The week of 9 to 15 November 2026
- Recap
- 4 of 4
- Date
- Reading
- 2 min read
A week of side quests that all ended up serving the robot: an old phone and a new camera.
What happened
- A 2011 phone, back from the dead. A Galaxy Note, a new battery and a recent Linux: the robot gets a screen. Read the post.
- Then a remote in my pocket. The same phone now drives the robot over Wi-Fi and shows what its camera sees. Read the post.
- Put to bed by someone else. When the computer, not me, puts the robot to sleep, it now understands it and stays quiet. And a startle no longer makes it lose my face. Read the post.
- It recognises me from the side. I had kept it from even trying for three weeks. Measured: 78 faces out of 78, even in full profile. It also remembers me for three minutes instead of twenty seconds when I turn away. The catch: it now doubts me about twenty times an hour. Read the post.
- After a restart, the body decides. If the robot was lying down before a restart, it stays lying down. A restart of its program no longer wakes it up.
- A desk camera arrived. It found the robot and framed it by itself. First step towards a 3D map of the desk, built from its photos and from the robot’s own camera.
- This notebook has a new face. The home page is now a map of what the robot can do, part by part. Every log has a number, and you can go from one to the next. See the skill map.
- A sister notebook. I am also teaching a machine to draw like me, on zarumbatus.com. Less wiring, more flies.
What I learned
Compare a share, not a total. Counting the robot’s reactions per day looked like a big improvement, but some days it was on for sixteen hours and others for three. Per hour, the picture was different.
Next week
- The 3D map of the desk.
- Stop it doubting me from the side.