From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 01 2002 - 10:36:49 MDT
Adrian Tymes wrote:
> ...
> Why wouldn't a disabled person use more conventional means? Like,
> again, just paying someone to run errands that said person can not do?
> ...
Well, on the average disabled people have less money than physically
capable people. That might be one reason...though if they could afford
this device during it's early days, I guess that they wouldn't be
average in that department.
More to the point, I don't see the advantage of this approach. How is
it better than mail order (or internet based) shopping? Groceries are a
problem (I think Peapod has gone out of business.), but for most things
that works pretty well. So there isn't much incentive to develop this
gadget. Bureacracies generally require you to be present in person,
disabled or not, so it couldn't be a stand-in there. The only use I can
see is shopping for perishable commodities, and that's not a good place
to start.
A possibly correct approach is to work on the self-driving car. From
this you can generalize in many different directions in an adaptive
radiation. Some of these would be towards the smaller end of the range.
And some of these might adapt into personal services robots, though
probably not much like the one that was envisioned.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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