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spyckie2

Things it can't do:

- go up stairs

- get up after a fall / reset itself

- pick up heavy objects

- precise motion (so no cooking)

- interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard)

The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clean around the house that would be a big win. Also, if it can help me detect which clothes are still wearable and which I should probably wash, that'd be nice.

I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house, even if it involves a lot of customization and setup. Imagine leaving your groceries next to the fridge and coming back to a perfectly organized fridge. Or letting your kids play in the play room and then the robot comes in and puts all the toys back. Or if you just tend to leave stuff out (throw your clothes on the floor or forget to return stuff), the robot can put it back.

I think that's a legit use case.

View on HN

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house

The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares?

A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year.

Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost must be below €18.3k ($21k) with human-quality-parity.

Personally, though, I would bet on dedicated, single-purpose robots, working together through wireless communication. Simpler to build, less costly, easier to replace. One small wheeled quadcopter for cleaning surfaces, one wheeled laundry box to carry it to the washing machine, one arm attached to the washing machine to put it in, etc.

Robots won't accidentally infect you with disease, which is a big worry these days.

They could get infected with a crypto-miner and cause you a high electricity bill.

One could make the argument that you normally want exposure to germs to keep your immune system strong. There’s even some conjecture that exposure to cold corona viruses offers some protection from COVID.

Leave a room and a swarm of tiny flying droids come out of the ceiling?

Robot arms coming out of the ceiling is bit more realistic.

... and terrifying. Imagine if they randomly came down from the ceiling due to malfunction.

robot will clean everyday as vacuums already do

Another possible angle is integrations, i.e. robot-friendly appliances. Maybe the washing machine has a powered door and an API that the robot (or some other software) uses to control it. No need to push buttons. Obviously, this won't cover all scenarios, but as someone upthread said, to be useful it doesn't have to do everything.

The bigger issue, IMO, is avoiding distasters like Roombas trying to vacuum dog poop.

This sounds like a good idea. As you said it doesn't have to cover all scenarios.

I'm happy with our Roomba. We don't have any dogs but is it really that bad!? :-)

Oh, I don't have either, I was just using that as the canonical example.

Can confirm that Roomba running over dog poop is a bad way to start the day

Consider the Pooptastrophe (also known as the Poopocalypse): https://cheezburger.com/897029/dogs-roomba-please-consider-t...

it's the kind of thing that only has to happen once for you to remember it forever.

Yes it is that bad.

Two months ago, my partner vacuumed up fox poop. No idea why he thought it was a good idea. We realised it wasn't when the soft, sticky debris coated the inside of the vacuum cleaner's flexible hose. :(

The smell only improved after I cleaned every internal crevice. Including submerging the crinkly part of the hose in a half-full bath and pulling through a sponge three or four times.

We still have to put deodorant beads inside the vacuum cleaner bag.

> robot-friendly appliances

I agree, although I saw it as implied!

Robots are like AI: once they become widely used, they are no longer called robots. :)

To me, dish washers, mixers, vacuum cleaners are all robots that can be part of the household fleet.

>To me, dish washers, mixers, vacuum cleaners are all robots

Mixers and food processors are robots in French:

https://www.robot-patissier.org/robot-menager-robot-patissie...

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

If I’ve learned anything in this industry, it’s that integrations cannot make your product viable. They’re nice, but are more often than not hail Mary’s because the actual product isn’t viable.

Yeah, it might be hard to sell a robot that can do a, b, and c as long as you already have set of devices that meet it halfway. OTOH, if it can do a sufficient set of useful things to get some traction, then you might start to see some integrations.

The thing about examples like the washing machine is, I haven't looked but I would be surprised if there isn't already a networked washing machine, less the powered door, that is meant for smart homes.

>> Personally, though, I would bet on dedicated, single-purpose robots, working together through wireless communication.

Robonix Philosophy at play here, inspired from Unix philosophy [1]

- Make each robot do one thing well

- Expect the output of every robot to become the input to another

- Design and build robots to be tried early, ideally within weeks

- Use robots in preference to unskilled help to lighten a chore task

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Origin

Meanwhile, someone somewhere is probably working on robot-mode for emacs!

Difference is : robots take up a lot more space. Having multiple simple robots leads to traffic in the real world and taking away space that humans could use. If robots could be like bosons that would be better

I'm not actually sure that's a difference. On the old systems where that philosophy was developed, disk space was at a premium. In fact, IIRC, the lack of space precipitated the need for a modular system of the sort described by the Unix philosophy.

For a hundred robots, sure. For inner city apartments, sure. But I could put 10 of these things in the corner of this room right now and mostly not notice.

The killer app here is tele-operated cleaning, with a monthly subscription model. I actually dont think it will replace your aforementioned 4h/week cleaner, just augment it with daily tasks.

Trying to stay as ethics neutral here.

