In the digital world in which we all more or less now live it would seem that the robots are gradually taking over. When was the last time you rang a large company for information and instead found yourself being moved from one pre-recorded message to another for instance ? Human -real human interaction is becoming sometimes difficult to find. So does what happened this evening prove the point? A live concert by real live musicians at Villa Moorings was stopped in its tracks by what could be described as Oscar the robot music critic.
Oscar’s real job is the automatic robot grass cutter – he keeps the lawns at the Villa in order. He scurries around all day long keeping the grass neat and tidy and all without a human hand in the operation.
He even returns to his house when the batteries are running down and recharges himself before once more powering off into action. A buried wire along the perimeter of the lawn that sends a stop signal to Oscar keeps him from straying off and cutting other people’s lawns.
We have published articles about Oscar in the past (article here) and there is even a video on youtube showing Oscar at work with a soundtrack from the 80’s pop icons – Boy George from Culture Club featuring the song “do you really want to hurt me?†It would seem that yes there was a bit of hurt around last night.
The band Organic Groove had just done a sound check and were ready to play when suddenly the power to all their equipment went off and the Hotel Villa Moorings was plunged into darkness.
It took a few minutes to find the culprit – yes, it was Oscar. Somebody had laid the main cable supplying the sound system for the Organic Groove across part of the lawn — well inside Oscar’s domain.
You can imagine the rest. Luckily no serious damage done. A few reset buttons pushed and once more the lights returned, the band played a blinding set and Oscar went back to work. His brief but eventful second career as a music critic put firmly behind him.
The recently updated and re launched Hotel Villa Moorings site can be seen here
Readers with a good memory might just recall an article that we published last year when the World Cup was taking over the hearts and minds of many Italians, featuring another robotic grass cutter – Ambrogio. He was kitted out in national colours as he worked hard keeping the grass trimmed around a pool in Barga. The sad news is that faithful Ambrogio finished his life in that same swimming pool when the perimeter wire buried under the grass was inadvertently cut by a workman and the electronic stop signal never reached poor Ambrogio as so he continued blithly on to his watery grave.
For anybody interested in more information about these robots – Ambrogio can be found here and Oscar here