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Innovative machine: In 1962, technicians connected the 77 kg Telstar 1 satellite to the launch rocket, ready to enter orbit. Photo: Lucent Technologies/Bell Laboratories

It was 1974. Platform shoes are the height of urban fashion. Disco is just getting on track. The Watergate scandal paralyzed the US government. The new Porsche 911 Turbo helps car enthusiasts at the Paris Motor Show temporarily forget the recent Arab oil embargo. And AT&T is undoubtedly the largest company in the world

AT&T's $26 billion in revenue-equivalent to today's $82 billion-accounted for 1.4% of the US gross domestic product. The second largest company, the huge General Motors, is only one-third of its size, dwarfed by AT&T's $75 billion assets, more than 100 million customers and nearly 1 million employees.

AT&T is a corporate giant, and it looks the same as Gibraltar. But now, only 30 years later, this behemoth no longer exists. Among the many events that led to the long-term decline of the company, the most important one occurred in the fall of that year. On November 20, 1974, the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit, which will end 10 years later with the split of AT&T and its network Bell System into seven regional operators, Baby Bells. AT&T and its legendary research organization, Bell Telephone Laboratories, and its manufacturing subsidiary, Western Electric, retained their long-distance services. Since then, the company has experienced many ups and downs. It started new businesses, split up divisions, and bought and sold companies. But in the end it succumbed. Now AT&T is gone.

The company-still a telecommunications giant, but more focused on the corporate market-agreed to be acquired by SBC Communications Inc., one of San Antonio’s Baby Bells, in a transaction valued at $16 billion. A few months later, AT&T’s well-known stock symbol-T, which stands for telephone-will disappear from the New York Stock Exchange. This company was developed from the original telephone patent of Alexander Graham Bell. The coming company will officially cease to exist.

Should we mourn for the loss? The simple answer is no. Nowadays, telephone providers are everywhere. AT&T's service continues to exist, and if it doesn't exist, it can easily be replaced.

But this simple answer ignores AT&T's unparalleled history of research and innovation. In the company's heyday, from 1925 to the mid-1980s, Bell Labs brought us inventions and discoveries that changed our way of life and broadened our understanding of the universe. How many companies can make such a request?

Bell Labs’ frequently repeated list of innovations includes many milestones in the 20th century, including transistors, lasers, solar cells, fiber optics, and satellite communications. There is no doubt that AT&T's R&D machine is one of the greatest machines ever. But few people realize that, paradoxically, its innovation led to the downfall of its parent company. And now, through a series of events in the past thirty years, this remarkable R&D engine has lost its momentum.

When AT&T monopolized the control of American Telecom, the R&D managers of Bell Labs and Western Electric received stable financial guarantees, enabling them to look forward to 10 or 20 years-truly disruptive technologies require this long-term vision to sprout and prosper . The combination of stable funding and long-term thinking has made core contributions to a wide range of fields such as wireless and optical communications, information and control theory, microelectronics, computer software, system engineering, recording and digital imaging. Bell Labs has accumulated more than 30,000 patents and has hosted a series of scientific breakthroughs, winning six Nobel Prizes in Physics [see sidebar, "Bell's Nobel Prizes"] and many other awards.

Funding mainly comes from the built-in "R&D tax" for phone services. Half a century ago, every time we picked up the phone to make a long-distance call, every dollar would cost a few pennies-much higher than today's value-to Bell Labs and Western Electric, most of which were long-term- -Long-term research and development in telecommunications improvement.

For example, in 1974, Bell Laboratories spent more than $500 million on non-military research and development, accounting for approximately 2% of AT&T's total revenue. Western Electric spends even more on its internal engineering and development business. Therefore, more than 4 cents of every dollar received by AT&T that year was used for research and development of Bell Labs and Western Electric.

In 80 years, Bell Labs has won six physics prizes

By emitting a beam of electrons at a nickel crystal, Clinton J. Davidson showed that the beating electrons diffract like electromagnetic waves. His proof of the wave nature of electrons eventually led to solid-state physics. George P. Thomson shared this award.

By combining semiconductors in the right way, you can make them amplify and switch signals. The transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley makes all digital devices possible.

How do electrons behave in amorphous materials such as metal alloys and glass? Philip W. Anderson proposed a quantum mechanics model. This work won him a Nobel Prize and shared it with Nevill F. Mott and John H. van Vleck. With the development of memory chips and other solid-state devices, it has found practical applications.

Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson used the radio antenna originally developed for satellite communications to probe the sky and detected the weak microwave echo that was born in the universe. Their findings provided key support for the Big Bang theory.

By shining a focused laser beam on a group of atoms, Steven Chu was able to slow down the speed of the atoms and reduce their temperature to almost zero. This "optical molasses" effect gave birth to atomic lasers and improved atomic clocks and navigation equipment. Chu shared the award with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William D. Phillips.

1998-Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

Horst L. Störmer, Robert B. Laughlin, and Daniel C. Tsui use a powerful magnetic field to place electrons in a quantum state with liquid-like properties. This phenomenon known as the "fractional quantum Hall effect" reveals the behavior of electrons and other elementary particles.

Every penny is worth it. This is task-oriented R&D in an industrial environment, focusing on practical applications and their ultimate impact on the bottom line.

AT&T’s commitment to research and development stems mainly from its experience in developing high-power vacuum tubes used as transcontinental telephone service amplifiers before World War I. After Bell's original patent expired, in the face of fierce competition from local phone companies, AT&T saw its leadership position threatened-even though it controls about half of the country's phones.

The company hopes to expand and provide "universal services" to its customers, aiming to place its mobile phones in every home and office across the country and connect them to each other. But this requires a very low-distortion amplifier or repeater, which allows AT&T to provide something other companies cannot provide: coast-to-coast calls.

In 1912, the young doctor Harold D. Arnold (Harold D. Arnold). A physicist who just graduated from the University of Chicago joined AT&T's engineering department. A few years ago, he started trying to improve the performance of the low-power Audion transistor invented by Lee de Forest. Arnold applied an oxide layer on the tungsten cathode of the tube to promote the emission of electrons and to extract excess air molecules from the tube, which he believed would hinder the flow of current. The resulting high-power vacuum tube performed well, re-growing the voice signal sent with minimal distortion [see photo, "a famous visitor"].

Using repeaters based on Arnold tubes, AT&T caused a sensation at the Panama Pacific International Fair in San Francisco in 1915, when the company demonstrated its first transcontinental service. At the AT&T headquarters in New York City, Alexander Graham Bell once again issued his famous command to the mouthpiece: "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." In San Francisco, his old assistant roared: "I It will take five days to get there now!"

In the next half century, AT&T will dominate the US transcontinental telephone market-an advantage that helped the company re-establish its monopoly and put many small local telephone companies under the umbrella of its Bell system. Therefore, firmly convinced of the value of investment in research and development, in 1925, AT&T managers reorganized most of the company's research and development activities into one organization: Bell Telephone Laboratories.

The first headquarters of Bell Labs was located in an elegant, sun-drenched 12-story building at 463 West Street in New York City, overlooking the Hudson River, and soon became the home of 2,000 scientists and engineers. Its founding president Frank B. Jewett later helped lead the research and development efforts in the United States during World War II, and served as the president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1939 to 1947.

Famous visitor: Frank B. Jewett (right), who is about to become the first president of Bell Labs, demonstrates high-power vacuum tubes to Joseph J. Thomson, who discovered electrons. Photo: Michael Riordan/Bell Laboratories

As an industrial laboratory, Bell Labs is mainly dedicated to improving AT&T's telephone operations. However, his first research directors, Jewett and Arnold, wisely supported projects whose results were not necessarily useful in the short term. Their commitment to such basic research soon achieved an unprecedented scientific breakthrough in 1927.

When physicist Clinton J. Davisson observed electrons passing through vacuum tubes and bouncing from nickel crystals, they discovered that these active beams of subatomic particles seemed to behave like waves! The interesting hypothesis proposed by Louis de Broglie that matter may have wavy properties aroused fierce controversy in Europe at that time. Davidson's accidental discovery of electronic waves was of great help in verifying De Broglie's theory-and won him half of the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was the first Bell Labs.

Quantum descriptions of substances that emerged from fermentation in the 1920s soon found practical applications in the work of other Bell Labs scientists. Understanding the conductivity of semiconductors (such as silicon and germanium) that appeared in the US radar program during World War II has become critical, and Bell Labs and Western Electric played a key role in research and development. This emerging quantum theory of solids was also crucial to the invention of transistors by post-war physicists John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley—their new home at Bell Labs, a huge building in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Suburban campus work

However, transistors are still a long way from becoming mass-produced small inventions that can reshape or create huge industries, including radio, television, microelectronics, and aerospace. Before transistors began to take their present form, it took more than a decade of development—including silicon purification, crystal growth, and the diffusion of chemical agents called dopants into semiconductors. Most of the work is not done at Bell Labs, but at two western electrical plants near Allentown and Reading, Pennsylvania, where engineers developed the precision manufacturing processes and technologies required for mass production of transistors. Today, the clean room used in almost every aspect of semiconductor manufacturing was born and grown in Allentown.