We will probably see something like "Human assisted AI" with a sliding scale from mostly human to mostly AI for various tasks at various stages of development. The operators will be sourced where work is cheap, like Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Once VC gets it they'll fund the first few generations of bots on optimism alone.

Honestly who cares if it cant do everything. Nor can robotic vacuum cleaners and I have three.

@spykie So what if it cant go up stairs, have robots on each level. If it cant pick its self up, have multiple, let them help. Most things it cleans are light, so no problem there either. Cant interact buttons? Give it a rotating toolhead.

@bArray it doesn't need to operate autonomously, see the Human assisted AI argument. With good UX one remote operator will control five or six bots at once, tagging objects, issuing instructions. Give the User a good AR app, let them issue location based instruction around the house that the "AI" (remote operator) will slowly handle during the day.

Honestly, this space will be a primary design driver soon. I cant totally see IKEA making robot compatible cupboards.

If this space isn't huge I will be incredibly surprised.

Killer app... Exterminate!

Yeah I agree, I think this space is huge. Imagine two or three generations down, someone from a poorer country using some form of VR tool with this, maybe with two arms instead of one, navigating your airbnb rental, cleaning counter tops, doing laundry, and organizing your stuff, and then jumping to the next appointment and doing it over and over for a solid days wage for their respective economy. With someone manning the bot, I see this being far more flexible than just your robot vaccum. They might not be able to do as many things as well as an in-person maid, but for 80% of tasks they might be able to do it good enough.

Sounds depressing for the worker here, yes it's a job but only because AI isn't far advanced to replace them yet.

Do you mean depressing like Amazon warehouse workers? Or do you mean more like Uber drivers?

Bezos & company aren't exactly considering the plights of their employees/independent contractors for their quarterly financial report.

Is it bad that I rank how successful a venture might be based on how many jobs it might destroy?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that sentiment could be used to describe between 80 and 95% of the global job market. Most jobs suck, otherwise you wouldn't have to pay people to do them.

Sometimes I read things on HN and wonder if I'm living in some alternate universe by myself. I would never in a million years, allow someone else to remote-operate a robot in my house. The idea of even allowing something above Roomba-level intelligence in my living area is a no-go.

> Sometimes I read things on HN and wonder if I'm living in some alternate universe by myself. I would never in a million years, allow someone else to remote-operate a robot in my house. The idea of even allowing something above Roomba-level intelligence in my living area is a no-go.

Mmm...I guess it's fair to assume that the IQ of a human cleaner is superior to anything resembling a Roomba. Would you hire a human cleaner and grant them access to your living area? And if so would you be monitoring their every move while they go about the job?

No issues with humans being in my house. There is just something abjectly dystopian about robots (imo).

Or If we get a universal income, the cost of personal cleaners goes way up, and it suddenly makes way more financial sense to automate such routine jobs...

A one-time, billion-dollar x-prize package would create plenty of incentive, without requiring the (politically fraught) middle step of UBI.

- The robot is in your house the whole 168 hours a week, not just 4. You're assuming a good cleaning robot would be absolutely useless for anything else, like cooking, laundry, etc.

- 4-year robot lifetime is overly pessimistic. If upgrade is not the reason (which has nothing to do with lifetime, it's your choice to upgrade), a robot could last way more than 4-years (especially with right-to-repair laws in place).

- That said, such a robot will most likely be available for less than $21k and very soon in the near future.

The first point has an obvious response and the last is speculative.

I find interesting to address the middle one statistically.

A given machine has a number of random events that can kill it. Each possible event type i can be modeled as a Poisson process Xᵢ with, in a given year, probability λᵢ. The machine survives in a given year if no occurrence of event i happens, with probability Pr(Xᵢ = 0) = exp(-λᵢ).

For instance, a device with an average lifetime of 8 years and a single possible cause of death, has λ = -ln(½^⅛) = 0.087.

Given N independent event types (say, if you have on the order of N components), the yearly survival of the overall machine has probability Πᷡᵢ exp(-λᵢ).

Thus the lifetime of the overall machine is ln(½)÷ln(½^(Σᷡᵢ 1÷Lᵢ)) = 1 ÷ Σᷡᵢ (1÷Lᵢ) if each component has lifetime Lᵢ.

For instance, two components with an average lifetime of 8 years yield a single machine with an average lifetime of 4 years.

The more death-causing event types there are, the smaller the lifetime; and a general-purpose robot inherently has more.

I believe this result is counter-intuitive, and is the reason you might be led to think I am overly pessimistic.

Why does your argument not show that cars would have a similar lifetime?

It shows that cars can never reach the pricepoint of a bike for the same lifetime, because the increased number of failure points require an increased level of quality of each part to yield the same lifetime.

stuff goes wrong with cars all the time. most of it isn't critical to the core function of the machine. cars also undergo routine maintenance where parts are (hopefully) replaced before they fail entirely.

