (raising some people's fears of scientific dictatorship) but it is a definitive improvement over the current oligarchic/lawyer/playboy elitism and parasitic dictatorship of finance capital. It definitely creates much needed experimentation for a more meritocratic and progressive society during a time of great planetary transition and danger.

A properly constructed SciFac city of course can function in parallel with the old society rather than hatching an embryonic socioeconomic replacement but it may be a futile exercise to stop its role model leadership once it begins. Ecole Polytechniques of the world and profit/patent based silicon valley type constructions would pale in comparison if we get a small holistic bubble of the 21st century up and running. Yes, purposefully killing the patent culture within city limits will do wonders for brainstorming while reducing individual neuroticism and jealousy based interpersonal barriers. Out of 7 billion people on earth, staffing will not be a problem. Conceptualizing proper incentives to work within SciFac (besides getting to live there) is the easy part.

Conclusion:

Rather than a massive shake up of society or dictatorial large scale top down attempts at modernization, for some countries a SciFac City provides a rather benign foot in the door towards eventually rebooting the entire socioeconomic system. The public via state credit can easily set up a number of different highly automated relatively self sufficient SciFacs which share and learn from each other while keeping competition friendly.

The militaries of the world have engineer divisions that can quickly clear the needed areas and set up resource feeds for the SciFacs. The aesthetics and actual creativity inducing architecture are for the artistic breeds, organizational psychologists, and potential residents to decide upon. Soviets managed to rapidly catch up in technology and infrastructure using the shell within a shell compact living, researching, designing, and building Naukograd clusters. Dedicated Western power elite factions can do even better and overshoot rising competitors to the East when it comes to getting a top notch idea and getting it to the factory floor to take advantage of economies of scale. Of course SciFacs would function even better if they are international and cooperative in nature. In that case, China can aid in rapid construction of them in return for resource swaps as it has promised with high speed rail.

The public is hungry for state aided experimentation like this as the vacuum of ideas within elite circles becomes more noticeable by the day. The return on these investments stands to overshadow even the space race when it comes to ripple effects of emulation. Simple concepts like a city owning its own factories, farms, and energy sources to provide for basic resident needs (the way they provide police, the courts, and firefighting) will be revolutionary in terms of logistics and living efficiency. People will have a hard time believing it took this long and how they managed to live before such basic common sense practices.

What Jobs Will be Replaced by Robots?

Japan style plunge into robotics (and subsequent decimation of service sector employment) is essential for reconstruction of Western socioeconomics into a more humane form.



It may sound like madness to support further automation of labor during a historically significant economic depression. However, just like the proverbial bandaid, it is better for Western businesses and organizations to streamline themselves through robotics rapidly for the following two reasons:

1) Visible presence of robots outside their traditional places (factory assembly lines) will spur real national debate on the inevitable and irreversible historic process of ever rising unemployment due to mechanization. It is unlikely that generation Y will embrace neo-Luddite movement but rather will begin to clamor for an advanced high tech welfare state that Japan is seemingly moving towards. The bandaid being ripped off quickly will result in the rapid onset of shock that is spread across class and geographic lines as it will primarily decimate the demeaning service sector (that even children of the upper middle class often rely on). This in turn will help birth a diverse coalition of people across the political spectrum that applies heavy political pressure to create livable stipends and measures dealing with human displacement. We already see aspects of this in Germany and Japan as these societies do not rely (to nearly the same degree) on pseudo-serf labor of immigrants but choose to have ever more clean and automated farms and factories.

2) Contrary to popular belief, baby boomers retiring across the industrialized world will not free up enough job openings to arrest the process of mechanization and human replacement. That is due to technological progress in artificial intelligence software and robotics being an exponentially accelerating one. It is better to harness and direct the process proactively rather than to prolong the pain that comes from service sector illusions and their ridiculous broken promises. It is no secret at this point that white collar workers are being equally squeezed by technology as Internet has wiped out entire swaths of their employment in the last 20 years. Technology and robotics has removed more jobs worldwide than any sort of outsourcing or reliance on underpaid migrants. Public embrace of automation stands to permanently reduce daily and weekly working hours after there is fundamental understanding of what's occurring.

