Isn’t using a LIDAR-guided robot with navigational expert systems to print things sort of like pursuing advanced long-chain carbon nanotube structural technologies to build superior buggy whips?
Thank God for this. I have been waiting so many years.
I want to use this instead of a fax machine; “sure, I’ll send that document right over - it should be there in a few hours depending on traffic.”
It’s a robot built by Xerox, what did you expect it to do? Revolutionize UI design and then do nothing with the discoveries?
Can this device print the hardcopy for a co-worker and then passive-aggressively ram into their knees because WHY THE HELL IS A PDF NOT GOOD ENOUGH AND YOU ARE MURDERING THE PLANET?
That is my only question. Thanks.
I’m holding out for a version with a built in stapler.
Alas our “Print my emails out for me” former director retired before he could be only person in the world that this would be useful to.
Inter Office cocktail delivery, and then I’m in…
One project manager was caught making backups of files by printing them. True story.
I know a woman who would have no kneecaps left…
(same woman who used to spend about an hour going around and pulling random pieces of paper out of people’s garbage – because recycling) I love her dearly, but almost everything she does has this diametrically opposed aspect to it (preaches tolerance – incredibly intolerant).
It’s only missing a shredder and a call-back button on its web interface for when managers are done reading their printout.
You know, it occurs to me that with a creative ink source, this could be something that engineers should embrace.
While there’s definitely some pareidolia going on in the prototype it has the potential to be a whole lot more fun.
One of the problems with shared printers was that there wasn’t a way to print things privately, unless you stood hovering over the printer output tray. I’ve seen printers with two dozen individually key locked output trays–probably sold to lawfirms, and the like. And there’s always the solution of buffering the job until released by a keycard. Still, the user has to walk to a central location, which might be awkward if that user was in the middle of talking to clients when the document was printed. (we must remember that this device is expensive, and not neccesarily marketed towards college computing labs)
But I don’t think there’s as much demand for a secure, shared printer as there once was.
What an absolutely preposterous device, and how indicative of society’s gradual march into moral decay.
…If they could make it bring me good, fresh coffee instead, I’d buy ten.
It could cut out the middle man and just read the document to them.
We had one in my last job. You print your file then go to the printer, enter a code and it gets printed.
We deal with these issues at work from time to time. Mostly medical/financial stuff.
What makes me question this sort of robot is two things: our classy printers support secure storage and local release by password or token(you can also buy software to do this at the print server level but we’ve avoided that) and we can put a good-enough, reliable-enough laser on your desk for ~$200(maybe half that if you skimp on reliability, more like $400-450 for something pleasingly overqualified).
This forces the robot option to be quite cheap and reliable(especially since it can only be shared as fast as it can move between users, so multiple bots will be needed in busier situations.) is that impossible? Probably not. Is that going to take some serious refinement to even get close to just throwing brute force and cheap hardware at the problem? Oh yes, yes it is.
Suggestion: intern?
