Dwayne Raupp

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gif: Engineering Explained/YouTube (Screengrabs)

Electric motors are coming whether we want them or not. So let’s not pout, but instead celebrate the ways in which electric vehicles actually outperform their conventional internal combustion engine-driven counterparts.

Coming at us again on this fine fall afternoon is Jason Fenske of Engineering Explained with a short and sweet video detailing the main performance benefits of an electric car over a conventional one.

His main points are actually fairly straightforward. The first is that EVs produce peak torque at zero RPM, meaning acceleration figures tend to be stellar. It’s because of that low end torque (and just generally high torque output across a large rev range), low inertia, and high redlines that electric motors tend to be mated to single-speed gearboxes instead of complex transmissions. This means less weight in the drivetrain, more reliability, and no drivability or acceleration sacrifices associated with shifts.

His third point deals with throttle response. In particular, Jason talks about the physical limitations of center-pivoting round throttle plates, and the fact that rotating the throttle from five to 15 percent yields an increased opening area of three times, whereas rotating the plate from 95 percent to 100 percent yields only a change in opening area of just over 1 percent. With electric vehicles, though, calibrating the throttle with the power output is simply a matter of software, with Jason stating:

With an electric vehicle you can get exactly what you ask for with that throttle pedal because you can choose exactly how much power you want it to deliver at any given position, versus internal combustion engines which are more sensitive when you’re at low partial throttle.

The final point deals with the ability to use an electric motor to slow a vehicle down. By simply allowing the wheels to turn the motor (and use its inertial as drag), the forward motion of the car charges batteries instead of heating up brake rotors and pads. This means less fade and wear on the brakes, and even the ability to downsize calibers and rotors for less unsprung mass.

The last point, and the one I find most interesting, deals with the ability to flexibly package battery packs. Batteries can be oriented flat on the ground to allow for a low center of gravity, and they can be thin and of strange shapes because they neither require a fuel pump (which takes up space), nor do they require liquid to flow “downhill” to that pump. Plus, it’s not strange to have multiple battery locations (with a gas tank, you’d need a transfer pump between the multiple tanks). Yes, batteries are heavy, but they can be packaged in a way that helps maximize interior volume, and minimize the effect of that mass, yielding better handling.

Robots are going to have to work together if they want to destroy us, their soft, fallible masters. But the current paradigm of having a Skynet-like (or rather, Zerglike) overmind control a set of semi-autonomous drones  is too easy to beat — take out the brain and the rest fail, right? Not if they’re all the brain, which is the idea demonstrated in a wonderful new paper, “Mergeable nervous systems for robots.”

The admiration of the authors for our shining, pitiless destroyers is evident from the get-go. The very first sentence of their paper, published today in Nature Communications, reads:

Robots have the potential to display a higher degree of lifetime morphological adaptation than natural organisms.

Not if we don’t let them! But I digress. The researchers, a multinational team from Lausanne, Lisbon, and Brussels (led by Marco Dorigo of the latter), point out that this amazing potential is, at present, unattained. Why? Because the swarmbots we’ve seen tend to outsource their intelligence to a higher power like a computer watching them from above. They’re more like remote limbs than independent bots.

To fix that to me reassuring weakness, the team decided to imbue each robot with the ability to control both itself and its brethren. These MNS robots all have their own CPUs, sensors, wheels, and so on, and can operate independently. But when one connects to another, it subjects its will to the “brain” robot and becomes as a mere appendage to it.

Bots operating independently avoid a green stimulus, then operate as single units once connected to do the same thing. Instructions always originate in the red-lit “brain” modules.

This has lots of advantages. First, there’s no need for an overarching intelligence that monitors and directs the robots, and all the infrastructure that implies. Second, it vastly simplifies the logic necessary to accomplish tasks: the “brain” issues commands and the “limb” robots execute them. Third, it makes replacing parts easy: if part of an arm isn’t working, swap it out; if the brain is destroyed, switch to the next one down the line. Fourth, it makes scaling the robots from five- or six-bot formations to hundred-bot formations… well, if not easy, then easier than before. And finally, adding functions like lifting or pushing is as easy as adding a lifter or pusher unit to the “organism.”

