Sure, it is a advertising and marketing gimmick. Positive, it is form of hokey. However darn it if this does not unexpectedly pull on the heartstrings.
Husqvarna, the maker of autonomous residence garden mowers that look one thing like RC tactical assault autos from Mad Max instances, is releasing an uncommon software program replace to have fun a lonely robotic 1000’s of miles away. In early August, the Curiosity Mars rover will flip 10 years previous. Following the software program replace, some 100,000 Husqvarna Automowers world wide will be capable of sing Comfortable Birthday to the intrepid explorer.
There’s some backstory right here (and, in fact, a video). The engineers behind Curiosity clearly had some enjoyable. They programmed the superior knowledge assortment robotic to sing Comfortable Birthday to itself, which it did on its first birthday in House. However saving batteries took priority on subsequent birthdays and the rover, which remains to be in operation, has not had any birthday magic since.Â
Rovers have lengthy held a singular area in fashionable creativeness, and whereas anthropomorphizing a machine is all the time questionable these Rovers (and the group behind them) are worthy of celebration. My children love a e book referred to as Good Night time Oppy, in regards to the Alternative rover, and there are related titles about Curiosity.
“For us, it is a solution to pay homage to the good engineering work of NASA, and that of our in depth group of robotic consultants, by letting our robotic mowers have fun a fellow robotic … no one ought to need to sing Comfortable Birthday to themselves, proper?” requested Björn Mannefred, Robotics Software program Supervisor at Husqvarna.
Husqvarna has been forward of the pack in working with IoT and exterior third-party options, together with Google House, Amazon Alexa, and IFTTT. This newest software program replace is accessible on August 5 and has a little bit of Elon Musk aptitude to it. When you’ve got an Automower, the replace is accessible to fashions 405X, 415X, and 435X AWD and can grow to be out there completely in September for Automower house owners to be used of their future birthday celebrations.