Engineers take this phenomenon into consideration and design systems with redundancy and/or easily replaceable parts. You need specific numbers for the design in order to treat this mathematically.

> ... machine ... has ... events that can kill it ...

> ... N independent event types ...

So if the robot blows a $0.03 (i.e., 3 cents) electrolytic cap [0], that's an independent event type that "killed" the machine? Just trying to get a sense of how you define "machine kill" (and as I said I mentioned a big caveat of right-to-repair laws).

[0] http://amzn.com/B01MSQOX0Q

Sorry, what is the supposedly obvious response to the first point?

a human cleaner isn't really a perfect substitute for a robot. people might feel uncomfortable with having a human worker in their house for a variety of reasons. most people I know actually clean their whole house before the cleaning service shows up. you don't have to feel guilt/embarrassment at the state of your house when the robot starts working. I could imagine a lot of people might be willing to pay a premium for this, even if the robot doesn't do as good of a job.

And humans can't come over during a pandemic.

For high risk people, this might be a good alternative for normally-simple tasks they can't do by themselves.

Now I just picture someone passing away quietly only to be found weeks or even months later in a still immaculately clean house.

or in a more Black Mirror-esque reality, maybe after the human dies the robot no longer detects a heart rate or pulse and considers the corpse as trash and just disposes of it automatically.

There's something darkly funny about people so embarrassed to have a cleaning person in their house, that they create a solution that would put most cleaning people out of a job.

The knowledge workers automate jobs away, leading pundits to say the future for low-skilled workers is to provide boutique services for the upper class. The end being that the upper class is too ashamed to actually consume those services if it means looking at a person...well, that's sort of a delicious irony, isn't it?

there's definitely some irony to it. I do think a significant motivation for automating stuff is to avoid firsthand confrontation with the reality of capitalism. some people don't necessarily feel uncomfortable with the power dynamic though; they're just embarrassed that another human sees how unclean their living space is. someone might also worry about theft, or they might not like having to be in their house at a certain time each week to let the workers in. it can also just feel like a general loss of privacy in your home.

It seems to me that the reality of capitalism is why wages are too high for the middle class to be able to afford servants.

I have never hired a cleaner, but I imagine there are also people who are uncomfortable having strangers in their house and handling their things.

I have also heard about people getting cleaners who initially do a good job, but whose work quality degrades over time. You wouldn't have that problem with a robot.

Until it gets a million software updates to add “features” that are really just ploys to slow the device down and encourage you to upgrade ;)

Assuming that the robot is properly maintained and no parts break.

The cleaning performance of my Roomba degraded over time.

Not to brag, but my house has a a machine (and a room!) dedicated to cleaning a very embarrassing thing. I'll go even further and brag that I use this room and machine daily! Western society has normalized using the toilet, thankfully, and for a long time now, but it wasn't always the norm.

At least a human cleaner wouldn't spy on you by default.

Given the proliferation of always-on microphones in people's homes (Google Nest, Amazon Alexa, etc), I'd say we're not avoiding the spying issues...

Well you can not have those if you don't like eavesdropping. A cleaning lady is atleast something you notice might hear you and she wont use the data to decide my credit rating.

A safe assumtion is that all IoT devices spy on you. I wonder how much longer there actually are robot vacuum cleaners that are safely offline for sale with full functionality.

At our house, we don't clean because of embarrassment. We clean because we want them to do the stuff that we don't want to do ourselves. I'd rather they spend time cleaning the oven than pick up toys.

I can tell you there is a huge market for something that works well in the 40-50k range. You are vastly, vastly underestimating this market.

Hotels have a variety of tasks they would love to replace a host of low cost labor with robots with.

Someone in a higher income bracket wouldn’t think twice about that cost if it did significant work. On the other hand, the bar is high (cleaning, folding, picking up -- all are still fairly challenging AI problems, to say nothing of the "business" logic that would go into it).

Then you've got that quality servos are expensive. Some of that can resolved with volume, but not all of it.

Your statement and previous do not contradict. Multiplying the hours required to do the job in a larger environment like a hotel (4/week becomes 80 person hours / week) would produce a break-even cost higher than what you suggest.

Indeed. To give further figures, in France the minimum wage is around €10, and employees cannot work more than 35h/week, which yields a price point of €72k below which a 4-year-lifetime machine with human performance becomes cost-effective for a hotel.

In fact, France would probably be a very attractive country for this technology because of this.

A hotel is a great application for robots since the rooms could be designed for their capabilities.

And they are consistent. Make it work in the few distinct layout configurations and specific hotel appliances, and then it can repeat on all the rooms.

yadayada, you're all robots, artificial humans, walking calculators. tell me what those low income workers will do when you take away their jobs?

What happened to gas lighters when street lights were replaced with electric lights?

Or midnight soil rakers

Well, what did happen to them? The implication of your statement was that they were obviously totally fine, but is that a given? It's possible they were miserable and then died. Switching careers is not always easy and smooth.

