Word: vacuums
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...meet Roomba, a new housecleaning robot spawned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab and built by a Somerville, Mass., company called iRobot. Roomba's function is a humble one: it's designed to vacuum your living room while you're otherwise engaged. But Roomba also represents a technological watershed: it's the first robot ever built that is designed to live in your home, serve a useful purpose and be priced for the mass market--at $199, it costs about the same as a mid-range vacuum cleaner. Roomba isn't quite Rosey the Robot...
...robot is essentially a computer with a body, but iRobot wanted to market its robots as household appliances. And it turns out people have higher standards for appliances than they have for computers. Appliances have to be cheap, simple and reliable; nobody is going to buy a $2,000 vacuum cleaner that requires a Ph.D. in engineering and has to be rebooted twice a day. Leaving the ivory tower for the iRobot team was a culture shock. "We had to learn about plastics," Angle sighs. "We had to learn about Far East manufacturing. We learned that if you haven...
After the auditions, the senior staff then makes its decisions, although the selections don’t take place in a vacuum...
...staff performed experiments on what research documents refer to as maruta, literally "wooden logs." The lumber was in fact live subjects, mostly Chinese soldiers and civilians but also captured Russians, British and Americans. They were frozen alive to research frostbite. Burned alive to research human combustion. Loaded into vacuum chambers until their bellies ruptured. Hung by their ankles to see how long a person can live upside-down. They were infected with plague, anthrax and cholera and subjected to vivisection without anesthesia. For 13 years the experiments continued, ending with Japan's surrender in 1945. Between...
...some claim the more there are, the merrier everyone is?that negative ions are natural mood enhancers: relieving stress and even inducing weight loss. Manufacturers in recent months have flooded the market with devices that supposedly boost the negative-ion count, ranging from air conditioners and toothbrushes to vacuum cleaners, underwear and dog collars. Manufacturers estimate total annual sales in Japan could grow to several billion dollars annually over the next few years. All good, except there is no scientific evidence to prove negative-ion machines do much more than part the credulous from their cash. A similar craze...