Or, if you wanted to sound like an evil genius planning to take over the world with these things:

Our control paradigm enables robots to exhibit properties that go beyond those of any existing machine or of any biological organism.

That’s how the paper describes it. We get it, robots are superior!

Each MNS robot is like a little custom layer cake: wheels and “treels” (track-like wheels) on the bottom; then a ring with a little gripper that can rotate around and expand to hold onto another robot’s ring; then an optional utility module like a magnet for picking up nearby objects; then the computer and sensor package, which has the wi-fi, 360-degree camera, range sensor, and identification beacon. You can see the rest of the parts in the diagram at right.

Obviously these little basketball-sized things aren’t going to do any serious work. They don’t even have arms, or guns, or vicious blades. But the robots in the experiment are just to demonstrate the logic and benefits of such a setup.

Imagine a real-world application with dozen or two of these things rolling around a construction site. They could operate on their own to pick up supplies and trash, recharge, and do simple deliveries, but join together when they need to do something unusual like pick up something heavy, climb a wall, or monitor the site at night.

In conclusion, Dorigo et al. write:

Our vision is that, in the future, robots will no longer be designed and built for a particular task. Instead, we will design composable robotic units that give robots the flexibility to autonomously adapt their capabilities, shape and size to changing task requirements.

Clearly, it’s the future we deserve.

Featured Image: Marco Dorigo and Nithin Mathews

ALLEN PARK -- The Detroit Lions hit the practice fields at team headquarters on Monday for a second straight day of practice. Here are some observations from the workout, which I think was somehow hotter than Sunday's opener. 

-- The Lions weren't alarmed by their somewhat sloppy first day of practice, and with good reason. They hadn't touched a football field together in six weeks. Rust was to be expected -- and sure enough, things were a lot more crisp on Day 2. Drops weren't nearly as much of an issue, and quarterback Matthew Stafford was especially good, slinging the ball confidently both short and deep. Darren Fells was actually his favorite target, but it was Golden Tate who had the highlight of the day, tippy-toeing down the left sideline for a long completion -- and hanging onto the ball as he went into the first row of fans.

-- Before we get anywhere else, there's a whole lot more to say about Fells. He was signed to be a blocker, but man, this guy looks like he could be a threat in the passing game. He snagged a couple catches during seven-on-sevens, including eating up Tahir Whitehead in the short field. Later he got loose behind the defense and wrestled the ball away from safety Tavon Wilson for a deep completion over the middle. And then he got back to passes -- one on the left sideline, and another along the right -- to set up Tate's highlight reel catch. Heck of a day from a guy considered a blocking specialist, and it breathes some life into Detroit's plan to expand its two-tight end sets.

-- Wilson was injured on the deep play with Fells and did not return, but he was having a heck of a practice before that. He had tight coverage while working against the tight ends in one-on-ones, and then he later picked up a fumble by rookie tight end Michael Roberts. 

-- Roberts' ball security could use some work, but I continue to be impressed with his ability to move and get open. He caught a few more balls today. I think the Lions really might be on to something here, though he needs some polish before he's ready for Sundays.

-- It was Storm Norton's turn to occupy the revolving door at left tackle. No, that's not a typo. Taylor Decker and Corey Robinson are out, while Greg Robinson hasn't been cleared for team drills and then Cyrus Kouandjio joined him on the sidelines Monday. So it was Norton, an undrafted rookie with big feet and even bigger hair out of Toledo, who got the call. Coach Jim Caldwell warned not to read too much into it, and he's right. Norton faces long odds of seeing a meaningful snap this year. But it does speak to the situation at left tackle -- and while the Lions can sweet talk it all they want, it's clearly not good. Offensive lines need time to gel, and that's hard to do when your top four left tackles can't take a team rep.

-- While the Lions cautioned not to read too much into who was playing left tackle, it's worth noting who wasn't. Cornelius Lucas was once a lot like Norton -- a big undrafted free agent with some intriguing upside. But that star has since lost some of its luster. He was fine as the extra offensive lineman in jumbo packages last year, but just hasn't been consistent enough to hold down a regular job at tackle. And if he can't see time at left tackle now, with the small village of people unable to play, then it's hard to see him ever doing it.  

