When someone else puts the robot to bed
- Log
- 25 of 25
- Date
- Reading
- 2 min read
Skills in this log
Something broke in this log. It is written up anyway.
The robot can be put to sleep in several ways: by the app that runs it day to day, by the maker’s app, or by a simple command sent from the computer. In the last two cases, someone else puts it to bed. Until now, it didn’t notice.
What was happening
On 9 November at 11:58 pm, the computer put the robot to sleep. The app that runs it didn’t see it: it restarted tracking my face about twenty times and kept playing its little sounds until 12:20 am. A robot lying down and squeaking in the dark is not the intended effect.
Digging through its log, I found a second, quieter flaw. Every time the robot startled at a noise, tracking my face stopped, then started again. On 9 November this happened 360 times, adding up to 34 minutes without following me.
What changed
The app now watches the robot’s physical state. If someone else puts it to bed, it switches to “sleep” mode: tracking stopped, motors at rest, silence. When the robot is woken up, it resumes: it finds me within two seconds and says hello.
A startle no longer breaks anything. The robot plays its little sound and turns its head towards me, without letting go of my face.
One last tweak: when it loses sight of me, it waits three minutes before deciding I’ve left. A noise during that time no longer pulls it away from looking for me.
What the numbers say
Before the fix, every startle made it lose my face. Since then, none: 23 startles out of 23 on 11 November, tracking kept every time.
The scene in the video was filmed at noon today. The computer sends the order to put the robot to sleep; 4.6 seconds later its log reads “robot put to bed by someone else” and it goes quiet.
What’s left
When I talk to it, tracking still pauses while it answers: that’s on purpose. And some breaks remain when a noise happens while I’m out of sight. They are far fewer, and that’s the next lead.
