- Burleson deployed robots to scan its sidewalks
- They detect damage, obstacles, and other issues that could make it harder for people with disabilities to use the sidewalk
- They can complete 6 miles in the time a human could scan 2 miles
Obstacles in your path and damaged sidewalks are frustrations to most pedestrians, but for folks with accessibility needs, they can make routes completely inaccessible — so one city is using robots to make their streets better.
Burleson, a city in the US state of Texas, is the first in the state to deploy Daxbots — also known as ADA-compliance or urban service robots. These Wall-E-looking machines roam sidewalks and are packed with scanners and sensors to measure sidewalk width and slope, as well as detect potential obstacles that could pose barriers for people with disabilities (via CBS).
The bots cover about six or seven miles per day — a human would typically cover just two miles in that time — allowing the city to collect a large amount of data quickly. Using this information, officials will know where repairs and improvements are most needed, so they can make their city’s streets as accessible as possible — and simply better for all local residents.
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The robot revolution is back on!
Forget delivery bots bumbling across town with a burger in their trunk, these kinds of helpful assistants are the kind I would love to see roaming my local streets. Not just sidewalks, I’d love to see them going along roads to search for potholes — near me, they’re like hydra heads, one gets filled in, and three more take its place.
They’re also simply adorable. Beyond the similarities to Wall-E, I love how the bots apparently know to pause briefly when people approach so they can take a selfie with them.
What also helps the appeal is that the bots are offering genuine help to the whole community. Local infrastructure is boring but essential to our everyday lives, yet knowing where best to use resources can be impossible with laborious data collection that can take an age — and that local authorities might not have time for.
These Daxbots tackle the problem head-on and seem to provide a solid template for how other service robots could help make our daily lives better — rather than simply chasing flashy, attention-grabbing improvements that aren’t that useful in the grand scheme of things.
We’ll have to see if the Daxbot program has been successful once the full analysis is complete, but for a change, I’m actually hoping we might see more robots on our streets.
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hamish.hector@futurenet.com (Hamish Hector)