Japan has pledged to make robotics the backbone of its economy in the next 30 years. This means mass assembly and taking advantage of economies of scale to soon make robots an affordable investment for small business owners. So what areas can the robots move into?

1) Bartenders

There is absolutely no reason to have human bartenders in vast majority of the bars. Sure, upper classes will continue desiring human servile labor to be present to provide psychological feeling of dominance but majority of bars are dingy barely maintained ways to make a quick return on the owner's investment (just visit Manhattan). If the owner thinks the bar is being patronized just because of sexually attractive workers and their idle chatter, that is fine. Mechanization allows focus and sex appeal to be transfered towards musical acts and other attractions that customers are often there for in the first place. The robotic bartender itself will provide a spectacle as this video of an early model shows. It is a great investment that creates efficiencies in reliability, speed, and fun factor of drink pouring. Technically a large bar just requires one human guard.

"What if it breaks!!?? The night is over!!" What if the refrigeration system breaks or the lights or.. Not an argument.

2) City Bus and Subway Drivers

Now that DARPA is actively testing automated cars that successfully drive in human traffic (with the help of congressional act to make 1/3 of military convoy vehicles automated by 2015), there is no reason to have safe linear routes manned by humans. Many cities in the world already have a dedicated bus route all to itself, making robot driver's job all the more easier.

"What if it breaks!!?? The night is over!!" Really? Again? Reliance on certain car software is increasing and many drivers currently take the auto features that they use for granted. It is much easier to provide safe autopilot for a linear subway and bus route. Multiple failsafes to brake the vehicle can be implemented along with redundancies. We aren't sending a probe to Mars here.

3) Certain Types of Cooks

Here is a video of a robot that makes noodles. Today fresh noodles, tomorrow pizzas, bagels, hamburgers, etc. A robot like this contains within it the entire assembly line so things like noodles can be transformed from raw ingredients to final steaming form on a plate. Future models will be a qualitative step above the glorified vending machines like this pizza bot in Italy. Fast food corporations will be the first to jump on these machines and thus lower their price through mass bargaining (as well as the price of final product of course). Smaller chains will follow as quality of the finished fresh product will not differ from mom and pop business cookery. Creative touches can be manually added to the programming or downloaded. Obviously the need for cooks will remain and those who are left will have more time and freedom to get creative.

4) Traffic Police

Cars in 50 mile an hour zone can easily be made to not be able to go above 50 miles an hour. This is not technically a robot example but demonstrates the thought process we should embrace. If governments are actually serious about preventing road deaths (instead of just using speed limits to cynically bolster local finances with fees), then it follows that new cars should automatically adjust their speed ceiling based on the zone they are entering. Modern WiFi tech more than allows for it. Obviously there would be an emergency override switch in case of crime or health emergencies that automatically notifies relevant authorities.

5) Other Types of Catering

The reason why I separated bartenders and cooks from the umbrella of catering is to illustrate that pretty much most demeaning jobs are replaceable (if not altogether then in parts). There will definitely be a transition period where robots are gradually introduced into one part of the catering chain and work with humans. Although modern automated locomotion (either based on offshoots of segway transport or actual mechanical legs) is remarkably stable, robotic waitresses will be the final development. When people go to restaurants, many still have this pathological feudal desire to be served (the way they serve others during long week) so a robotic waiter may take away from the "experience" regardless of how graceful and quiet the robo limbs are. Once again however, mid sized chains can implement catering bots as a sort of a gimmick to ease the transition ("Welcome to Applebees! I am Wendy and will be your caterbot this evening. Tips are not included or needed! I love you!").