-- Owner Martha Firestone Ford was back at practice for a second straight day, but she wasn't the only guest of honor. Tom Crean, the former men's basketball coach at Indiana, was also on hand and had a long chat with GM Bob Quinn. Caldwell said after practice he got to know Crean a little bit during his time in Indianapolis, and also mentioned the Harbaugh connection. 

-- For those of you demanding to know who the emergency long snapper is, it appears it could be Anthony Zettel. The second-year defensive end was seen taking a couple reps during practice, and he really wasn't that bad. At that to his list of hidden talents, along with tackling trees and throwing 94 mph fastballs.

My Verge colleague Sean O’Kane put it well when he wrote that the Tesla Model 3 interior doesn’t look like any car you’ve ever seen. It’s stunningly austere, with a smooth strip of wood across the dashboard that looks like it was carved straight out of a bamboo stalk; zero instrumentation behind the steering wheel; and none of the usual interior handles: the glovebox is opened via virtual button on the display, and you exit the car by pushing on a small button on the door. There isn’t even a place to insert a key.

But a big part of that interior is the display, and a lot of people will want to know: How does the display in the $35,000 Model 3 compare to the display in the Model S or the Model X? After riding in a Model 3 for a mere five minutes, I’m hardly an expert on it. But I did get to briefly swipe through it, and a few things (aside from the very, very spare interior) jumped out at me.

The first and most obvious is that the display is a horizontally-oriented screen, while the display in the Models S and X is placed vertically. The Model 3’s screen is also smaller (15 inches compared to 17 inches), and juts out from the dashboard, rather than being nestled in it.

I asked the Tesla employee who gave me a ride if the software was running on an updated Linux kernel, and he didn’t know (or said he didn’t). But the user interface on the Model 3’s screen was definitely different from the UI on the Model S — not surprising, given its orientation. During my ride, maps took up the larger portion of the screen, which is what I usually defaulted to when test-driving the Model S. That instrumentation that doesn’t exist behind the steering wheel? It’s on the left-hand side of the screen now, showing your speed and a digital representation of your car and the other cars around it.

But unlike the Model S/X display interface, the menu bar is on the bottom, not at the top of the screen. And unlike the Model S/X, which splits neatly into a dual-view mode, the Model 3 interface appears to be split up into three: the main view, the instrumentation on the left, and another app bar below for, say, music selection. When I swiped on the music options, I was able to drag that app up to fill a larger portion of the screen, then swipe it back down to shrink it and only show controls, favorites, and recents.

In the very brief time I was in the Model 3, it actually felt less intuitive than the first time I drove a Model S and swiped through the display, but it really is too early to say. I also wasn’t driving myself, so I can’t say how easy it was to navigate the interface while driving. (This also means I didn’t get to try any of the tactical buttons on the steering wheel, or pull the right-hand control stalk for Autopilot mode — which has been relocated from the left side of the wheel.) But Musk has said that the Model 3’s interior was built for autonomy, so, if that future becomes a reality, you wouldn’t necessarily need easy access to all of the information you do now.

And you probably knew this already, but, no: the Model 3 doesn’t have a Ludicrous option in its driving settings.

Hopefully, we’ll get to test drive the Model 3 in a more meaningful way in the near future. But that’s likely dependent on when the Model 3 ships to non-employees, which is anyone’s guess at the moment.

Big Mac, fries, and McFlurries aren't the only things you can get at McDonald's.

Customers ordering fast food at the Woodbine Beach McDonald's in Toronto can get a cup holder that folds open into a boombox speaker for your phone. 

SEE ALSO: KFC China is using facial recognition to make food suggestions

The Canadian location is giving out the limited edition cup holder/speakers to celebrate the McFlurry's 22nd birthday, which, FYI, was invented in Canada. Sorry, America, no awesome transformer cup holders for you!

The McDonald's Boombox was a collaboration with the University of Waterloo's Audio Research Group and Stacklab. The goal was to see if they could turn a disposable cup holder into a speaker for your phone.

While the result isn't quite a Bluetooth speaker — there are no electronic bits inside of the Boombox — it still works as an amplifier, increasing sound from your inserted phone's speakers by 101 percent.

