21st Century Robot: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book from reading the description on the back. It's been catalogued in my library under science fiction, which I'm not entirely sure is the right designation; though non-fiction isn't quite right either. There are some definite drawbacks to the system we use! Anyway. 21st Century Robot is a manifesto, sci-fi book, and user manual. There are lots of people involved, not least of which is Intel. This book goes through the 21cR manifesto: A robot is imagined first, easy to build, completely open source, fiercely social, intentionally iterative, filled with humanity and dreams, and thinking for him/her/itself. Sounds good to me! The tone is a little overly excited and back-patty for me - lots of exclamation points.The manifesto is explained, and the conception and creation of Jimmy (the robot) is described. The process of designing and building Jimmy is really interesting, as he is meant to be as accessible as possible. If I had to describe this book/manifesto/robot/idea in one word, it would be social. The robot they designed was meant to be cute and appealing to humans while still looking like a robot. The point of the robot is not to be a slave to humans, but to be a friend. They talk a little bit about why it's important for your robot to have its gender or non-gender specified - male, female, or neither - but I didn't really buy it. Something-something we would treat a robot differently based on its gender something-something gender roles something-something we got an expert to talk about this!Jimmy's designs were given to some robotics students, and each group got a different budget to work with. He was designed to be as affordable as possible - his shell is 3D-printable, in smaller pieces that are then fitted together - I think they said it took a few days for one version of Jimmy to be printed. The website (http://www.21stcenturyrobot.com/) has a bunch of plans for building Jimmy for less than $500 up to over $12,000. The code is designed so that each robot can have a different personality - for example, your robot might be kind of nervous so you could have it run away when it hears loud noises or look at the floor when someone talks to it. The best part is that everything is open source (or at least it will be when the website is complete, I guess) - anyone can tweak the designs at any level from hardware to code to build something personal. If you have the knowledge, you can build your own robot based on the designs on the website or your own design, and if you're not so inclined, you can buy a kit for $1,600 (that includes all the moving parts and inside bits - you still have to print the outsides). If you are a pro coder, you can mess with all levels of the code for Jimmy - if you're not, they are developing robot apps that you can mix and match to develop your robot's personality, which I think is one of the coolest parts of this project. Being able to manipulate your robot's personality quickly and easily would be so great for someone who doesn't want to or can't put in the time and effort it would take to become proficient enough with coding to do that all from the beginning.So as much as I think this is a really cool project, the “anyone” I've been talking about is not all-encompassing. You need the know-how to build something, more so if you want something cheaper. You can get a kit with all the parts you need (minus the shell) and presumably easy instructions to put it all together, but $1,600 is still prohibitive for many people. For the less than $500 version, you need to know where to buy the parts, have access to all the necessary tools, and understand the jargon enough to follow the directions. With every version, you need access to a 3D printer for enough time to print out the pieces and the money to purchase the material - based on what I skimmed in the robot designs, that ran from $70 to over $250. The library that I work at has a few 3D printers accessible to the public at a low cost, but printed projects are limited to 2 hours. There have been many larger projects printed in 2 hour increments and then attached, but doing that with Jimmy's shell would require the know-how to break up the 3D image files into the 2 hour pieces in a way that could be easily fitted together, not to mention a lot of time to print and the cost.In between all of this information about designing and building social robots are a few Asimovian short stories about a roboticist who goes around the solar system trying to figure out why a particular robot would attack its owner or steal a dead body. The ideas were pretty compelling, though the writing left a little to be desired for me. Here is one of the author's short stories that wasn't included in the book, about mining robots who start going to church (that pdf includes some really nice watercolours too!).I've giving this book 4 stars because the sci-fi interjections reminded me of [b:I, Robot 41804 I, Robot (Robot, #0.1) Isaac Asimov https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388321463s/41804.jpg 1796026] in a good way, and because all the meat of this book is pretty exciting. I look forward to seeing what comes out this project in the future!