6) Agricultural Harvesting

Many types of backbreaking farm jobs currently performed by illegal immigrants can be wiped out with harvestbots. These bots easily spot and pick oranges, apples, etc. This is relatively basic visual recognition programming that is developing at tremendous pace. Harvester tech progress (as pictured here) is well underway even in societies that like to exploit under the table labor.


7) Garbage Men, Recycling Workers, Certain Janitors

This is self explanatory. Roombas are but the tip of the iceberg of what's about to explode on the world scene.

8) Remaining Assembly Line Workers

Previously, factory bots were very specialized. The new thinking prevalent in Japan is that factory bots should be reprogrammable to extend their lifespan. This means more humanoid bots that can be made to build multitudes of new objects, be able to mingle with human workers, and work with each other if needed.

The more one looks around, the more silly jobs one sees that can (and thus will) be replaced. The sooner this happens the sooner the displaced humans will become an overwhelming force for societal change and futuristic welfare. A union of the displaced alone can be a political block unmatched in history. Look back 100 years or even 50 years and see how wonderful it was that things like elevator operator went the way of the Dodo. In 20 years we will look back and marvel at the absurdity of many tasks that our politicians have the nerve to call backbone of sound economy.

Technological Progress Causes Permanent Global Unemployment

Less than 20% of world's population is ultimately needed to produce ALL the goods and services.

Exponential technological progress and corresponding leaps in efficiency can only create rising unemployment under the current economic system. The problem remains even if every citizen is provided a graduate school education.



College graduates working as waitresses, jugglers, baristas, and improvising craftsmen are not signs of an economic downturn the way we tend to think of it. It is just an inevitable symptom of mechanization and rising efficiencies due to technological improvements. Mechanization is not just the biggest cause of unemployment domestically (compared to usual scapegoats like outsourcing) but internationally as well if you look at all of human population as a whole.

Research and development of more efficient machinery to replace human workers has not stopped with Henry Ford's death. The subsequent results do not just affect blue collar workers of course. The Internet and constant breakneck improvements in communication technology systems are constantly eroding white collar sector and driving down consumer prices.

Although economic/political system of United States is very inefficient at providing higher education infrastructure at an increasingly affordable price ( one of the more visible signs of supply not fulfilling demand as intended), mechanization makes itself felt nevertheless. The quarter of Americans who somehow acquire the resources to get a Bachelor's degree are increasingly finding themselves doing "service sector" jobs that don't need even a high school diploma. There is the fact of cut throat competition that human replacement brings (with the corresponding rise in power of the capitalist class that buys the labor).

This is tired old news but the problem of mechanization would not be solved even if the state built thousands of grad schools to make sure that the new generation of workers all have PhDs. Germany and France provide most of their people with access to higher education through advanced state capitalist economic schemes yet each country had relatively higher unemployment compared to United States. The only reason why United States did not have Eurozone levels of unemployment in the last 20 years is because the elites restricted supply of new university construction. If American public was supplied with education that it craves then we'd see the same riots, car burnings, student movements, and street protests as in Germany and France.

European oligarchs have long decided that keeping their poor citizens uneducated is too blunt in terms of spitting in the face of the general public. Considering that even the relatively technologically backward Russians were able to provide education for most of their society within 2 generations, German and French authorities could not deny their people the same without facing revolt. Considering it is also a spit in the face to ask a chemist or a media major graduate to serve food and booze, the elites in Berlin and France also provided welfare provisions and emulated United States with plugging menial labor gaps with immigrants. These measures have worked for a few decades and now are also breaking down as technology makes most people and their labor unnecessary. Obviously most people in the world (or France for that matter) can't be neuroscientists, investment bankers, software database experts, or consultants even if they were certified for that. American elites are facing an even greater crisis since the economic system of United States was only sustained by class/race inequalities and decades of ideological state propaganda.