I believe cost cuts to maximize profit consistently cause an enormous number of people to lose their jobs, yet no one addresses that.

I mean this is absolutely true in the sense that 99.9% of the hours that humans used to spend doing things across history have already been automated away.

The amount of time we used to spend making a single yard of cloth, or creating 10 pounds of flour is almost unfathomable today.

The prevailing economic theory was that we would automate away so much work that leisure time would prevail. Instead our massive increases in output have just driven greater consumption.

But the difference made by housecleaning robots isn’t the straw the breaks the camels back.

It would take a massive breakthrough in AI to eliminate the majority of knowledge workers at the scale that agriculture and textiles have already been transformed.

I'm all for transition assistance and a safety net to mitigate the harms, but halting human ingenuity seems like it would put far greater numbers of people at risk of misery and untimely deaths.

Lamplighters are especially useful to consider here.

How many lives has electricity saved? How many ICUs can operate continual machines because of it? How many people at risk of heat stroke can run AC in summer because of it? How many transplants and temperature controlled medicines got delivered because of it? What about its role in food safety? What about timely communications of life saving information, like those lost at sea asking for help, or severe weather alerts advising others to shelter? That's just the beginning, it seems incalculable really.

That lamplighter should have had a society willing to catch them during the transition. But imagine if it solved this problem by holding that one person's job sacred at the cost of millions of other lives instead.

It's absolutely good and relevant to worry about individual cases, but it seems like society is better off if we allow jobs to adjust to the actual current needs of humanity, rather than holding them fixed. Then we just also try to do our best to take care of as many of those who fall through the cracks as we can.

Wait, so you're suggesting we should think more about what happens to them, rather than ridiculing the question?

Survivor's bias says even for the ones for whom it wasn't smooth and died a horribly gristly death that we wouldn't hear from them.

That’s obviously not just about cost. Human beings have schedules and lives of their own. They must eat, drink, shit, fuck, and watch Netflix. I cannot keep a human being in my closet to serve me anytime I want. I’d be willing to pay a premium for a mindless servant that’s available nearly 100% of time.

move to Singapore then. they have full-time, live-in maids from indonesia or phillipines that can cost as low as USD 300-400 a month. i grew up in Singapore, where I had 3 maids on staff at all times, and they took care of everything, 24/7.

I think a lot of people would prefer a non-conscious entity to do their cleaning, who has no ability to judge them in any way.

Most people also don’t live in Singapore.

not sure if this comes across as dehumanizing, but trust me, the employers don't give a shit if the maids judge them. i don't know of anyone who has ever worried about being judged by their maids.

Not everyone is ok with treating a fellow human like a robot.

I am not defending the situation except to point out .. people at the lowest rung of the social ladder need to eat and have work with dignity. This is a complex issue. I'm glad I don't live in a developing country anymore so don't have to come face to face with it. I would like to raise awareness that you , I and a bulk of people on HN live in absolute abundance compared to a wide swath of the population in places such as Philippines, Indonesia, India and Pakistan. It is better not to judge others like the original poster (who may be providing people with dignified labor opportunities).

If Alice hires a full-time live in maid and her just-as-wealthy neighbor Bob buys a robot instead, all else equal, which is having a better impact on the world?

> Personally, though, I would bet on dedicated, single-purpose robots, working together through wireless communication.

This reminds me of the little swarm of robots that come out of the walls to clean up spills in The Fifth Element.

I use a good weekly cleaner, and she does not organize my stuff. If anything, hiring her has forced me to organize more frequently so my stuff is not in her way when she comes to clean.

It's a totally different use case to have a labor-saving device available 24/7. For example, I did not stop using my dishwasher when I hired a cleaner, and my cleaner does not do my dishes or put them away.

My dream house includes a kitchen with enough dishwashers that they function as the cupboards for the dishes as well. then when the dishes are down they're already away.

I think I would be very interested in this

Just replace your shelves with a couple of desktop dishwashers. The water use isn't great but soap and food waste isn't a heavy chemical. The obstacles to home ownership are problematic, however.

https://www.reviewed.com/dishwashers/best-right-now/the-best...

I think you have to think beyond equivalencies. We pay for 4 hrs/week because we can't afford more. But what if you could have 15 times or 50 times a day kind of cleaning, just not as thorough?

That's what I think the value is for this robot. A quick clean, reorg of the room / house.

> The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares?

This is where raising the minimum wage can spur innovation. If we gradually increase the cost of human labour (with higher wages, and other conditions), then the market will be motivated to fund & find technological solutions.

Or you could teach your kids to clean up their toys themselves. Make it a fun game for example.

Set an example by putting away your own groceries as soon as you put them in the kitchen. Boom 5k saved.

Maybe they will grow up to not be the type of person who leaves all of their crap on the table of the university table after they are done studying.

