When Automation is Applied Well
One of my favorite cartoons growing up was The Jetsons. It was easy to envision a day when we’d jet around in cars, or have anything we wanted served up automatically:
Of course, it was always a treat to see the automation mess up and relate to the hapless humans in the story:
The Jetsons was set in 2062. How far do we need to progress in just over a half century to achieve Jetsons-like status? I’d posit a decent amount, although not insurmountable. At the same time, the automation much work flawlessly.
For example, clean water is a precious commodity in the world. Seeing a McDonald’s franchise running their sprinklers during a rainstorm is frustrating:
We have the technology to stop sprinklers from running in a rainstorm. There are automation control systems available simply not running the sprinklers when the sensor is wet at one extreme, and at another sophisticated systems tied to weather forecasts.
So why are the sprinklers running in the rain? And why didn’t anyone in the store manually shut down the sprinklers?
When automation is designed and applied well, it really can make life more enjoyable and safer. For example, my motion sensing lights on my house work very well. Except in a snow storm. During a snow storm, the bright light reflects on the snow, and the sensor thinks it’s daylight, shutting off the light and plunging me into darkness. Of course, the sensor rapidly determines it’s dark, and a nice disco flashing light effect!
We have GPS guided tractors, plowing straight lines and even varying nutrient mix based on soil samples.
Yet struggle with oil leaks a mile underwater:
The lesson from all this is to design automation thoroughly, thinking about extreme use cases and baking this into the underlying design and architecture.
 Email This Post
|
 Print This Post
|
162 views |  (3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ... |