The McDonald's Boombox works much like a putting your phone in a cup. Sound is reflected through the cone shape and amplified. Its designers at the University of Waterloo and Stacklab ended up going with a 10-sided cone design that opens up between the bottom of the cup holder.

"When we changed the shape of the cones of the McBoombox, the difference in sound levels was 50 percent," says Janelle Resch, PhD candidate and entrepreneur at the University of Waterloo, in the Boombox's promo video. "When we used the reflective material, you increase the sound level by 43 percent. Inserting your phone increases the sound level by 101 percent."

It's a brilliant way to give cup holders a second life and is the perfect thing to bring to a picnic during summer.

Sadly, the McDonald's Boombox is extremely limited. They're only being distributed on July 28 from 2-7 pm ET, and by the time you read this, they'll probably be out of them. McDonald's, if you're reading this, how about mass-producing them for all your restaurants?

If you want to join the electric vehicle revolution but you're not willing to downsize from your rugged SUV or pickup truck, your dream ride may have just arrived. 

Bollinger Motors, an independent EV startup based in upstate New York, just unveiled its first (and only) vehicle: the B1. The company claims the B1 is the world's first all-electric, all-wheel drive sport utility truck, finally adding some grit and muscle to the EV scene.  

The truck looks like a cross between a Jeep and an OG Hummer, stripped down of any frills for a life of hard labor. The B1 has a sparse interior style and convertible setup, so you can remove the cab and doors for any job or off-road joyride imaginable.

The truck's heavy-duty design catches the eye, but Bollinger's claims about its battery might be its most remarkable feature. The company says the B1's large 100 kWh battery will have the potential for a 200 mile range, just under Tesla's 215 mile-per-charge estimate for the much smaller Model 3. A smaller 60 kWh battery could give future B1 owners 120 miles per charge, which is still well beyond the Workhorse hybrid truck's 80 mile all-electric range. That's a ton of juice for a big, badass work truck.  

The B1 will offer drivers a stripped-down experience.

The B1 is also slated to generate 360 horsepower and 472 lb-foot of torque, which Bollinger claims will push its 0 to 60 acceleration time to an impressive 4.5 seconds, with a top speed of 127 mph. The truck has a 6,100-pound payload capacity for heavy-duty hauling jobs. It's also outfitted with twin 110 volt power outlets for remote charging on the job.

The B1 could become a mobile work station.

There are some very important details Bollinger isn't quite ready to reveal, however: production partners and pricing. The small company doesn't have the means to manufacture the B1 on a large scale, so it will have to team up with an established third-party partner with the appropriate facilities.

Bollinger will be able to set a price once the manufacturer issue is ironed out, as it aims to land on a number appropriate for a "nicely equipped sport utility vehicle" according to the press release. Pre-orders, which are slated to open early next year, will cost $1,000 per reservation.  

The company plans to begin delivering B1s to customers within 19 months of signing on with a manufacturer using a direct-to-consumer sales approach with plans for expansion to standalone store locations across the country, à la Tesla. 

Bollinger unveiled the B1 the night before Tesla is slated to roll out its first Model 3 sedans to customers in a livestream event, but that wasn't an intentional move to undercut Elon Musk's triumphant moment. Bollinger doesn't think of Tesla as competition — even though Musk has teased a Tesla pickup as recently as April — it's just another company making progress in the EV space. 

Bollinger spokesman Jeff Holland said as much in an email to Mashable. "We certainly applaud the efforts of forward-thinking companies like Tesla, however we believe there is a need and a desire in the marketplace right now for a multi-purpose all-electric sport utility truck like our Bollinger B1. In fact, we think the B1 would fit nicely in the garage next to the new Tesla Model 3 sedan."

The company has a ton of work to do before it can give drivers the rugged EV driving experience it promises, so it's a little early to imagine the B1 posting up next door to Tesla's latest. If it can fulfill it's potential, though, we could be looking at a whole new segment of electric vehicles.  

Three years ago, Justin Miller had a six-hour phone call he says saved his life.

Miller is a medically retired military veteran, previously serving two deployments in Iraq. The trauma of combat led him to develop severe post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury. 

The nightmares didn't let him sleep, and he was scared things would never get better. 

“I called the VA after having a particularly bad nightmare and told them I needed to see someone now," Miller says. “They scheduled me an appointment for two days later. Here I am, on the verge of killing myself, and I need to wait two days to see someone.”

