I thought of two possible, somewhat feasible and most importantly, insanely fun (at least fun to think about) projects:
a) trash-maps.google.com, and
b) where did it go-bot.
trash.maps.google.com
This project would actually deal with a very important real life problem, especially in urban areas: cleaning the streets, and recycling what's swept. I'm thinking this as a swarm robotics project, where little semi-autonomous guys will roll by the curbs and on the sidewalks and one-by-one identify the soda cans, cigarette buds, coffee cups, etc. while keeping a catalog of what sort of trash is collected where in the world. And then, you go on trash.maps.google.com and see what streets are the cleanest and where people are, let's say, more relaxed and less worried about the environment.
What do you do with the trash that you collect? See Wall-E if you haven't.
Potential Issues with trash.maps.google.com
1. What better than having your street squeeky-clean at all times? On the flip side, this piece of technology, might cause people to say "oh, the robots will clean it anyway" and start dumping more and more things on the street.
2. Another issue might be people stealing, attacking, kicking, abusing and doing all sorts of weird things to these little trash-map-bots. Who'll cover the cost of that? Not me.
Where Did It Go-Bot
This project would make people who loose things often very happy! Only if they don't care about being spied on all day long. Have you ever wanted to Google your closet, apartment, or office drawer? Well, with where did it go-bot, now you can!
I'm thinking of this robot as a little piece of shiny furniture-like spherical robot, in different finishing and colors, roaming around looking at your stuff, labeling what's where, saving it to your google-drive, crawling through the things you own (not physically, although that might sometimes be necessary) and asking your questions when it gets "confused": is the location of this object important for you? Should I keep track of your new set of apartment keys?
Potential Issues with Where Did It Go-Bot
1. Well, as much as I like the idea, it's still creepy. Some thing, knows where my stuff is all the time. I mean, that can be really useful if I'm looking where the other pair of my gloves is, but what if I'm actually hiding something and this little sneaky robot found it somehow? Creepy. Privacy is a huge issue.
Solution: Disabling / enabling tracking of certain objects or certain groups of objects may prevent this issue. You could say, don't track my t-shirts so the robot ignores all t-shirts. Filtering out could be done as "forget immediately / ignore" or "forget after the object becomes 100% invisible". This much of detail shouldn't be left to the user though...
2. If, sorry, I actually meant to say when, this system gets hacked, some random people will know the exact location of all users' belongings. Or will they? You can, say, who cares about Mr. X's socks location? But you never know. What if Mr. X has a very expensive collection of cigars and wine that are rarely found... That would be valuable if stolen and sold... Privacy is a huge issue.
Solution: There really is no guaranteed solution against hacking. If it's man-made, and it's online, there's a chance that it will get hacked. Encrypting the heck out of every component may eliminate some kinds of attacks, but it certainly isn't enough.
I may give this 20% time robotics ideas another thought.
I hope you had fun reading!
I hope you had fun reading!
Bener Suay
