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Comment by WillAdams | Hacker News Reader

One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff.

Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for a central vacuum system, compleat w/ a switch at each connection for on/off) --- I really can't recall a device with widespread demand since DVD and then Blueray players (or maybe the Wii? the PS2 counts as a DVD player arguably). I don't know anyone who has done more than read about "Smart Mirrors" for example....

What will be the first device to bottle up AI and other modern technologies in a package and become widely in-demand/distributed?

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> What will be the first device to bottle up AI and other modern technologies in a package and become widely in-demand

One problem I see is that corporations insist on collecting and reselling our data. As a result, a lot of people are reticent to get much automation. They seem to accept it with TVs, but other devices - it's just too much of an intrusion.

I say "a lot of people" but I don't know how many people it is, exactly.

There was recently a bit of a controversy with a refrigerator that had a big monitor on the door. That could actually be a cool feature: it could show you what's inside before you open the door. You could access it remotely if you're at the store and trying to remember if you have milk at home. But of course, the company started putting ads on it, and undoubtedly they're selling your data.

HN crowd is not representative of the world at large. consumers don't care. cost and convenience are primary motivators.

Onve again it's been shown that consumers do care when they are properly shown the extent of data collection and/or are allowed to opt out.

E.g. when iOS introduced "ask apps to not track", 96% of users clicked "do not track": https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...

If consumers didn't care, companies wouldn't go to extreme lengths to hide the fact that they are tracking you, and to invent craxier and crazier dark patterns to trick you into giving up your data.

What about when it's "accept all" and "reject and subscribe for $1.99"?

Illusion of choice forced onto you by the tracking industry. Again, if consumers didn't care, the tracking industry wouldn't need to present users with this "choice".

As far as I can tell, many “regular” people do care and alter buying decisions based on privacy concerns. They use words like “creepy” instead of technical ones, but the underlying discomfort is the same.

> They use words like “creepy”

This is common for useless products, like smart glasses or pendant-style AI devices. When consumers have clear utility, however, most give away privacy quite willingly.

> When consumers have clear utility, however, most give away privacy quite willingly.

Exhibits 1, 2, and 3; "Smart" phones, "Smart" watches, and pretty much 90% or so of "apps" people install on either from their respective "app stores".

I doubt the vast majority of people objecting to ads are doing it because creepy privacy invading reasons compared to just simply who would actually want ads running on a screen on the fridge? Who would actually just stand in front of the fridge watching an ad? Unless they really do something stupid like keep the fridge locked until the ad finishes, but really, who do they think is going to pay attention to it?

A screen with an ad on it is objectionable enough, even if the ad is untargeted.

> A screen with an ad on it is objectionable enough, even if the ad is untargeted.

Especially these days when pretty nearly the entire advertising industry has a whole library of "dark patterns" and psychological trickery they've effectively outright "weaponized" against the "consumer class".

The problem with ads is that they steal your attention to serve someone else’s commercial interests, whereas the objects in a home should serve its occupants’ purposes, practical or aesthetic. The fridge in particular is a site for displaying family information like the calendar, children’s artwork, etc. so an ad there, even an honest and passive one, is a violation.

> it could show you what's inside before you open the door

I've always thought it would be cool to have transparent doors so you could see inside without needing to open the doors. Obviously, most people do not have "neat" fridge interiors and would be considered ugly and not a good look. But having those cool spy room windows that go frosted or mirrored or some other opaque look with the flip of a switch could solve that. Which tech is less expensive: dimming glass or cameras and monitors?

It would necessarily let heat leak in

I wonder if you could use two sheets of glass, and have a double-paned system. Maybe even with vacuum or some gas that's an even poorer conductor of heat than air in it.

This is one for windows --- unfortunately, even the best such windows have a markedly lower R-factor than the much less expensive typical door construction.

Such refrigerators are available for commercial applications --- where the on-going energy usage is offset by the need for customer access, but it would be a huge impact on one's electric bill.

Bars, restaurants and supermarkets have glass fronted refrigerators and freezers the world over, and yes, most are double glazed.

They're just less efficient and more likely to break. In a commercial environment that's worth it to show off the contents, but the trade off is different in a domestic setting.

I mean, supermarkets have huge freezer and cooler cases with no doors at all. The efficiency loss is just the cost of merchandising.

This actually isn't so bad with chest freezers, as the cold air in the freezer doesn't mix too much with the warm air above.

I hate that I'm being an advertisement for the corporate appliance dystopia. I'm sure it's somehow loaded with a whole bunch of surveillance, ads, and other anti-features. And I'm pretty sure it was from a brand where repair parts are essentially nonexistent. But I was shopping for appliances recently and I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a fridge like this. I think the shaded glass was based on an LCD mechanism.

the real problem with household robots is that they are either flimsy toys or dangerous machines, and there's not much in-between. If we were to build a humanoid robot that would just put laundry away (as described in a HN article a few weeks ago), it would need to be strong enough to lift a laundry basket, have advanced control systems to go up and down stairs, and also be safe/reliable/trusted enough not to hurt people or damage property. We can do these things (modulo the trust, probably) but the confluence of all of it gets very expensive very quickly.

