Letter from the Founder

I have been looking into the future!! .. or maybe I have just listened to a lot of podcasts out of Silicon Valley!

I do, however, think, now is the time to think about how we the normal people, will use human humanoid robots.

It is pretty clear to me that I cannot see a huge piece of industrial equipment the size of a human being sitting around in my kitchen doing nothing most of the time, and I think you might be having the same thoughts with humanoid robots.

It is also clear, however, that these humanoid robots will very soon be very useful to us ordinary people (we see reports of shortage of labour in so many sectors, especially health care and services). So the question: is how can we get the full benefit of these robots without all of us having robots sitting in the kitchen doing nothing for most of the time.

Again, I think the answer is pretty clear and it is based in the sharing economy. In Denmark we have a long tradition of cooperatives sharing big machinery. It started in the farming sector and that’s probably where the most clear example still is. So combining our potential need for humanoid robots, with the thinking of behind cooperatives, lead to the idea that we are promoting here on this website: shared robots.

As you can see the website is called shared robots.org, not .com, and this points to the fact I alluded to before, with the cooperative idea, we are in this together, and we are in this not to profit

This of course does not mean that our company will not make a profit, profits are good, because they can be reinvested in R&D, new ideas, new equipment, et cetera, et cetera; so profit is a good thing also for a not for profit cooperative, but again, I think the cooperative idea gives us permission to use the .org in our name.

If you read the news (I will be posting links to various articles on this site, so you can follow along to see the rapid expansion of humanoid robots) you’ll see that many people, Elon Musk being the usual guy at the front of things with very optimistic predictions will soon have access to not-so-expensive humanoid robots. We can also see, that they are getting more and more practically usable, in the sense that they have sufficient degrees of freedom, they have power to lift, what we would reasonably require them to lift, and most importantly, they have batteries and battery management such that they are able to operate for hours. I think being able to operate for hours is a necessary requirement.

So what is the purpose of this website? Given the fact that there is not one single humanoid robot out there currently that we, the ordinary people, can buy?

The idea is very simple: I think we need to gather now, before everything starts, and start thinking about how we the users would like to use these robots. If we can make - or at least try to make - it such that we have as much control - and democratic control - of what is going to happen, we will be at a significant advantage. So the purpose of this website is to find you dear fellow interested humanoid-robot-user person and start having this discussion.

The plan is that we do this on this site: have a discussion and I would be surprised if this also did not happen on social media, but on this site, we have a safe space where we can talk - curated. I’ll be the curator of this discussion about what we think is the best use and the best use cases for humanoid robots.

End of this very long rant! Welcome to site, and I very much hope that you will sign up so that we can start having these very important necessary discussions.

Kind regards

Lars, founder of sharedrobots.org