Stuart W. Leslie, a science historian at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, pointed out: “The scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey may have won the Nobel Prize and received most of the media attention, but Allentown and Reading delivered the results." "Their research and production engineers, tool and mold makers, layout operators, and assembly line workers figured out how to translate the award-winning research into reliable, durable, consistent, and inexpensive equipment."

In the 1950s, with the invention of the transistor, Bell Labs produced many other innovations, and Budding, Bratton, and Shockley won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956. Silicon technology gave birth to integrated circuits. It also led to solar cells, which provided long-lasting power for generations of satellites in the following decades. Electrical engineer John R. Pierce perfected the wartime traveling wave radar tube as an efficient microwave source, making his satellite communications dream a reality. He played a key role in the development of Telstar, the satellite with an amplifier circuit designed to retransmit signals over long distances.

Then, in 1964, physicists Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson used huge horn antennas rescued from the Telstar project and accidentally discovered the dim afterglow of the birth of the universe: the remnant microwaves of the Big Bang. Their discovery triggered a revolution in cosmology and won them a trip along the old road from Bell Labs to Stockholm in 1978.

But as Christopher Rhoads pointed out in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, AT&T’s Magnificent R&D Program helped the company consolidate its monopoly position and significantly improve the telephone service it provides to its customers. , Which also contributed to the dissolution of the company. Take the transistor as an example. This invention has now become the core of all digital products, from DVD players to satellite transponders. AT&T originally obtained the patent for this invention for a negligible $25,000, and later placed it in the public domain as part of the 1956 consent decree to prevent the court from breaking the monopoly.

AT&T’s leaders recognized that transistors were too important to allow them to use themselves-in any case, the court might not allow it. But more importantly, Bell Labs and Western Electric Company held a series of seminars in the 1950s. Engineers from many other companies participated in these seminars to actively encourage the spread of their semiconductor technology. Participants include Jack Kilby, who will continue to be a pioneer in integrated circuits for Texas Instruments, and a handful of engineers from a small electronics company in Tokyo who will use the early success of transistor radios to transform them into a dominant position in consumer electronics for decades: Sony . If the invention of the transistor triggered the information age, then after those workshops fueled the combustion, it really became a global phenomenon.

At that time, Bell Labs managers generally regarded their company as a quasi-public institution that contributed to national welfare by enriching national science and technology. From this perspective, it makes sense for AT&T to vigorously promote semiconductor technology—especially in a period when the company is profitable and does not feel any competitive pressure.

But this generosity may be one of the key forces in its eventual downfall, because smaller, more flexible, and less legally bound companies seized the opportunity to develop and deploy innovations that helped weaken AT&T's dominant position in the US telecommunications sector. "After being forced to break up in 1984," the Wall Street Journal's Rhoads wrote, "it was slowly overwhelmed by technology that lowered the price of long-distance calls, and recently it has been overwhelmed by wireless phones and Internet calls."

While Bell Labs and Western Electric are committed to many of their innovations, they are deeply ingrained in the culture of the parent company to resist rapid change. According to former AT&T corporate historian Sheldon Hochheiser, “The lack of service spirit and competitive pressure has produced a corporate culture that is largely dominated by engineering thinking.” He added that this culture “encourages a A value system, in which managers often spend time making innovations right, as defined by engineers."

Therefore, AT&T engineers usually emphasize the reliability and robustness of the network, rather than the rapid introduction of advanced technology. Usually after ten years or more, new features (such as long-distance direct dialing and touch-tone phones) will eventually permeate the entire system. The cellular telephone, which was first described in detail by Bell Labs engineers in 1947, has never gained extensive commercial operation as part of the Bell system.

Perhaps the most shocking example of the company's technological conservatism is the lazy introduction of electronic switches, which was conceived in the 1930s by Mervyn J. Kelly, head of research at Bell Labs (later became president). Kelly was the person who hired Shockley to guide him in finding solid-state replacements for the electromechanical relays used in switches in many of the central offices of Bell Systems.

