Our good friend, consultant and roommate, Jason Wolfe, is interning at Willow Garage, a robotics research group in Silicon Valley. They recently achieved a significant milestone in robotics: their PR2 alpha robot was able to “navigate through eight doors, and plug its power cord into nine outlets”. The company is striving to create a “mechanical personal assistant” that can do basic household tasks and fetch beer. See video below:

The New York Times picked up on this and wrote a good article explaining the achievement. They mentioned that this robot would be able to navigate any building designed to meet the Americans with Disabilities act as these buildings have ramps around all steps and doors with non-round knobs which simplifies the door opening process.

I wonder if the lawmakers who drafted ADA considered that easier access to public spaces would also allow easier robot access to these same spaces.