Cloud Robotics... The Future of Cleaning?

Recently, I stumbled upon a couple of articles discussing cloud robotics and how their  continued development could threaten jobs.  I was immediately reminded of the movie 'I, Robot' where the super computer VIKI had been programmed to 'understand' and apply human logic and emotion that she became almost more powerful than the humans.  I remember watching that movie and thinking how far fetched it was, and now, the exact same thought process in being developed by Google. "Google has developed an open source (free) operating system for robots, with the unsurprising name "ROS" -- or Robot Operating System. In other words, Google is trying to create the MS-DOS (or MS Windows) of robotics." reports Ford.

In Martin Ford's Book, 'A Light in the Tunnel', he notes, "A housekeeping robot would need to be able to recognize hundreds or even thousands of objects that belong in the average home and know where they belong. In addition, it would need to figure out what to do with an almost infinite variety of new objects that might be brought in from outside. "

He further adds:

'As in the object recognition example, robots will be able to take advantage of a wide range of online data resources.

• Migrating more intelligence into the cloud will make robots more affordable, and it will be possible to upgrade their capability remotely — without any need for expensive hardware modifications. Repair and maintenance might also be significantly easier and largely dealt with remotely.
• It will be possible to train one robot, and then have an unlimited number of other robots instantly acquire that knowledge via the cloud. Machine learning is likely to be highly disruptive to the job market at some point in the future in part because of this ability to rapidly scale what machines learn across entire organizations — potentially threatening huge numbers of jobs.'
• Essentially, one robot will learn about the function, location and purpose of an item or system and will be able to share this information with all other robots via the cloud. Think of the cloud as the robot brain, accessing the experience of an individual robot. Tons of information sharing via the cloud and the ability for the robot to draw from this infinite source.

In an industry such as commercial cleaning, most people believe the work is process based, that the same thing is done everyday. In theory, this is correct. However, the reality is that an experienced, well-trained commercial cleaner sees more than than the task list in front of them. They get to know each building, each office and each cubicle. The tendencies of the tasks may be able to be tracked but the human ability to connect with a client, discuss their needs, their issues and provide understanding are some things that a robot cannot do.

People still want to deal with people. Imagine your frustration when you have a question and you have to wade through 10 minutes of voice activated or pre-recorded messages. I know personally, I always hit zero or scream "representative" because all I want is a real person to understand what I need. No matter the development, this connection, the human connection will always be necessary.