Poor Roomba
So I bought our house a new Roomba Discovery for the holidays. Ok, fine, it’s more because we haven’t vacuumed in way too long (but that’s another story). It’s weird for me to admit, what with my irrepressible obsession with robots and robotics, but this Roomba is my first proper domestic (servant) robot. (That’s especially strange considering my family once owned a semi-prominent robotics company in the 80s.) After I plugged the little guy in and got him all charged — see, I’m anthropomorphizing it already — I hit the clean button and the strangest thing happened.
No, it didn’t break down, or miss a huge chunk of debris. I started to feel really sorry for it, and really awful about myself. My eastern-European Jewish-descent wasn’t exactly causing pangs of white guilt or anything, but there was definitely the distinct taste of shame in my mouth as I watched the poor, stupid Roomba seemingly-aimlessly bonk back and forth over the floor in search of carpet-jetsam. I know this shouldn’t be surprising considering my writing and observation of human-robot interaction — but still.
So yeah, I’m more likely to get over it than I am to return the thing, but it’s an incredibly outré to feel sorry for an inanimate object that performs a particular function that vaguely implies servitude. Now get back to work, Roomba — you missed a spot.
(Incidentally, not only has Pete written on this very topic, but Wired has a vaguely similar piece today, specifically on the topic of robot “souls”.)
Co-founder of 
[...] We’re the overlords, not the robots. [...]
please tell me you don’t scoop up the bedbugs that bite you and release them into the wild ;)
I feel a lot worse when I see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc6-oqX75Y8
Poor Entropy, the sad little robot in hell.
[...] Discovery — Veronica’s and my first domestic robot that turned out to be a fun, if guilty novelty which proceeded to have battery issues, difficulty in finding and interfacing with its dock, and [...]
Don’t go forgetting about the Roomba just yet! As a DC17 Animal owner, we’re always thrilled with its sucking abilities, but with hardwood floors/area rugs and constant production of fur from our friendly collection of critters, we find the Dyson – though powerful – still requires near daily use for a clean house. Our plan for the are to have a Roomba on each floor for the daily gruntwork and a weekly (perhaps bi-weekly) Dysoning for the serious mess that the Roomba just isn’t equipped to handle. Sure, we’re talking about $1K worth of vacuuming equipment … wait, that’s really a lot of money.