An average of 20 veterans die of suicide each day, a rate 20 percent higher than the civilian population.

Miller had planned to end his own life.

But before attempting suicide, Miller called his friend Chris Mercado. A fellow veteran, Mercado wasn't a trained counselor or mental health professional. He simply picked up the phone and listened to Miller talk about his pain and hopelessness and fear. 

By the end of the phone call, Miller promised Mercado he wasn't going to attempt suicide. And he didn't.

That six-hour phone call was the inspiration behind a new app called Objective Zero, the brainchild of Miller and Mercado. The pair wanted to replicate their life-saving interaction on a bigger scale to reach veterans in need around the U.S.  

The nonprofit app, which is currently in development, will instantly and anonymously connect veterans to other veterans who have been trained in suicide prevention and de-escalation. The veterans can then chat via text, phone, or video.

Objective Zero will also provide a range of suicide prevention resources to those in need, and a chatroom to help veterans connect to a larger community for support. 

An additional activities tab has free meditation and mindfulness activities to help veterans cope with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other mental health issues. This feature was created in partnership with the popular app Headspace, which normally charges a fee for its service.

The name of the soon-to-be launched app was inspired by a lofty goal: Bring the amount of veteran suicides down to zero.

An average of 20 veterans die by suicide each day, a rate 20 percent higher than the civilian population. While veterans only make up 8.5 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than 18 percent of all suicide-related deaths in the U.S.

There are more than 40,000 nonprofits dedicated to supporting veterans, but Miller and Mercado realized many veterans who die by suicide aren't connected to any resources, similar to the problem Miller had in his time of crisis.

Veterans only make up 8.5 percent of the U.S. population, but they account for more than 18 percent of all suicide-related deaths in the U.S.

The duo created Objective Zero with cofounder and app developer Blake Bassett at the helm of design. Cofounders Kayla Bailey, Ryan Pereiram, and Betsey Mercado also helped to create the app's features and marketing. 

To make Objective Zero a reality, App Design Company donated more than $10,000 of free software development to the team — a generous gift that served as the majority of funding for the app.

Along with connecting veterans to veterans, the app will help connect veterans to civilians who want to help, too. Civilians will be able to sign up for a military awareness course, allowing veterans in crisis to have the option of whether they would like to connect with a fellow veteran or a civilian.

"We've found that civilians want to help veterans, but they don’t know how or don’t know how to ask veterans about their military service," Bassett says. "Our anecdotal evidence seems to suggest some veterans prefer talking about their problems with a civilian, a surprising finding that speaks to the potential for the role civilians can play in helping reintegrate our veterans after war."

Objective Zero is projected to launch in the beginning of Sept. 2017. 

If you want to talk to someone or are experiencing suicidal thoughts, text Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Here is a list of international resources. 

In the pics, you can see that I have used a rectifier to convert the output three phase AC from the brushless generator into DC.

Originally it was a single phase rectifier which I converted into three phase.

Make a 3-phase rectifier at home.

If you do not want to convert or make a 3 phase rectifier, you can simply buy it.

So anyways, after you have the three phase rectifier, what you have to do is connect its three terminal to the terminals of the generator that you are made.

Now, you will be left with only two terminals from the rectifier.These two terminals are for the DC output.

Just connect the DC output terminals to a multi-meter or some DC load and rotate the shaft of the generator.It should glow the bulb or show some reading on the multimeter as can be seen in the pics.

So that was all for this instructable guys.

Thankyou.

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Zounds! 'Tis Free Comic Book Day, when younglings and olds alike descend upon their local comic book merchants in search of the only nourishment that will slake their savage geek thirst: MOAR COMIC BOOKS. 

But despite the feeding frenzy focused on the wonder secreted in the pages of these paper treasures, Free Comic Book Day is actually a sweet moment for many families when friends and family get to unapologetically share their collective guilty pleasure. 

No, this isn't the day to haggle over a rare issue of an obscure superhero series, or eye the comic book shop owner suspiciously as she darts into the back room where they keep "the good stuff." 

Nope, today is just about sharing the love of comic books, and we managed to find a number of moments on social media that capture that warm and fun sentiment. 