(A sidenote: provision of graduate level schooling, health care, and affordable housing to everybody in a country is but a logistical engineering problem that can be solved very cheaply (in terms of energy/labor expenditure) with today's efficient tools. It is not even a problem of the state needing to own all means of production and distribution. 2009 technology allows the state to control just a bit of the vertically integrated industrial chains in order to rapidly build up the however many university buildings needed (besides the sheer cheapness to create a national standardized Internet curriculum and the supporting broadband architecture).

At the beginning of 20th century, many workers decided that although they could work 15 hours a day, they didn't want to. They wanted to work just 8 hours a day by virtue of being alive in a resource rich sovereign state. The economic system of the time of course easily fired those who wanted some time during the day to themselves. The result was that thousands of workers engaged in years and years of strikes, skull crushing violence in the streets, and appeals to reason ("this is horrible human condition, I don't like this, change it since technology allows more time during the day"). The oligarchic reforms, such as creation of 8 hour workweek and some safety nets, are well known. The efforts to prevent social instability and violence are repackaged as saving capitalism (and demonstrating capitalism's adaptive qualities) in today's history books. They also show that society did not collapse when the shift to an 8 hour workday occurred. Technology made it more than possible. When less than 1% of the population are needed to grow food and ( less than 30% of population needed to make knives, cars, computers, plates, jeans, and umbrellas) humanity can finally engage in mass reduction of daily energy expenditure.

Although one of the world's dominant economic experiments (free market capitalism as nicknamed by its ideologues) stagnated a lot of technological progress through inefficient distribution of education and key infrastructure, technology kept advancing exponentially nevertheless at least on micro consumer level. Mass unemployment is coming regardless of shifts to and from center-left or center-right socioeconomic structures. Even if the state started to aggressively employ millions of people, it would just delay the inevitable effects from mechanization. Although many of the rich and economic experts expect everybody to be content with doing service jobs for one another ( with the Marxist mantra of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" repackaged as "I'm a biology major but I can cook let me bake you a pie. I've studied computer repair but can cut hair let me be your barber") the authorities know this is not sustainable in a profit driven system. The current slide into an international economic depression will reshape the world even more so than the depression of 1930s. Oligarchs will try once again to preserve capitalist structures by reducing unemployment through provision of new welfare safety nets, reducing competition between workers through idling them in universities or sending them to war, and shifting political support towards more state capitalism.

As more engineers, scientists, researchers, and mathematicians publicly realize just how much more efficient 21st century direct state provision of goods and services is, it'll be increasingly difficult for governments of the world to justify their efforts at placating the rising tide of unemployed and underemployed. State capitalism can only go so far in the face of material reality. Rising unemployment among large swaths of the population, social stagnation, falling profits is the only outcome of 19th century Laissez Faire economics grafted on top of 21st century scientific possibility. The rich will have to decide whether to push the world's rising unemployed further into suffering and possible violent revolt or to provide a livable stipend and thus try to preserve personal power and some profit.

Robot Pets Help the Elderly

Move over cats and dogs. The equivalent of a crazy cat lady of the future is likely to be one with a multitude of specially designed robotic assistants. As of 2009, Japan is full speed ahead in creating a manufacturing base for robotic companions that will help the elderly with psychological well being, household chores, staying in touch with loved ones, staying physically fit, mobility, providing endless entertainment, and even assisting out on the street. The average age of all major industrial countries is constantly rising. The wave of post-war baby boomers around the world will drive demand for assistance and entertainment to levels never before seen.

As of today, many elderly rely on pets and grandkids for amusement, companionship, and feeling of empowerment through care taking. These methods are unreliable since they are mostly a one way street in terms of care. The investment into a cat in particular, might not even outweigh the psychological comfort of cuddling with it and enjoying its chaotic willful behavior. There is the constant expense of acquiring food for it and the time needed for other care. Dogs offer the increased health benefit of getting the elderly outside for walks. Many dogs however, consume even more food and the walks can be a drain occasionally.

