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"The bottom line in the Dune trilogy is: beware of heroes. Much better to rely on your own judgment, and your own mistakes."
- Frank Herbert
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| Mechanical Cleaning Device | ||
| A small, ground-based autonomous robot doing basic janitorial work. |
This is a relatively early reference to this idea. The Roomba vacuum cleaner and the Scooba floor cleaning robot from iRobot are now ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive devices.
(Scooba in action)
| Most of the Interior staff had gone home to bed; it was almost three in the morning, and the corridors and offices were deserted. A few mechanical cleaning devices crept here and there in the darkness. |
| Technovelgy from The Unreconstructed M,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Science Fiction Stories in 1957 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the MSE-6 series repair and clean up droid, made famous in the original 1976 film Star Wars.
Also, fans of Ray Bradbury might be thinking of the robot mice from his 1950 novel The Martian Chronicles, while Heinlein fans might be thinking of the hired girl robot from his 1956 novel The Door into Summer.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from The Unreconstructed M
More Ideas
and Technology by Philip K. Dick
Tech news articles related to The Unreconstructed M
Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick
Mechanical Cleaning Device-related
news articles:
- Robot Janitors Get To Work
| Artificial Skin For Robots Is Coming Right Along |
| Robot Guard Dog On Duty |
| Wearable Artificial Fabric Muscles |
| Dancing Robots Taught Dance Moves |
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'Power could be compressed thus into an inch-square cube of what looked like blue-white ice'
'It's so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself...'
'Heavy penalties... were to be applied to any one found driving manually-controlled machines.'
'Buy a Little Dingbat... electropen, wrist watch, pocketphone, pocket radio, billfold ... all in one.'
'... an elastic, tinted material that had all the feel and appearance of human flesh and epidermis.'
'It is remarkable that the long leverages of their machines are in most cases actuated by a sort of sham musculature...'