#freecomicbookday

A post shared by Sabrina (@buffysummrsx) on May 6, 2017 at 1:48pm PDT

But hark! There are still hours yet left to pillage your nearby purveyor of comic paraphernalia. We beseech you, if you haven't already darkened the door of a comic book shop today, let these images inspire you to action. 

We launched Aut.Des to bridge the gap between science and design. We want to raise awareness and enable discussion about the real world applications of AI in the design process and for creative industries.

Please join us in this experiment and sign up to the forum or submit your project to the tool repository on autdes.com

Six months ago now, Google launched a VR version of its Google Earth software for the HTC Vive, and it remains one of the best experiences in the industry. There are some updates we’d love to see to the platform, though, and we might get some of them soon.

Google is teasing a “brand new” Google Earth experience that it’s set to unveil at 8:30 a.m. Eastern on April 18 at New York’s Whitney Museum of Art. No other details about the experience have been revealed, and it’s very likely that any update would mainly apply to the traditional version of the service that anyone can use rather than the VR version specifically. Still, any such tweaks could feasibly apply to both versions, so we’re still hoping to have at least some VR-relevant news from the event.

Earth currently allows you to visit various locations on the planet and view them in 3D. Tokyo springs to life like a model train set that you can explore in great detail, for example, or you could soar over Yosemite National Park like a bird. It’s an amazing piece of software, though it could definitely benefit from a few updates. We’d love to see more locations in 3D for example, as many non-American sites are simply the flat 2D pictures you’re used to seeing on a screen.

We also want to see it come to more headsets. Google’s Tilt Brush finally made the jump from Vive to the Oculus Rift earlier this year, and there’s no reason this shouldn’t do the same. It would also be great to get some version of the software on Google’s own mobile VR ecosystem, Daydream, which already has staple apps like StreetView and YouTube on it.

This story originally appeared on Uploadvr.com. Copyright 2017

Short all the Vcc pins of the respective modules together and connect it to the 5v pin on the arduino. Do the same for the 3.3v and gnd pins.

Here are the connections of the different modules.

HC 05 module:

RX pin to arduino dig pin 0.

TX pin to arduino dig pin 1.

HC SR04 sensor:

Echo pin to arduino dig pin 6.

Trig pin to arduino dig pin 7

WTV020-SD module:

pin1 (reset pin) to arduino dig pin2.

pin4 to speaker +

pin5 to speaker -

pin7 (clock) to arduino dig pin3.

pin8 to gnd.

pin10 (data) to arduino dig pin4.

pin15 (busy) to arduino dig pin5.

pin16 to 3.3v

L293d motor controller:

pin A1 to arduino dig pin 8.

pin A2 to arduino dig pin 9.

pin B1 to arduino dig pin 10.

pin B2 to arduino dig pin 11.

Remember to make duplicate connections on both the motor controller modules. Connect the servo signal (yellow) wire and to dig pin 12.

Check the diagram for further reference.

Bradford Cross, a founding partner at machine learning and big data venture capital fund DCVC, wrote an interesting post on his blog about the impending end to today’s bots hype period, including one section called “Bots Go Bust.” He is right in the sense that hopes for bots will soon crash to Earth, the frothy valuations for AI startups will end, and press coverage will go off the boil.

I want to discuss why the bots-mania took hold, why they were implemented wrongly from the start, and why they will come back strongly — and fairly soon — when the first-wave mistakes are corrected.

The bot bubble

Bot-mania emerged from Silicon Valley and other AI labs as voicebots like Siri, Alexa, and other AI-based products started edging into mainstream use. In parallel, consumers were getting “app fatigue” — too many apps to remember and juggle as brands and startups pushed people to download an app instead of using the mobile web. (Everyone was chasing prime real estate on the smartphone screen.) The bots craze also coincided with the new dominance of messaging, now the preferred way people talk to each other on smartphones.

For bots, the thinking went: Instead of all these apps and interfaces to navigate, people can use their phones more conversationally, not pressing buttons inside apps but just messaging what you want. Bots would work as you message with friends in iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and so on.

As so often happens, Silicon Valley missed the human element in its excitement about the technological breakthrough. Valley types did not grasp that a bot is essentially a human helper in virtualized form — it is an “agent,” in the parlance of the customer service industry.

