Smart or not smart? #1/1

A series (see bottom) of articles covering different “smart” product categories, specifically from my single (and therefore inherently biased) opinionated view of companies attempts at bringing (supposedly) smart products to market.

Series 1 – Garden

Episode 1 – Gardena’s smart Robotic mower SILENO city

You may know Gardena as the German top-quality (and top price) gardening tools; and as their web site declares:

“GARDENA is the preferred brand for millions of home and garden owners worldwide when it comes to garden care.”

Let’s take Gardena’s “smart” range of lawn mowers; specifically, smart Robotic mower SILENO city, which I have.

It’s anything but smart. 

Instead, it’s dumb.

It has about the same smarts as those robotic “turtles” we had in school back the in 1980’s (actually based on a 1940s design).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(robot)

The SILENO mows the lawn without any understanding of its environment. It brutishly goes about, bumping into immovable objects, damaging itself and the object, time after time after time. Even the most forgetful goldfish remembers not to keep banging into the glass of their tank.

Instead of any intelligence, the SILENO relies on you having carefully laid a conductive wire along the perimeter of your grass that you want the SILENO to stay within. Just like the Turtle could visually follow a black line on white paper!

Fair enough, given how complex an environment a garden could be?

Well, no!

Dyson have a robotic vacuum cleaner (the 360eye) that manages to visually map its environment using a camera, and then uses Machine Learning (ML) to remember and adjust its programming according to changes.  Smart.

It also has Infrared (IR) edge detection (to avoid severe drops) and of course it has similar “bump” sensors to those of the Turtle and the SILENO.

The SILENO is automated; robotic even; but is it smart?

If you think about it, what does smart actually mean?

Would a human using a lawn mower - whether it’s powered manually, by electricity or fossil-fuel – push it over the edge and or ram recklessly into a tree, brick wall or delicate flower?

If a Tesla car can process very complex, dynamic and fast changing environments where life or death decisions have to be made instantaneously – and – a Dyson vacuum can map and adapt to its environment, why couldn’t the SILENO use GPS + vision + other sensors to be “smart” and learn its environment and adjust to changes dynamically, and at the very least remember where it has mown?

Thoughts? 

++++

Next episode (2) is firmware update process; smart?

Series

1. Garden
2. Automotive
3. Security
4. Smart meters
5. Entertainment
6. Lighting
7. Heating
8. Cleaning
9. Environment

The premise is did said company get it right / getting it right – or - should they have stuck with making excellent human-powered manual products and left the innovation of robotics and automation to the start-ups that design for the human (user-centred design)?

I have chosen companies and products that I use – daily. 

Some have great products – of that there is little doubt – but like many of the non-digital-native (NDN) companies I have interacted with over the decades, either as a consumer (as in this case) or as a professional, some struggle to understand that creating a digital-powered product or smart product is not about bolting some electronic components together and hoping for the best.