NRDD - Nasal Relief Delivery Droid

That’s NRDD. He’s our Nasal Relief Delivery Droid. He supplies the tissues when one of us gets sick, or both of us watch a sad movie. No matter the drippy-nose related disaster, we can always count on NRDD.

NRDD isn’t a real robot, to be sure – he just looks like one – but we do have a pair of real life robots that live with us. As with many robots, these robots are both our friends and our partners. We consider our relationship with them a symbiotic one. We provide clean energy, maintenance and lots of love and they – these two at least – clean the floors.

Addencientia & Meticulor

Meet Addencientia and Meticulor. 

Addencientia (on the left), “Addy“, for short, is an iRobot Scooba floor washing robot. She uses a water and soap solution to clean our wood floors.

Meticulor (on the right), “Metti“, for short, is an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaning robot. He sweeps up our wooden floors and vacuums the carpet of the rooms that have it.

Together they make a great team and we really appreciate all of their hard work. I am sure they appreciate ours as well, as we take great care of them.

What makes them robots, though? Why are they not just a weirdly shaped mop and a cordless vacuum?

Addy and Metti are machines that perform work. They do so with little or no intervention from people. As long as we keep them clean and well maintained, they will continue to keep our house clean and well maintained for us.

Meticulor has a schedule that he uses to determine when he is going to start cleaning up. Let me tell you, if you are bare-foot when Metti starts you’d better head for the hills or find yourself some slippers, because he is a bot on a mission and he doesn’t let measly toes get in the way. 

See what I mean?

Addy likes to be told when to clean, but once she is told, she goes off on her own. We don’t tell either of them where to clean or how to clean it or even how long to clean. They have adaptive programs, both of them, to determine the best route, the best amount of time and the best attention to detail to keep our house looking great.

Addy and Metti are the perfect example, I think, of people and robots co-existing happily. If we treated them any differently than we do – if we treated them any differently than any other member of the family – surely they would fall into disrepair and do a poor job. If we love them, treat them well and respect them, they will so the same for us.

It is possible that one day robots will be able to think like we do. When that day comes, I’d like to introduce one of them to our good friends Addy and Metti. I am sure they’d get along.