When consumers interact with a branded bot, either to buy something or to get service, it is this role as an agent that is the “job” consumers “hired” a bot to help with. And while bots are fast and work 24/7, they are not nearly as smart as human agents. They often fail to understand what you want. They become, in effect, a really low quality human agent.

With all the hype, developers rushed bots into service as standalone experiences. They were thrown into the deep end of customer expectations to sink or swim — and they sank. Most consumers were not very interested in being Guinea pigs for the latest Silicon Valley technology fad (what’s in it for them?). Usage was low, as was customer satisfaction.

As standalone experiences, these bots were not connected to the usual customer care channels and the teams behind them (large companies like banks and telcos have literally tens of thousands of customer support staff answering questions by phone, email, messaging, and so on). That meant, when a bot fails, there is no graceful fallback to human reps. Instead, it’s usually just an “Oops, sorry, I can’t help you” comment.

In this sense, the current wave of bots is a bubble that popped — a moment of excitement followed by a steep drop-off. However, as Cross suggested in his blog post, this will pave the way for the next iteration, which is much more promising. It follows the standard hype cycle of innovative technology: a peak of hype, a trough of despair, then a plateau of useful application.

Get ready to welcome bots back

But there’s reason to think that this plateau is months, rather than years, away. The reason is, first off, that bots are inexpensive compared to human agents, which means that companies have a big incentive to adopt them. And second, there will be a second phase of bots usage bridging the gap between completely automated technology and human support reps.

The error of the sink-or-swim experiment was that it ignored that bots should be specialists, and limited in their roles. When it comes to specific and menial tasks — like updating address or payment cards, or looking up FAQs — they are very good at their jobs, and have no labor costs.

Tango time

What this next wave will do is learn what we call the “tango” — where humans and bots go back and forth within one thread, handing off to each other according to their strengths and weaknesses. Bots will handle simple stuff, like forms, FAQs, and basic processes like requesting an account balance, but they will automatically escalate the thread to a human as soon as a tougher task comes along. If companies execute this dance correctly, the exchange will be seamless, and the consumer will receive a more efficient, intelligent experience.

As bots learn this tango, you’ll see a lot of work handed off to them — around 40 to 50 percent of inquiries from customers at large brands are fairly menial tasks that bots could handle — and bots will go from a curiosity or an annoyance to something genuinely useful.

Rurik Bradbury is the head of research at LivePerson, an online messaging, marketing, and analytics company.

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One way to ask somebody whether they’re still feeling it, romance-wise, is to make them a playlist. This is a tried-and-true method for conveying your feelings and implying the question, “Are my feelings the same as your feelings?”

For example, you might remember the Jack’s Mannequin song “The Mixed Tape,” which is about a mixtape the frontman / singer / songwriter Andrew McMahon made for his ex-girlfriend, expressly intending to “burn a hole” in her (emotionally). That’s kind of a lot, but you get the picture. He later published a list of the songs on the actual tape he made, so other people could listen to them if they wanted and feel the same pain, but to be honest, it didn’t work on me. That’s because a playlist is specific to the emotional situation of the person who makes it and the person they give it to (or passive-aggressively play it near, in my experience).

Not so in the case of this very frank playlist, which I stumbled upon in the Ruined Childhood Tumblr. This playlist welcomes everyone in for the show, and the show is messy. Rather than a collection of moods, thoughts, feelings, and vibes, it’s a collection of song titles that form one run-on sentence.

According to the original tweet the “To: Wyatt” playlist was taken from, it was a message to a boy (named Wyatt, obviously) after only a few dates. Keep that in mind when you read Wyatt’s fairly brutal response.

This is a nightmare, but it’s also creative, and a good spin-off from a time-honored tradition of curating other people’s artwork as a way of expressing emotions when we have a hard time putting them into words ourselves. This is the best breakup note I’ve ever seen — way more effort than a text, much more frank than a ghosting, an infinitely better story to tell your friends, and not that painful, since it’s also hilarious.

I’m really mad I didn’t include this in “How to make the most of Spotify playlists,” a post that is now woefully incomplete and embarrassing.

Another illustration for an upcoming food truck app I'm working on.