Noisy, bulky relays open and close circuits to establish a continuous physical connection between any two phones. On the other hand, solid-state switches have no moving parts, so they are smaller, faster, quieter, and more reliable. Although electronic switches based on solid-state components had been developed in 1959, AT&T did not introduce the first digital switch to the Bell system until 1976. Until the 1980s, when AT&T monopolized telephones, electronic switches were still gradually introducing services and came to an abrupt end. The faster introduction of digital switches by MCI and Sprint could lead to the downfall of AT&T.

Although Bell Labs and Western Electric developed most of the underlying silicon technology required for integrated circuits, which eventually became the core of electronic central office switches, AT&T was not involved. Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments are upstarts because they focus on miniaturizing electronic products for their military and aerospace customers, but are leading the way. Here, AT&T engineers may have caused this mistake again because they insisted on using high-performance discrete components with a lifespan of 40 years in the Bell system. Ian Rose, president of Bell Labs, admitted that the system does not have a big push for miniaturization. "The weight of the central office is not a big issue," Rose said.

Another factor contributing to technological inertia is the billions of dollars that have been invested in Bell systems. Any responsible company manager wants to amortize this type of investment before introducing newer and better equipment, especially if there are no real competitors. As the historian Hochheiser points out, “the absence of competition allows Bell System managers to look freely in the long-term.”

This ability in the long run is a boon for Bell Labs researchers. They can follow their instincts and explore things that interest them in particular, rather than what might support AT&T in the next few years. . "The only pressure at Bell Labs is to do work that is sufficient to publish or obtain patents," recalls Maurice Tannenbaum, who developed the first silicon transistor in 1954 [see "The Lost History of Transistors", IEEE Spectrum , May 2004] and rose to the top of Bell Labs management in the 1970s.

With ample office and well-equipped laboratory space, lush green environment, elegant cafeteria and spacious library, the Bell Labs campus in Murray Hill attracts some of the best scientists and engineers in the world. Given their extensive research freedom, they rewarded their visionary employers with a series of extraordinary technological firsts until AT&T was disbanded in 1984.

Take researchers Izuo Hayashi and Morton Panish as examples. In 1970, they developed the first semiconductor laser capable of working at room temperature-a prerequisite for use in CD and DVD players, printers, barcode scanners, and fiber optic networks. At about the same time, Willard Boyle and George Smith invented the charge-coupled device or CCD, which is now the core and soul of digital imaging, producing millions of digital cameras every year Pieces. At the same time, researchers at Bell Labs created the Unix operating system and the C programming language and its branches [see sidebar, "Not Just Hardware"]-key computer engineering development that helped other companies such as Sun Microsystems thrive.

Today, Unix and all its variants, descendants, and imitators are undoubtedly the most influential operating system in the world. MS-DOS is the basis for building Windows, which was originally a poor man's Unix. Apple's Mac OS X also comes from the Unix version created by the University of California, Berkeley. Of course, Unix is ​​a model of Linux. Despite the importance of Unix, Unix at Bell Labs in 1969 originated from a complete failure, a system called Multics.

As early as the 1960s, multimillion-dollar dinosaurs such as IBM 360 swept the computing field. Although mainframes are powerful, they were single-user machines before the time-sharing system was developed. Multics is one of them. The creators of Multics were jointly developed by Bell Labs, General Electric and MIT, with ambitious goals. According to a 1965 planning document, they will design a system that will meet "almost all current and near-term requirements for large-scale computer utility programs."

Four years later, a commercially viable system is still a distant goal. Bell Labs withdrew from the project, but a core team of researchers led by Kenneth Thompson [sit above] and Dennis Ritchie [standing] continued their research on operating systems. Thompson designed the file system at the core of Unix. (He also wrote a game called Space Travel, which stimulates the development of the operating system itself by showing the resources needed to run the program.)

By the late 1960s, minicomputers were running around in the computer world, and the Multics Group was allowed to buy Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-11 (a bargain for only $65 000). The first PDP-11 version of Unix was a miracle, only 16 KB in size, and 8 KB of memory for additional software. The first Unix application will be a word processing program for use by AT&T's patent writing team. The experiment was successful; other parts of AT&T started to use Unix, and the new operating system began to run. When AT&T released the code and used it for non-commercial use, the University of California at Berkeley; Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; and other schools created richer systems. A generation of software developers will grow up with Unix in one form or another.

Soon, Thompson decided to write a Fortran compiler for the new operating system. However, what he came up with was a new programming language similar to the Basic Combination Programming Language (BCPL) written for Multics. He called it "B". By 1971, it had developed into the C language. Today, most major software projects are written in C or its descendant C, which was invented by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in the early 1980s.

