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Comment by drcross | Hacker News Reader

We see posts like this daily (and I know this article is more about AI) but there's still no low priced robotic arms on the market. it's almost 2017, but there's no dishwasher unloader or any other meaningful service robots except from an automatic vacuum cleaner..

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I make and sell low-cost robots, and business is great. :) But you don't see them, because I'm in a niche where I sell to companies with huge pressures to cut costs and go faster. (You don't see this kind of pressure for robots in the home, but I wouldn't be surprised to see dishwasher and service robots appear in chain hotels and restaurants, because of the scale they are at.) Having one dishwasher to unload is not a profitable problem to solve for most people in their home, but if you had 1000 dishwashers, it would be worth it to investigate your automation options.

Hey there, I'd be super interested in this. I checked out tapster.io but I'm more looking for (a little bit)larger and stronger robot arms. Email me at sixsamuraisoldier [at] gmail.com

Sure! Sent!

What is most interesting to me is a general purpose robot arm (or pair of arms) that is geometrically similar to human arms so it can be trained by a human. And that is designed not to unload a dishwasher, but is designed to do basically anything it is trained to do. Which can include not only unloading the dishwasher, but doing the whole process of getting dishes cleaned and put away, laundry cleaned and folded and put away, and any number of other household tasks. And probably most importantly, it can make robot arms.

And the robot vacuum misses spots and isn't very strong and requires you keep the area clear and never does as good as job as a person does...

There's an arbitrage opportunity wherever a person does a better job than is strictly necessary.

a human vacuum misses spots and isn't very strong

Yes, a service robot that can cook meals will actually save me more time than an autonomous car.

The car must be the lower hanging fruit in this case.

Microwave dinners?

Perhaps OP should have said cook meals of similar quality to home cooked meals.

Only if you consider that a meal. I'm not sure I would, although I'm not sure I would expect a robot-cooked meal from fresh ingredients to come out preferable; in any case, the capital investment required to implement an automatic kitchen capable of producing on-demand quality on par with a minimally skilled human cook would alone be enormous, to say nothing of the software capabilities being not there yet in a way that regularly provides fodder for @InternetOfShit and the like.

Or it might just have a higher expected value. Dead people don't eat dinner.

Doubt its the low hanging fruit technically, more the massive gains from first-mover advantage. A pair of robot arms cooking you food doesn't seem as much a winner takes all environment.

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