Robot Cleans Your Tablet or Smartphone Screen

James Joyner · Wednesday, February 6, 2013 · 5 comments

From the Department of Stuff I Really Don’t Need comes a robot that cleans the screen of your iPad.

Mashable (“This Little Robot Cleans Your Tablet or Smartphone“):

Touchscreen devices have gone a long way in the first couple of years, but one problem has stayed the same: dirty screens. No matter how much you clean your smartphone or tablet, it only takes a couple of seconds of operation for its screen to become covered in greasy fingerprints.

Enter AutoMee S by Takara Tomy, a 2.75-inch screen cleaner that slides around your tablet’s screen like a tiny Roomba.

The palm-sized bot is small enough to be used on smartphones as well, and smart enough not to fall over the edge of the device. Running on a single double AA battery, AutoMee S cleans the screen using special cleaning paper, which sounds good enough, although Takara Tomy doesn’t guarantee it won’t damage your device.

Aside from its possible utility as a gag gift, I can’t fathom why anyone would want one of these. Granted, $16.80 isn’t going to break the bank but, since I can’t use this while the phone or tablet is in operation–thus my screen will be dirty, anyway–and it’d be more trouble to find and deploy the AutoMee S when the device is not in operation than it would take to wipe the screen off manually, what’s the point, exactly?

Comments

mantis says:

Wednesday, 6 February 2013 at 12:01

what’s the point, exactly?

People like, and buy, tiny robots. It doesn’t matter if they are actually useful.
JKB says:

Wednesday, 6 February 2013 at 12:28

To accustom the populace to our coming robot overlords.

Coming soon, a robot fast food joint that produces gourmet burgers without human hands, 340/hour.

and here is a fully automated pizza dispensing machine.

Where will all the women’s studies and English majors work?

One area we should resist our robot overlords in is, government.

Let’s further assume that price controls in Argentina and tax collection in Italy could suddenly be automated with 100% enforcement at zero percent cost. Would you do it?

On the plus side, you would get rid of a bunch of bureaucrats, many of them taking bribes to look the other way when the time comes.

On the minus side, if those tasks could be fully automated with high levels of compliance, then Italy would collapse under tax burdens, and black markets would take over the economy in Argentina as shortages of goods at official prices skyrocketed.

Indeed, many regulations are so bad that the combination of inefficient bureaucrats, bribery, and evasion is a better choice than automation (assuming of course, that automation would actually work as bureaucrats intended).
rodney dill says:

Wednesday, 6 February 2013 at 13:10

@mantis: Sometimes even when they are explicity not useful
walt moffett says:

Wednesday, 6 February 2013 at 17:00

Wonder if this could be adapted to a counter/table/floor cleaner.
Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

Wednesday, 6 February 2013 at 19:23

@mantis: @rodney dill: My ex used to say that Americans don’t buy things because we need them, we buy them because we want them and they are for sale.

@walt moffett: As to table and countertop, I don’t know, but Roomba, and its counterparts, has a mopping attachment in Korea (but good mothers still know that you have to use a floor steamer to get the floor really clean).