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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

> Handles loaded hampers

What does it mean "handles"? It doesn't say it puts on a wash, but that's what I'd want. I can only assume they're vague because it doesn't do anything useful.

> Makes beds

A robot the height of a child makes a double bed with sheet, duvet, and pillows? I highly doubt it could reach.

> Isaac 1 is autonomous for Laundry Flow and Daily Reset by default, with teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee we complete tasks.

That's a lot of words to say "a person will drive it around your home". What sort of insurance do they have for that person breaking something in your home? What audit trail do they have for the operators?

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Down under "What does it do" it says:

> Depending on the home in question, Isaac 1 may be able to help with even more within each feature area (such as loading and unloading clothes from washer/dryer machines)

So evidently that isn't included in Laundry flow. Maybe "handles" just means picking up the hamper and moving it to the washing machine? I wonder if it requires a specific hamper for this to work.

Honestly this thing looks pretty useless.

>What sort of insurance do they have for that person breaking something in your home?

Probably just make the user accept a license agreement saying they accept the risk? I suspect most people would accept the risk something might get broken if it means they no longer need to clean their house.

Not if the broken thing is a pet or toddler. And the amount of actual cleaning this thing appears to do is tiny.

What if it breaks something and you still need to clean your house? This thing does not look like it's going to much of anything successfully.

The competition here is hiring a cleaner. Cleaners are insured. And it's even more than that, it only does a very few jobs, so we're talking a total of <5m of human time per day that it currently automates.

I'm not defending anything about this, but it does have a telescoping torso so it can get to 'human height' when needed.

But it can't lean and balance. Making a bed requires reaching potentially 1m across a surface that might also be 0.5m high. That requires balance, humans can bend and balance like that very naturally, but that's hard for a robot, and this doesn't look like it has the manoeuvrability to achieve it.

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