World-class science continued until the 1980s. In 1978, physicist Steven Chu came to Bell Labs. It took six months to find out what excites him the most, and was told that he could only be satisfied with "starting a new field." He said that he felt that he was one of the voters, "Except for our favorite research, there is no obligation to do anything." Zhu returned the confidence of his employers by developing a laser method to cool the atoms. This research won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997 and now allows others to explore the quantum behavior of atoms and molecules.

However, in the past two decades, basic research and applied research have increasingly parted ways with AT&T. Since its dissolution in 1984, many of Bell Labs' best scientists have left. Then came the spin-off of Lucent Technologies in 1996, which inherited most of Bell Labs' shares. After Lucent’s stock price plummeted in the past few years and the well-known scandal of physicist Jan Hendrik Schön’s falsifying data, the exodus of top talent continues and accelerates. Outgoing scientists have joined the corps of Bell Labs alumni that already hold academic positions—including Chu, who has just succeeded another AT&T alumnus, Charles Shank, as the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

Photo: Lucent Technologies/Bell Laboratories

Bell Labs’ budget has also been affected because Lucent’s R&D funding has fallen sharply in the past few years. In 2003, R&D expenditure was US$1.49 billion (down from US$2.31 billion in 2002), surpassing the spending of 56 companies worldwide. Recently, to a large extent by reducing research and returning to profitability, Lucent will be fortunate to remain in the top 100.

In retrospect, in the face of the ruthless power of the market, it seems unreasonable to expect a listed company to invest so much money in long-term research. AT&T adds tremendous value to society, but as a condition of its regulated monopoly, the company does not allow the commercialization of new technologies that are not directly related to telephones.

In addition to charging for telephone equipment and services, AT&T cannot charge customers for this technology. When it is a regulated monopoly, the company can add a small sum to these fees for risky future-oriented research, such as establishing a solid-state physics department after the war. But because ordinary companies compete for customer funds after spin-offs and spin-offs, AT&T and Lucent cannot afford such luxury.

Our customers are the ultimate losers. A dynamic and forward-looking society needs such a mechanism to reserve funds for its long-term technological future. Letting the government serve the purpose is an imperfect choice at best, fraught with difficulties in making wise choices. A peer review process that is widely used to select projects may be able to use public funds for valuable research, but it usually benefits mature scientists and often overlooks smart young researchers—such as Chu—have bold but risky ideas .

AT&T, Bell Labs, and Western Electric have effectively transferred a small part of our daily expenditures-from all corners of the U.S. economy-to long-term research and development projects in the industrial environment, which can and often do have an impact on our lives. Significant impact. Today, we are eating away the technological capital they built during those amazing productivity years. Are we doing anything to replace it?

Michael Riordan teaches the history of physics and technology at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.

A detailed description of the invention and development of the transistor can be found in Crystal Fire by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson: The Birth of the Information Age (WW Norton & Co., 1997).

The main events leading to the demise of AT&T are discussed in The Fall of the Bell System: A Study in Prices and Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1987) by Peter Temin and Louis Galambos.

For a timeline of AT&T's innovation milestones, please visit http://www.att.com/history.

Does more than 100 mobile robots indicate that everyday robots are inevitable?

Last week, Google, Alphabet or X or whatever company you want to call it announced that its Everyday Robots team has grown enough and made enough progress. Now it’s time to make it its own thing. Now you guessed it. You guessed it, "Everyday Robots." There is a problem with the design of a new website, and there are a lot of fluffy descriptions about the content of Everyday Robots. But fortunately, there are some new videos and enough details about the engineering and team approach, it’s worth spending a little time trekking through the chaos to see what Everyday Robots has done in the past few years and what plans they have done. For the recent.

The place near the arm does not seem to be suitable for placing an emergency stop, right?

Our headline may sound a bit acrimonious, but the headline of Alphabet’s own announcement blog post is "Every day robots leave the laboratory (slowly)." It is not so much a sarcasm, but rather an admission that the mobile robot is in a semi-structure. Effective operation in a chemical environment has been and will continue to be a huge challenge. We will go into details later, but the high-level news here is that Alphabet seems to have invested a lot of resources behind this effort, has a long time span, and its investment is beginning to pay off. Considering the random state of Google Robotics over the years (at least from the appearance), this is a nice surprise.

