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Comment by hugs | Hacker News Reader

"home is always going to be a nightmare environment for this kind of thing"

We have two choices: 1) Design robots for places optimized for humans, or 2) Design places optimized for robots -- a future where the living space (and all the machines and other things in them) are redesigned from scratch for the robot that will cook, clean, and move around there. Then a second priority is making it comfortable enough for the humans to also live there, too.

I suspect it's easier to adapt a human to an environment optimized for robots than it is to adapt a robot to an environment optimized for humans.

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> I suspect it's easier to adapt a human to an environment optimized for robots than it is to adapt a robot to an environment optimized for humans.

Replacing existing human spaces with robot-optimized spaces would make robots significantly more expensive than basically any other approach.

At that point, why even bother with all the interface hassles of having it work with a mobile manipulator? If you're already getting semi-custom equipment all over the place and designating robot exclusion zones within your house, then you probably have the cash and floorspace to go all in on special-purpose labour saving devices like a washer/dryer combo that loads directly from the chute and can run itself.

But once you begin describing that, it's clear how absurd it would be to install it all for use a few times a week.

Home mobile manipulation will never be a thing until it can use the existing HMIs.

>Replacing existing human spaces with robot-optimized spaces would make robots significantly more expensive than basically any other approach.

Houses built over the past 50 or so years are designed to disintegrate over 50 or so years and be rebuilt anyway. Although demand for new construction is reduced by the way that neighborhoods tend to go from high income to low income as the buildings physically disintegrate, there is a lower limit somewhere, and redevelopment will happen everywhere eventually.

> Houses built over the past 50 or so years are designed to disintegrate over 50 or so years and be rebuilt anyway.

This may happen in places, but in any case building larger (to accommodate robots) spaces is not a way to make the robots more cost-effective or drive adoption.

Locomotion on flat floors covered in furniture is one problem out of many, and if redesigning all the other parts of the human environment solved all the other problems, researchers would only have one problem left.

We replaced a $15 land line with a $1,100 iphone and got multitudinous other benefits. Replacing human centric habitation space with human+robot centric spaces seems like it would have similar outsized benefits. For example, maybe dishes never need to be cleaned by water if you have a robot willing to manually scrub them for 8 hours. Indeed, maybe your robo chef can also sterilize the "counter" so you just eat right off of it.

As someone who enjoys soup, I can find a couple flaws with that plan.

My biggest problem is that if that world comes out of the current one, it's going to be one heavily mediated by capitalism (just like everything on my iPhone). So, yes, the robot could scrub the dishes. But once I've accepted that relationship with my robot, version 2 comes out and it has a feature where it doesn't need to spend 8 hours doing dishes because it includes a free trail of the $20/month dish subscription and just throws them out and signs for the shipment of new ones that comes while I'm away at work.

Whatever the exact scenario, the environmental cost will be huge. The COST cost will be huge. And probably the robot will be reporting the details of what I ate and what stayed on my plate back to the company to sell on to the ad sales branch of the company

> And probably the robot will be reporting the details of what I ate and what stayed on my plate back to the company to sell on to

Life insurance companies and your employer.

Why not both? Design smart houses with special rooms for the robots.

Automated kitchen - place a bunch of ingredients regularly or right before ordering a meal, pick up freshly made food of your choice (or what's possible).

Automated laundry - dump dirty clothes, pick them up washed, dried and ironed (probably the hardest part heh).

Automated garage with charging/fill up, maintenance checks, washing?

Will need a lot more space, so it would be only for the rich, at least at first. A common automated kitchen for an apartment complex might be possible.

And better make them very reliable or maintenance can be a nightmare.

Hmm, the automated garage is actually a damn good idea. Shouldn't be too hard to program a robot to remove valve caps and top up tires, check tread depth, wipe bugs off the windshield and bird droppings off the paintwork. Maybe even pop the hood and check/replenish fluids.

The car's computer/sensors could share all the relevant data, too.

It could totally be both. Boston Dynamics' Spot is already doing a good job navigating a human's world, but I also could see home goods manufacturers making new versions of their products "Spot-optimized".

I like your thinking.

I am dubious about the last line regarding maintenance making it into reality though.

Given current track records on "planned obsolescence", "right to repair" and McDonalds issues with their frozen machines I suspect such maintenance will be the new "subscription".

No. We're building houses for humans. We're not building a robot retirement home. Design it for humans first, or you're going to wind up with a really crummy place for humans to live.

Thats it! Calculator heaven! Put the humans on wall-e style seats on conveyor belts and circulate them though the laundry station, restaurant, bath house etc, then periodically detour them though more exotic shops and museums to eventually drop them off at their cubical or bed room.

If we're talking about massive retrofits or greenfield projects, then that's sounding even more like it's a fit more for hotels and stuff than some kind of Henry Ford "one in every driveway" model.

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