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Comment by chejazi | Hacker News Reader

Do you see the evolution of iRobot-esque autonomous cleaners as a threat to your business? Are you planning on pulling an uber with all the capital you raise and pursuing R&D of said devices?

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I think it's still enough of a long-term threat (I'd say 5 years for these to start to become an issue, 10 years to become commonplace) to not get in the way of growing their business, and maybe eventually they will employee a few of those devices themselves.

If anything, in Uber's case, the other players have shown it can be a wise choice to form partnerships rather than to take on the risky and capital intensive process of building up an in-house R&D unit.

Even then, self-driving cards are a single-purpose task (yes, that task is complex, but it's single purpose). Cleaning is the amalgamation of a number of tasks. Furthermore, anyone who's had a cleaner knows that a big part of home cleaning is 'neatening', i.e. pickup up and straightening material to make them more aesthetically pleasing. Machines won't be easily doing that for some time.

Cleaning is very sophisticated and complicated work. We observed even small detail can change customers' satisfaction. Current robot technology is still very early to handle complex human work like cleaning. In a longterm, robotic tech is opportunity rather than threats. Though we do not have specific plan to make autonomous cleaning system, we can take advantage from robot innovation.

"All the capital you raise?" They've raised 190K.

Uber has raised 12.5 Billion dollars.

I didn't say "raised", and a prevailing trend for a successful startups is to raise lots of capital.

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