According to Astro Teller, who is in charge of Alphabet's moon landing program, the goal of Everyday Robots is to create "a universal learning robot", which I think sounds enough. To be fair, they deployed a lot of hardware, Hans Peter Brøndmo of Everyday Robots said:

This is a lot of robots, which is great, but I have to question the actual meaning of "autonomy" and the actual meaning of "a series of useful tasks". For us (or anyone?), there is really not enough public information to evaluate what Everyday Robots does with its 100 prototype fleets, how much robot support is needed, the constraints of their operation, and whether to call their work." "Useful" is appropriate.

If you don't want to browse Everyday Robots's weirdly over-designed website, we have extracted good things (mainly videos) and reposted them here, along with some comments below each.

0:01 — Is it just me, or does the gearing behind these actions sound a bit, eh, unhealthy?

0:25-I think the claim of winning the Nobel Prize by picking up the cup from the table is a bit exaggerated. Robots are very good at sensing and grasping cups on the table, because this is a very common task. Like, I understand, but I just think there are better examples to illustrate the current problems of humans and robots.

1:13 — It’s not necessarily useful to make an analogy between a computer and a smartphone and compare them to a robot, because certain physical realities (such as motors and operating requirements) prevent the kind of zoom that the narrator refers to.

1:35 — This is a red flag for me, because we have heard about "this is a platform" many times before, but it has never been successful. But in any case, people continue to try. It may be effective when limited to the research environment, but fundamentally, “platform” usually means “making it do (commercially?) useful things is someone else’s problem. I’m not sure if this has ever been A successful model of a robot.

2:10-Yes, okay. This robot sounds much more normal than the one at the beginning of the video; what's the matter?

2:30 — I am a big fan of Moravec's Paradox, and I hope that when people talk about robots with the public, it will be mentioned by more people.

0:18-I like the door example because you can easily imagine how many different ways it can be disastrous for most robots: different levers or knobs, different glass positions, variable The weight and resistance, then, of course, the threshold and other similar annoying things.

1:03-Yes. I can't emphasize enough, especially in this case, computers (and robots) are really bad at understanding things. Know things, yes. Know them, not so much.

1:40 — People really like to cast a shadow on Boston Dynamics, don't they? But this seems unfair to me, especially for companies that Google once owned. What Boston Dynamics is doing is very difficult, very impressive, come on, very exciting. You can admit that when you are dealing with different difficult and exciting problems yourself, others are dealing with difficult and exciting problems, and don’t feel a little annoyed by what you do, for example, not so flashy Or whatever.

0:26 — It doesn't make sense to say that the robot is low cost, without telling us how much it costs. Seriously: the "low cost" of a mobile manipulator like this is easy (and almost certainly is) at least tens of thousands of dollars.

1:10 — I like to include things that don’t work. Everyone should do this when presenting a new robotics project. Even if your budget is unlimited, no one can always do everything well, and we all know that others are as flawed as we are, and we will all feel better.

1:35 — When talking about robots trained using reinforcement learning techniques, I personally avoid using words such as "intelligence" because most people associate "intelligence" with the kind of basic world understanding that robots don't really have .

1:20 — As a research task, I think this is a useful project, but it is important to point out that this is a bad way of automatically sorting recyclables from trash. Since all the garbage and recyclables have been collected and (probably) taken to several centralized locations, in fact you only need to have your system there, where the robots can stand still and have some control over their environment And do better and work more efficiently.

1:15-Hope they will talk more about this later, but when considering this montage, it is important to ask in the real world what tasks do you actually want the mobile manipulator to perform, and which do you only want to perform Tasks are automated in some way because they are very different things.

0:19 — It may be a bit premature to talk about ethics at this point, but on the other hand, there is a reasonable argument that it is not too early to consider the ethical significance of robotics research. To be honest, the latter may be a better point of view, and I am happy that they are thinking about it in a serious and positive way.

1:28 — A robot like this will not take your job away. I promise.

2:18 — Robots like this are not the robots he is talking about here, but the point he puts forward is very good, because in the short to medium term, robots will become the most valuable role, and they can increase what humans can do by themselves. Things are not to completely replace human beings to increase human productivity.

3:16 — Again, the idea of ​​that platform...blarg. The whole "someone wrote these applications" thing, uh, who the hell is it? Why are they doing this? The difference between a smartphone (which has a lucrative application ecosystem) and a robot (which does not) is that there are no third-party applications at all, and the smartphone has enough useful core functions to justify its cost. It will take a long time for robots to reach that point, and if software applications are always someone else’s problem, they will never get there.

I am a little upset about this whole thing. A fleet of 100 mobile manipulators is amazing. It is also great to invest money and manpower to solve robotics problems. I'm just not sure whether the vision of the "daily robot" we are asked to buy must be realistic.

