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Remember that friendly nod you received from the garbage homo concluding calendar week? These minor acts of bonhomie between garbage collectors and householders may soon be a thing of the past, thank you to an initiative past Volvo which aims to replace garbage men with drone robots. Though this volition no doubt provide ample opportunity to wax nostalgic, the past has always looked inordinately bright and someday we may well find ourselves pining for these robots when they are replaced by mini plasma powered incinerators, removing the need for garbage collectors altogether. Putting the psychological chemical element aside, information technology's worth taking a deep dive into the tech fueling Volvo's encroachment into civilian robotics.

The first affair that must exist said is that the aim here is non to replace garbage collectors entirely, at least non initially. In the plan laid out past Volvo, the robots would exist under the supervision of a garbage truck operator and be responsible for the conveying, lifting and emptying of the bins into the truck. Thus you may even so receive a friendly wave from a truck operator for some time yet, perchance all the more than jovial for non having only thrown out his back hoisting your overfilled garbage bin.

On the other hand, this volition certainly mean less garbage men actually manning the vehicles. Whereas a typical garbage truck today requires two operators, one to control the lift while the other fetches the bins, the latter position will disappear with the advent of Volvo's robots.

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Details are still sketchy on the exact nature of the robots doing the lifting and emptying, merely in  a company graphic, they appear to be roughly humanoid in appearance, with a Segway-like locomotion mechanism. Information relevant to the operation of the robots has been somewhat more forthcoming. The drone robots will be slaved to the trucks operating arrangement, where all the heavy computing will accept place. They volition likely have some simple "instinctual algorithms" hardwired into them that prevent things like inadvertently clothes-lining a gawking child.

Advances of this kind have been finding their mode into industrial robots recently, where injury to workers and technicians has long been a take chances. Many industrial robots now take simple reactionary circuits so that if they encounter unexpected resistance they immediately go limp, thus fugitive potential lethal human injuries. While Volvo has not revealed whether such safety measures would be part of their design, it seems probable that they volition.

What should testify more interesting is to see how their robots address some of the many exigencies that would inevitably ascend while collecting garbage bins. These include things like dealing with a raccoon that happened to be rummaging in the bin at the time of its collection, or knocked-over trash bins that have been haphazardly put out by inferior homo teenagers. Such instances would require responses more on the level of generalized human intelligence, something robots still observe tricky. Whether Volvo has some aces up its sleeve for dealing with these situations remains unknown, merely we won't have long to wait for an answer as the company states they could be deploying prototypes as early on every bit 2016.