To be clear: I am not shifting on you as a parent. I am making fun of owning robots to do the specific things you mentioned. Obviously if you are immobile in some sense it would be great to have a cleaning robot

Even if you're not immobile it would be great to have a cleaning robot. Hiring housekeepers is a thing. Do you actually enjoy cleaning?

Instead of building robots, perhaps we should allow low cost care workers to help immobile people. These care workers can be sourced locally or abroad (immigrants). Boom. You've just lifted someone out of poverty and helped an immobile human get a live human care taker.

All well and good until a pandemic comes along.

Live-in caregivers are not going to increase the chances of infection. Other types of caregivers may.

Why the focus on low cost and immigrants? There's millions of people in your country (and I don't even know where you live) that live below the poverty line or are unemployed.

Open up jobs, pay a decent wage, and stop this line of thought about exploiting people as much as possible for as little money as possible.

Why are you equating low cost with exploitation? Why focus on the immigrants when my post _clearly_ mentioned local or immigrants? It is also very disingenuous for you to remark about my location. Clearly, Hacker News is US/Silicon Valley centric. My comment was pointing out that Silicon Valley engineers need to get their heads out of their asses and look at the unemployment not only in the US but rest of the world.

Caregiving is a great job for those who don't have a job. More importantly, SV seems to be forgetting the human component of care giving. A robot _cannot_ possibly take the place of an actual human. It's just not the same.

> Why are you equating low cost with exploitation?

Probably because low cost always seems to mean low income, low status, long hours, and insecure employment.

People used to say the same things about dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, powered lawn mowers, etc. Heck, one could imagine Og the caveperson lamenting that their kids don’t know how to drag stones properly anymore given that new fangled wheel invention. Don’t worry, we will find other ways to discipline and train our kids as tech marches forward.

The important part is that people know how to do the things - and that the things have to be done - without the equipment. I grew up with a dishwasher, but when I moved out I was without for five years. I didn't end up panicking and just did the manual washing up for five years.

I own a house now with a dishwasher; I don't NEED it, but it sure is convenient.

Anyway, when it comes to kids picking up their shit, the important part there is that they learn the importance of not living in a fucking tip. If they or a robot or the well-paid help does it, it doesn't really matter in the end as long as it gets done.

Anybody can learn how to do housework when and if they need it. Doing it as a child can instill a work ethic which is very useful, but there's no need to train them on how to do it.

You'd be surprised how many young adults are not aware of basic things like if your sink does not have a garbage disposal you should not dump large chunks of food down the drain, or that you should replace your dish sponge periodically. Certainly these are things that could be easily learned, but I do think there is a lack of awareness (or caring) about basic procedures on which cleaning products to use when, etc.

I have seen recent college grads go over a year without washing/changing their bed sheets. In one case I found a couple dead bugs under the sheets. It may be pure laziness but in that case they are also feigning ignorance.

It's similar to how we don't teach kids basic accounting or personal finance in high school and they graduate and find themselves in mountains of high interest cc debit and making bad financial decisions after another, because they can learn it on their own when they're adults.

Your point is valid, but I never pass up an opportunity for a fun fact, so: wheels are not nearly as old as you think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel

Part of any organism's objective is to do more with less. Being efficient is a predictor of success in nature. Being efficient provides you and your family with health and security.

Obviously this evolutionary bias has gone a little off the rails with humans and we now have health and psychological problems as a result of efficiencies. I guess that's where self governance kicks in, unlike other organisms we can reason and adapt in spite of our fundamental evolutionary programming. Whether or not this evolutionary experiment works out is still yet to be determined.

> People used to say the same things about dishwashers

I still say the same about dishwashers. In the time it takes me to sort things into what can and cannot safely go in the washer, scrape off the food residue, load the machine, and unload the machine, I can simply wash the dishes and stack them on a rack to dry.

Vacuum cleaners are useful but actually not very important in the kind of dwelling that the robot could inhabit because it will have to have flat floor with no carpets so a broom will do just as well (or a Roomba type cleaner).

Dishwashers have a quality effect like many things.

If you have an ineffective dishwasher, you have to do lots of prep before putting dishes in, exclude lots of things from getting washed, etc. That takes longer, plus you don't cycle it as often, so you might find that you need a dirty dish and need to wash it by hand.

A very effective dishwasher is one for which you don't need to prep the dishes (just put them in) and can handle most of what you need to wash. It takes less work to use, and cycles more frequently. You can also cycle more frequently by getting a smaller machine.

The opportunity to invest in effective appliances is one reason it's nice to own a home, as opposed to renting.

You can get effective appliances by renting more expensive units too. That was one of the requirements when my SO and I were looking for a new place. Big sink, nice appliances, etc. We're paying about double what we were at our old apartment, but the convenience is well worth it while we're still focusing on paying off school debt but we also want somewhere nice to live.

Especially in the age of COVID-19 in the US, I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a super cheap crappy apartment like we were before.