The impression I got from watching all these videos and browsing the website is that Everyday Robot wants us to believe that it is actually working hard to bring the universal mobile robot into the daily environment in the way people (outside of the Google campus) can benefit from it. Maybe the company is working towards that exact goal, but is it a practical goal? Does it make sense?

The ongoing basic research seems very solid; these are definitely difficult problems, and solving these problems will help promote the development of this field. (If these technologies and results are released or shared with the community in other ways, then these advancements may be particularly important.) If the reason for this work in a robotic platform is to help stimulate this research, that would be great, I There is no objection to this.

But I really hesitate to accept the vision of this universal home mobile robot to perform useful tasks autonomously. This approach may be of great help to anyone who actually watches the Everyday Robotics video. Perhaps this is the whole point of the vision of the moon landing-try hard to do something that will not be rewarded for a long time. Again, I have no problems with this. However, if this is the case, Everyday Robots should pay attention to how it puts its efforts (and even its success) in context and portrays it, why it works on a specific set of things, and how external observers should set it Our expectations. Time and time again, the company's commitment to useful and affordable robots is too high, but delivery is insufficient. I hope that Everyday Robots will not make the same mistake.

Here are ways to encourage daughters to pursue STEM careers

In my 2016 article "Fathers' Views on Daughters and Engineering", I shared my disappointment at the lack of role models and cultural information that made my two smart daughters — and many of their female friends — -To pursue an engineering career.

After the article was published, I received an email from Michelle Travis, she was writing a book about fathers and daughters. She wanted to know my thoughts on creating stronger channels for girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM), and what can be done to change the narrative of engineering to highlight their public service role.

Travis is a professor at the University of San Francisco Law School, where she co-directs her work law and judicial projects. She researches and writes articles on employment discrimination laws, gender stereotypes, and work/family integration. She is also a founding member of the Work and Family Researchers Network and serves on the board of non-profit organizations.

Her latest book, "Dads for Daughters" (Dads for Daughters) is a guide for male allies to support gender equality. (I am one of the fathers who appear in this book.) She wrote that my mother who won the prize has two jobs, which is a children's picture book celebrating working mothers.

Over the years, we have kept in touch, followed each other's work, and looked for other ways of cooperation.

In the past few months, I have been frustrated by the news that girls from certain countries are either not allowed to go to school or risk safety even if they are officially allowed to go to school. This is one reason why I feel I need to talk to Travis and learn from her what else can be done to change fathers and men's perceptions of women's abilities and women's success in almost all fields (including engineering).

Last month, I asked her a few questions about her book and what her father can do to better support women. In the next interview, she gave a sneak peek and listed some resources for engineering dads who wish to encourage their daughters to pursue STEM careers.

QA: As a lawyer, why did you decide to research and write articles about fathers and daughters? Is it personal?

MT: My interest in making my daughter's father an advocate for gender equality is both professional and personal. As a lawyer and law professor, I have been using legal tools for years to promote equality for women in the workplace-seeking stronger employment discrimination laws, equal pay for equal work, and family leave policies. Over time, I realized that the law has limits on what it can accomplish. I also realized that we are asking women to do too much heavy work to break down barriers and break the glass ceiling. Most importantly, I realized that to make progress, you need the commitment of a powerful male leader.

I started to ask myself how women can get more men to participate in gender equality work. At the same time, I noticed the powerful influence of my two daughters on my husband. He has always regarded the equality of women as an important goal, but it was not until he started to think about the world his daughter entered that he completely internalized his personal responsibility and influence. With a daughter, he is eager to take action. He wants to be an outspoken advocate for girls and women, not just bystanders.

"The father of an engineer has a unique position and can be an ally in expanding opportunities for girls and women."

Watching this transition prompted me to study the father-daughter relationship. I found that my husband's experience is not unique. Researchers found that having a daughter tends to increase men’s support for anti-discrimination laws, equal pay policies, and reproductive rights, which tends to reduce men’s support for traditional gender roles. This has a significant impact in the workplace. For example, fathers of daughters are more likely to support gender diversity than other male leaders. Compared with CEOs run by non-father men, CEOs who are daughter fathers tend to have a smaller gender pay gap in the company.

Of course, many men without daughters are allies of women, and not all fathers with daughters are advocates of gender equality. We have even heard some men-including famous politicians-citing their "daughter's father" in a dishonest way.

But fathers of most daughters are genuinely interested in promoting equal opportunities for girls and women. This makes the father-daughter relationship an excellent entry point for inviting men to form partnerships to build a fairer world.