The robotic companions that are about to be mass marketed create a two way mutually beneficial relationship with the elderly. They can: help remember to take your medicine in right amounts, clean up around the house, play mentally stimulating games with you, update you on news events and your family, help guard your house, monitor your health levels, have direct connection to the hospital, respond to your interaction with them in hundreds of different ways, do amusing physical tricks, connect to other media devices for full entertainment experience, look and feel cuddly and fun, and be fully under one's control.

Such a relationship not only creates a financial investment superior to dogs and cats but can potentially create a bigger emotional attachment to machines. With advancement in WiFi broadband and cloud supercomputing, the robotic pets of the future will have access to endless constantly updating programming that will give a stronger illusion of consciousness compared to biological pets. First generation of early adopter cyberpet owners will undoubtedly run into a multitude of quirks and deficiencies. With time however, a 70 year old man can create a stronger emotional bond with the robotic assistant than he does with a car or a trusty rifle.

Japanese and Swedish authorities have been recently collaborating to study effects and potential of integrating multitudes of mass produced robotic companions in retirement communities and hospitals. Once government organizations begin to massively use robotics and once the rich make cyberpets into status symbols, the trend should take off culturally around the world. Unlike flesh and blood pets, robots can suggest activities and urge the owners to engage in healthier more active lifestyles. Combined with social networking, the cyberpets can link owners together socially by interest. By remembering what the owner likes, they would increasingly behave and cater to that preference. With voice recognition growing in leaps, cyberpets can even help finish the owner's train of thought if he or she stops mid-sentence.

By no means should cats and dogs be replaced since cyberpets can not only co-exist with their fleshy counterparts but even make real pet ownership more enjoyable. Cyberpets can make cat/dog ownership easier through caretaking/feeding/cleanup and can engage with fleshy pets in playful activities to extend the pets' lifespans and functioning. The cyberpets of tomorrow will be covered with durable soft synthetic exterior that is pleasant and warm to the touch. Their fur will not shed easily and would be replaceable according to one's aesthetic desires. We can't even begin to imagine the rise in quality of life when watching, say, a blue furred purring robotic lemur interact with your cat. Especially if the robotic lemur sings the oldies like Nirvana, vacuums the floor, informs you of your portfolio investments, and uplinks live video feed to television from your friends and family.

Having said that, can see a future drop in demand for real pets begin to occur. There's the environmental consideration of using a lot of chemicals and fertilizer to grow animal feed for animals used in cat/dog food. Using real tuna and fish bits in cat food might seem like a silly luxury a couple of decades from now. In Japan, increasingly there are cat and dog pet cafes for those who like furry animals but don't want to have them at home. Pet cafes and larger petting zoos allow not just a great public attraction (that generates revenue and promotes social interaction for the whole family), but can serve as an outlet to retire one's aging pets. As elderly people pass away, their pets would have a great public retirement destination to live out the rest of their life and interact with many other animals and children. Unwanted and unadoptable pets can mingle with the healthy ones and serve a useful public service. Large petting parks of course can be tended by robotic cleanup crews that would also educate the visitors.

Pet stores are a strange business since they treat pets as a commodity yet try to not treat them as one would a farm animal before the slaughter. If the cultural construct is one where cats and dogs are to be protected, then pet stores should be discouraged legally. Too many opportunities for abuse occur in the existing gaps between for profit pet stores, farms, adoption agencies, and buyers. Rather than expanding energies and human labor to fine tune inspection and enforcement, it makes sense to restrict pet acquisition to large regulated petting zoos and cafes. As for more exotic animals, only zoos and professional research organizations should be allowed to own them and make money off them through public tours.

Robotic pets combined with smaller amounts of better bred, raised, and regulated real pets, are a good way to kick off transition period for our elderly. The sooner furry robots begin to trickle into our homes, the happier and healthier our elderly and society will be overall.