Bonus, we also spend a lot less on electricity! We moved into a new-ish apartment building and I can keep the AC on 70 in Texas and my bill is less than $40/mo. In my old apartment, I would keep it at 76 during the day and only move it to 72 right before bed to save money. Bills were regularly $100+. Modern construction has so much energy savings built in to code now that you could potentially save money by moving to a more expensive apartment in a new building.

If you actually had a simple hack that reliably made children clean up after themselves, and could somehow sell it for money without it being instantly pirated, you would make rather more billions of dollars than Aaron Edsinger's robot ever would.

There is no magic trick there, just stop being afraid of hurting their feelings by being assertive and making your expectations of their contribution to the household known.

How many kids do you have and how old are they?

“Why don’t people just tell their children what to do?”

Education ? /s :)

I specifically had children because they are like little robots.

> Or you could teach your kids to clean up their toys themselves. [...] To be clear: I am not shifting on you as a parent. I am making fun of owning robots to do the specific things you mentioned.

Most of the specific things they mentioned have nothing to do with being a parent, and also apply to people who do not have children.

Things it can't do (extended):

- operate in your particular setting (it's likely over-trained for that specific environment)

- run for long periods of time as a fully autonomous robot

- be anywhere near small humans or animals

- do any of the tasks in the video with any kind of speed or precision

- learn new tasks

- handle multiple objectives, or even process the request of a single objective reliably

This is nowhere near being consumer grade. It'll either ship half-baked or you'll have to get on the "it's just around the corner" train, along with the autonomous vehicle guys.

You're right about this expanded list of things it can't do. However, the conclusion is a bit on the negative side. The Roomba or any of the autonomous grass mowing robots can't do any of the things you mention either, and yet they are commercially successful in the consumer world. The article mentions that this robot is still a research platform, so as you say, it is not currently ready for consumers. However, there is a lot of potential here despite of the limitations.

The more single purpose the device, the lower the price point would need to be. The Roomba also is a smaller device, so you’re not compromising living space either.

Right, just like scientific calculators and mobile phones :)

> the conclusion is a bit on the negative side.

It was to highlight that this really isn't the "do everything" robot that it's being advertised as that some are assuming it will be.

> The Roomba or any of the autonomous grass mowing robots

> can't do any of the things you mention either, and yet

> they are commercially successful in the consumer world.

No, but they are significantly cheaper single purpose robots that do their intended tasks well. This is aiming to be a more generic robot that does everything badly, at a much higher cost.

> there is a lot of potential here despite of the

> limitations

Well, the problem for researchers beforehand wasn't a lack of nice robot platforms to use. Some robotic arm controlled by a laptop on some wheels will already get you quite a lot of this functionality.

Really what a lot of researchers want is a nice framework that already offers a bunch of functionality they don't want to program themselves, so they can work on the more exciting cutting edge stuff. It needs to be robust enough to allow them to hack on random research hardware.

The Pepper robot falls slightly short on this for example, as many places have purchased one hoping it could be a robotic PoS/mobile FAQ - in reality it was just a mostly buggy experience for consumers.

I had a look at the code, it seems to run ROS, offer some possibilities, but I couldn't see at a quick glance some high level functionality they could hack on top of (although I could have missed it).

I'm very skeptical of fully autonomous vehicles in the short term but I'm more optimistic for this robot. The big issues for autonomous vehicles are mainly:

- You have to deal with and anticipate the behavior of dozens of other people/animals/machines.

- If you mess up you can injure or kill people.

This robot doesn't really have either of these issues. You'd have to be careful around babies and very small animals, that's true, but there's still a huge potential market even if you remove small pet owners and parents of toddlers.

Beyond that training the machine to identify common household items and tell it where to put them (the remote goes there, the backpack goes there, the shoes go there etc...) doesn't seem too far fetched. Being able to do the laundry (minus any ironing and assuming that you have a drying machine) also seems feasible to me. It won't be able to learn new tasks but if it's successful enough the company making them could continuously update it to implement new features, similar to how smartphone voice assistants keep improving and becoming smarter as engineers handle more corner cases.

Now are these features worth the current price tag, or even half of it? Absolutely not IMO, but that's obviously only for rich early adopters at the moment. If it gains enough traction I'm sure it can improve a lot and fast while cutting the price.

Since when do we define the value of something by the infinite list of things it can't do?

I could make a list a mile long of all the things my dishwasher cannot do... does that mean no HNs have dishwashers?

> Since when do we define the value of something by the

> infinite list of things it can't do?

When that infinite list is things people want. I speaking of course from the "consumer" perspective and outlining some reasons why this robot is many, many years away from being ready for that market. This particular robot will likely never be anything other than a research platform that has all support dropped for it after a few years.

> I could make a list a mile long of all the things my

> dishwasher cannot do... does that mean no HNs have

> dishwashers?