QA: Why do people want to read your book?

MT: Today's fathers are training self-confident and capable daughters who believe that they can achieve anything. But the world is still unequal, the workplace is run by men, there is a gender pay gap, and deep-rooted gender stereotypes. My book celebrates the role father can play in creating a better world for the next generation of girls.

Inspired by their daughters, fathers are fully capable of becoming powerful allies for girls and women. But in the post #MeToo world, it may be difficult for men to step in and speak out. This is where the father of the daughter can help. It provides fathers with the data they need to advocate for gender equality. It also provides specific strategies to illustrate how they play a role in various fields, from sports fields to science laboratories, from conference rooms to ballot boxes.

In addition to serving as a guide, it also shares the stories of fathers who have joined the battle. All the men who emphasized praised their daughters for inspiring them to pay more attention to gender equality. These include a CEO who invests in female entrepreneurs to manage parts of his company's supply chain, and a lawyer who sets up a part-time position in his company-which allows women to maintain partnerships. Another head coach hired the first female assistant coach in the NBA. Another governor broke the partisan line and signed a bill to expand the rights of sexual assault victims. An engineer provides computer skills training to support girls who have become victims of sex trafficking in India. In addition, there is a teacher, a U.S. Army colonel, a plumber, a firefighter, and a construction contractor who have joined forces to fight for equality in the girls’ high school sports program.

All these fathers, and many others, are inspired by their daughters to support gender equality. Their stories can inspire other dads to participate. Fathers who are committed to seeing their daughters realize their dreams have the opportunity to improve the world their daughters will enter, and fathers born for their daughters will support them in this journey.

QA: What do you think is the difference between engineer fathers and other fathers, and why?

MT: Being an engineer's father has a unique advantage and can be an ally in expanding opportunities for girls and women. We all know that there is a huge gender imbalance in the STEM field. This leads to a large loss of talents. Daughters’ fathers can take small but influential steps in their homes, communities, and workplaces, welcoming more girls and women into engineering careers.

At home, the father can fill the home with books, toys and activities, so that the girl can imagine that she is the engineer of the future. The father of engineering has created some great resources for this. For example, Greg Helmstetter found that his daughter lacked an engineering role model, so he created the STEAMTeam 5 series of books, which shared the adventures of five girls using STEM skills to meet challenges. Inspired by his daughter, Anthony Onesto created the Ella the Engineer comic book series, which depicts a superhero girl who uses her engineering knowledge to solve problems and save the world.

Other excellent children's books include Rosie Revere by Andrea Beaty, engineer, and Tanya Lee Stone's "Who Says Women Can't Be Computer Programmers?" With Mike Adamick's father's Book of Awesome Science Experiments. Daughter’s dad can also follow Ken Denmead’s GeekDad blog, check the Go Science Girls website, and purchase one of Debbie Sterling’s GoldieBlox engineering suites for his daughter’s next birthday.

As an engineer, dads can have a broader impact in their communities by volunteering with girl technology organizations such as EngineerGirl, TechGirlz, Girls Who Code, Girl Develop It, or CoolTechGirls. These organizations are always looking for engineers to share their expertise and passion for STEM careers with talented young girls.

Engineer fathers can also become gender equality leaders in their workplaces. Hiring, mentoring, and funding women is a key step in expanding women’s representation in the engineering field. Dads can further support women by joining programs such as the Million Women Mentoring Program or cooperating with IEEE Women in Engineering or the Society of Women Engineers. The empathy that fathers gain from their daughters can also enable them to create a safer workplace culture by fighting hostile work environments and fighting gender prejudice.

QA: From the perspective of an adult daughter, what makes a father different from a husband or friend?

MT: In a recent survey, fathers listed strength and independence as the primary qualities they wish to instill in their daughters-this is different from the characteristics that men value their wives most. From the perspective of the daughter, this can make the father a particularly effective ally on their behalf.

When the father is involved in the daughter's life, this relationship can have a profound impact. Participating fathers will produce women who are more confident, self-esteem, and mentally healthy. Girls supported by their fathers have stronger cognitive abilities and are more likely to go to school and achieve greater financial success. The fathers involved also helped their daughters establish healthier adult relationships with other men.

For fathers, daughter relationships are a powerful way to build men’s empathy and raise men’s awareness of gender discrimination and gender inequality. For example, men generally understand the challenges of work/family integration better when they look at their adult daughters taking care of the needs of their careers and their mothers.