Typical Day
Professional robotics engineer Alexandria Botnik wakes up in a fog at 4:01AM with an idea burning through her brain. She grabs the notepad and pen that she keeps near her bed. After losing five or six 4:00AM-strokes-of-genius, she's learned to be prepared.
Even though it's pitch black, Alex grabs her writing tools with a nimble dexterity. Of course, it helps that she's very organized and always puts stuff away in its allotted place.
Before drifting back off to sleep, Alex gives her husband, Stu, a kiss on the hairy back of his neck. He snores like a yeti. Stu's the stay-at-home dad—he and their daughter Cookie are what really keep Alex happy. Them, plus her super-duper-awesome job as a super-duper-awesome robotics engineer.
Alex wakes up again at 7:00AM sharp and slaps off her alarm clock with that same precision we saw earlier. It's summertime, which means Stu and Cookie don't have to be up yet. In other words, Cookie won't be starting her usual morning routine of banging her tambourine with her cookie monster doll and going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Alex has some quiet time to think out her day over breakfast, which is a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese. As Alex is about to walk out the door, Cookie appears in her onesie jammies, thumb in mouth.
"You going to work, Mommy?" Cookie wants to know.
"Yes, sweetie."
Cookie ponders this. "Can we play Cookieball when you get home?"
Cookieball is basically a cross between lacrosse, dodgeball, and the Hunger Games. Alex is usually pretty tired when she gets home, but she can't say no to that face. She agrees to play the game, bids her husband goodbye (now groggily standing in the doorway next to Cookie), and gets on her way.
The commute down south from the San Francisco suburbs is slow, but scenic. Alex uses the spare time to mull over her 4:00AM idea: a touch-sensitive surface with varying levels of friction that could improve responsiveness in any robot that needs to grab things.
If she, or someone else on her team, could figure out how to make that, it'd be a huge step forward for their latest top-secret project, R-2, which the team has been working on for over a year now.
Her mind racing with details, Alex arrives at the office and practically runs to her desk so she can begin sketching designs and researching the parts and systems that'd be required to develop a touch-sensitive material based on more than just pressure.
Before long, it's lunchtime. Alex almost doesn't notice; she gets so involved in her work that everything else disappears. Great for her productivity, but not so great for her back, or for her nutrition.
Alex gets up, stretches, and moseys over to the falafel place on the corner where she and some of her co-workers like to eat on Thursdays. She spends more time talking about work than she does eating, but it's always fun to bounce ideas off her colleagues.
It's all really technical and theoretical, so Alex and her team don't have to worry too much about spilling sensitive information in public. She's pretty sure the other people at the restaurant have no idea what she's talking about.
The team finishes eating around 12:30PM, then it's back to the lab. Alex decides to give this morning's project a rest. She spends the second half of her day fine-tuning the triangulation program on the upcoming self-driving Honda. Alex, for one, can't wait to buy one. If she didn't have to spend her commute focusing on driving, she could spend more time thinking about one of the other million projects she's working on.
However, the self-driving car isn't here yet, so Alex has to get her head out of its robotics fog when she gets into her car at 5:15PM. She listens to the radio on the way home and tries to relax. Her 4:00AM wake-up is catching up with her, but she can't afford to be tired when there's going to be a rousing game of Cookieball waiting for her at home.
Alex is barely out of the car before the game starts. It lasts all the way until dinner—stir fry, prepared by Stu, who's more than happy to get a little break from watching their daughter—and to Alex and Stu's delight, totally wears Cookie out. She practically passes out after dinner.
After putting Cookie to bed, Alex and Stu stay up a little while to read and chat about their days. By 10:00PM, they're both ready to drop, which is exactly what they do after brushing their teeth with the smart toothbrush Alex invented.