Your dishwasher is not an autonomous robot, arguably it's not even a robot. It does one very specific task mostly well. This robot is marketed as some generic home automation machine, which it isn't.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way.

It only needs to be able to do juuust enough work to justify its cost (obviously not true yet).

Roomba is, for example, an even more limited device, but since it does one thing well enough to justify a $500-$900 price.

Talking about all the myriad of things it can't do is just pointless.

The point I'm making is, this robot is being sold on the idea of some magical do-all machine around your house, when the reality is far different.

The problems I stated are really some of (but not all) the key problems that need to be solved in order for it to do as the advertising suggests. To put the problem into perspective, with billions of dollars man could send people to the moon, but is still unable to solve some of these fundamental robotics problems with similar funding.

I agree though, if this is ever to be a consumer product then it needs a massive reduction in scope and price drop (depending on what problem it solves). It's hard to think of a problem that is as commonly shared and simplistic in scope as hoovering without being a gimmick though.

You've got cooking which is basically automated through meal prep (e.g. microwave meals or even fast food services). You've got cleaning clothes - but the scope is enormous. Dusting and putting small items back in their correct location may be the only real possibility.

Let's build a list of things it can do:

Record all conversations in your house

Record all movement in your house

Record every time you enter or leave your house

Record how long you spend doing tasks (watching TV, shitting, cooking breakfast)

Recommend products for you to purchase based on actions within your house

Recommend products to replace the previously recommended product you purchased

Send all of your recorded speech and movements to law enforcement

Yes, this is the point. The market is replacing housework, but with its capabilities it can only replace a specific subset of housework currently. However, if there is just one really valuable thing it can do, then it may be worth it even if there are 50 things it can't do.

Things it can do:

- stick a knife in your throat while you sleep

(Assuming it is always-on and connected to the internet, and has zero-day vulnerabilities which it obviously will)

We need the three laws ASAP.

DARPA has done this long ago. I know you are making a dumb joke but the problem has been solved.

The three laws or an equivalent thereof? Cite sources, please. I think it's equivalent to strong AI.

Citation needed.

- Set the table

- Gather & sort laundry, maybe even put in the washing machine

- Gather dishes and maybe put them in the washer

All chores easy for an able bodies human. But imagine having some disability or getting older. Getting back that autonomy in your life is definitely worth the money. Heck, if I have to pick between playing with my newborn son or doing the above and the likes, I'd trade my car for a robot that can do this.

If you have the money, why not just hire a help? Hire your neighbour, not some billionaire. There's social ways and means for a situation like that.

But oh no, having people around and paying them a decent wage smells like socialism! Anti-individualism! Better to pay 20K for a half-assed robot that can only do a fraction of what needs to be done than to pay someone's wage, right?

Call your neighbor every time you need to put some dishes in the dishwasher or do some laundry?

You could have a maid but then you need to have them around all the time or you need a lot of space. Also many places in Europe it's essentially illegal to have a maid.

How is it illegal to have a maid in EU? Never heard of this one so genuinely curious. It's super expensive for sure but not illegal at least here in France.

Maybe this is mostly in Northern Europe. There's certainly companies providing cleaning services, but you may find thats it's essentially impossible to find locals who will clean and cook for you every night. The alternative is then an au pair, but they're allowed to do only limited housework and some people have even gone to jail for having multiple au pairs working as maids, tough technically for breaking immigration laws by having multiple au pairs, it's judged harshly because a lot of people believe the concept of maids is nothing but oppression of poor women.

> illegal to have a maid

Utter bollocks!

I said essentialy. There's certainly companies providing cleaning services, but you may find thats it's essentially impossible to find locals who will clean and cook for you every night. The alternative is then an au pair, but they're allowed to do only limited housework and some people have even gone to jail for having multiple au pairs working as maids, tough technically mostly for breaking immigration laws for having more than one au pair.

> it's essentially impossible to find locals

Presumably you aren't offering enough money. Anyway that is a far cry from illegal. Au pairs are not maids.

I'd imagine getting a robot to do laundry from start to finish in the way my housekeeper does effectively impossible. I'm not au fait with how the complexity of automated tasks is estimated ala algorithmic complexity, but I imagine is pretty much beyond impossible. Especially given living space constraints in most homes

I would hesitate to use this robot for dishes. Maybe sorting laundry but not folding them. And I don't know if it can actually set the table fast enough.

You'd be surprised at how much dexterity and precision all these things need. I doubt this robot can handle that.

I think at this point, if there was a robot capable of doing this, it would also drive my kid to school,walk the dog,and even do the dishes on its spare time. Instead we get a tall clothe hanger on a motorised base.

If you want/need a robot to walk your dog, then you shouldn't have a dog.

This seems a bit harsh. What about an elderly/ill/disabled person, who would love the companionship and would make for a kind and responsible owner, except that they aren't capable of consistently giving the dog sufficient exercise?

I think many dog breeds would outsmart the robot after a while.

I certainly can't imagine trusting a robot with a dog any time soon. Maybe there's a semi-autonomous, supervised use case, e.g. human takes dog & robot to a park; robot walks laps with the dog, staying close enough for the human to see what's going on and intervene if necessary. The set of people that would help (i.e. for whom it would be both needed and feasible) might be pretty small, though.

Wouldn't you pay for a robot what you would pay for a car if it can help you do your regular housekeeping? A $15k car arguably provides less value if you mostly use it to ferry you from home to work and back.

Are you sure? Without that car lots of people would not have access to affordable housing.

There's still probably several hundred million people in the developed world who has a car,but does not need it for affordable housing.

Depends where you live.

Over here, in Eastern Europe i have no need for a car(i sold it this year, after 10 years).

Public transport is really decent if you use it outside of rush hours, most stores are in walking distance(not only form my location but all over the city). And there is a great network of cycle lanes so you can easily cycle to work.

Plus our cities are usually wide, but not tall, which means more places for developers to build houses.

> Or letting your kids play in the play room and then the robot comes in and puts all the toys back.

That's the kids responsibility after they are done. Otherwise I do like the application to keep things tidy. It's a small thing but it improves quality of life and removes a common task of dealing with clutter. I think a lot of robots will start with huge limitations that nearly paint it into a corner. Eventually a more generalized platform will exist. Too many companies are attempting to make that today and skip the necessary steps in between.

it is the kid's responsibility... until it becomes the robot's.

This is what a 10 year old would want a robot for.

Defining where things belong is a thing I want control over, so that when I go to find something, it's right where I want it.

Actually putting things in their proper place is a chore, no matter how old you are.

That isn't necessarily a bad frame for "what a cool robot should do" ideas.

If I was 10 and had a robot and my friend also had one, we would be setting tbem to fighting each other, or doing stunts, or doing silly things.

For a lot less than $21K you could make a pretty nice outfit for a 10 year old and have them play the robot.

You would probably want some bleach-safe clothing though.

In my country, the robot is called M.A.I.D, Mobile Autonomous Interactive Dude(tte), and it's like $5/hour.

It's hard for robots to compete with below minimum wage illegal immigrant labor. I pay $100 for two people to spend 4 hours cleaning a 3000 square foot home - including laundry.

$12.50 an hour, how does someone make a living from that?

Lots of room/house mates, possibly to the point of illegality (that is, beyond the legal occupancy limit).

By not being the sole income earner. If their partner works a comparable job, suddenly youre looking at $25/hr which is perfectly comfortable in most areas.

That's just about surviving, and with both partners working. How do you have a family and any sense of security and health like that?

better to have the option of working for 12.5/hr than being forced to be unemployed.

A maid can do much more things than this robot can do. This robot is actually quite limited.

It's trying to work within the limitations of the robot and figure out what value it can bring that is the interesting part.

I'd buy this if it could setup my boardgames.

When I saw the video I was mainly thinking about all the things it might be able to help my elderly grandmother with.

I mean I get that luxury and convenience of this robot taking care of stuff that you find boring or tedious, but imagine this robot being able to do certain normal every-day stuff that you're actually no longer able to do yourself? (Or maybe you're capable but it hurts to do, you get the idea)

A few years ago I had my leg in a cast, and I'm just thinking if this robot could've helped me put on my sock?

I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house

Cheaper option might be to have less stuff in the house :P

I picture these being used around hospitals and nursing homes for general fetching and returning of things. i.e. linens, telephones, keeping patient's belongings in their own room (this was a nightmare for my grandma in the alzheimer's ward) and other things that would allow nurses and porters to be more effective

> - interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard)

What makes you say that? All it needs is a "knuckle" on the backside of the grasping arm, to push things with.

We already make gloves that work with touchscreens, so the knuckle can work with them also. Vision is the harder part.

> Or if you just tend to leave stuff out (throw your clothes on the floor or forget to return stuff), the robot can put it back.

You don't need the robot for the first part. I never found the second part that valuable.

The base can be redesigned and replaced to be more capable, or more customized to the environment it works in. Attaching some Segway bits would work.

It will still be a base. Awesome thing about legs is they can step way out of the equilibrium point thus creating a huge leverage for e.g. pulling or holding heavy things.

There's a few videos on youtube of various mechanisms for getting up stairs without walking on legs. I suppose the challenge is to get it to work properly on the huge variety of different stairs found out in the real world though.

Lots of washing machines and other household equipment now has APIs, so interacting with buttons or touch screens might not be necessary.

> The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs.

I think the 6x label on the dusting Spiderman scene is where I lost any interest. If it's that slow then it would take weeks to pickup the pile of Legos sitting on my floor right now, assuming it could.

That’s fine because I am not ok with a robot in the house that can strangle me in my sleep.

Not being able to walk upstairs is a feature.

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