People want Rosie from the Jetsons, but the compute power required would be astronomical, the mechanical systems would need maintenance, and there would be real safety concerns.

With LLMs, we've got the wisecracking figured out...

It's not expensive, it's an unsolved problem, the main issue for many years has been the modeling of cloth behavior. They already have a folding robot that means they have solved a significant chunk of it.

But the generalization of behaviors is also a large problem. Pick and place is mostly solved I believe, but translating your housework to pick and place in your apartment is still a bit off.

I'm not convinced safety is solved: given how often LLM's hallucinate and automated cars get confused, what happens when something unusual happens and the robot thinks a person's arm needs to be "folded" and breaks it? Or a person's clothing looks like the wall and a robot tries to move their arm through a person's chest?

Sure, for each individual situation one can imagine a safeguard but being in close proximity to unpredictable humans means there are unlimited edge cases... if a humanoid robot is strong enough to do something useful it is also strong enough to be dangerous.

Even simple dangers like pinch points on joints or not stepping on curious pets are an issue.

My son would adore a humanoid robot around the house, but could I leave him unsupervised around it?

Recent example in the news:

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-chess-playing-robot-grabs-and...

We don't build robots because the "hard/boring part" for the human is often NOT the hard part for the robot.

Take the dishwasher, for example, loading it is very hard for a robot, but easy and quick for a human. Washing the dishes is boring for the human, but a robot gets a sort of sick and twisted pleasure from cycling that dirty water around for hours on end.

In fact, we've removed some labor-saving features of houses (laundry chutes went away decades ago, and only recently has "laundry on the bedroom floor" become somewhat standard) for "safety".

MAKE DUMBWAITERS GREAT AGAIN

Fire safety is real. Ever seen a burned out house with an untouched bedroom because the door was closed?

> Washing the dishes is boring for the human

I feel like the only person in the world who doesn't mind doing dishes. When we lived in the city, I feel like most of my friends would rather have an in-unit dishwasher than in-unit laundry. For me, doing dishes feels almost meditative.

(But I do hate folding/putting away clothes.)

That may be the case but the dishwasher uses less power and water then you do washing dishes.

It's also not like I'm lacking for dishes that need hand washing anyway either: very large sauce pans, pots and chopping boards aren't fitting in the dishwasher anyway.

Doing dishes by hand takes only slightly longer than loading and unloading a dishwasher. Especially modern dishwashers which don't really dry the dishes so you have to hand dry at least some of them before putting them away.

You are not alone. I find a rare pleasure in doing the dishes. As you say, it's a moment of meditation. It also helps that our kitchen has a view to the wilderness.

I'd love a dumbwaiter simply for a place to queue items "this needs to get put away downstairs (next time I am downstairs)" etc. Instead I just use the shelf next to the stairs. Which doesn't work if I'm already carrying something to bring up/down stairs, and that pattern makes it so I'm likely to forget even when my hands are free.

I built a cart/track system that went from the basement to the outside via the bulkhead. It fulfilled that work pattern in some regards, but it also made it hard to use those stairs manually [0] so it also impeded getting things done. The design that kept the cart level used up way too much of the vertical space. The next version of this idea will be aimed chiefly at heavy things (with the commensurate work to tie down etc), and go through two transitions horizontal-sloped-horizontal,

[0] and yes blocking an exit is fire hazard I know I know

Only new models of robots are banned, FCC approval of previous devices still stands and therefore we can continue to purchase those models. They will just get additionally out of date.

> However, the US ban only covers new advanced robot models, not existing products that have already received FCC equipment authorization for sale in the US. The "action does not impact a consumer’s continued use of devices they previously acquired," the FCC says. "Nor does it prevent retailers from continuing to sell, import, or market relevant models approved previously.”

The thing I stumbled over was that the house owner was out mowing the lawn, something that we actually do have robots for nowadays. But then again, I do enjoy a good, meditative lawn mowing.

https://www.weaverobotics.com/

And Toyota robotics has been trying to solve loading dishwashers for at least 7 years.

And that's all the housework required really, vacuuming, mopping, dishwasher un/loading, picking random stuff off the floor, dusting is another minor thing to have done.

The vast majority of labor has already been solved with dishwashers and washing machines and dryers, electric ovens and stoves.

Loading dishwashers has been solved. Instead of moving the dishes from the storage place to the cleaning place, you just make them both the same place.

I do know at least one couple who have two dishwashers and just alternate which is being used for loading dirty dishes and which is being accessed for clean.

Yes. This is also called dish drawers. It's a dishwasher sized unit split into two independent parts.

My mother loves fridge magnets, and there was a functional magnet on the dishwasher. It consisted of two oblong wooden signs connected by a chain. The top had a magnet and the bottom dangler was reversible. The top read "DISHES ARE", and you could swap the bottom to read "CLEAN" or "DIRTY"

Now some may ask why anyone would need a sign for such an obvious status. But my parents are boomers, and they maintain a pipeline of dishes such that Dad licks his plate clean, then they are scraped into trash, then rinsed in the sink, then placed in the dishwasher. So perhaps the dishwasher may only be cutting grease and sanitizing, but to the uninitiated, we are thankful for that magnet-sign to tell us whether the dishes are clean, or just look that way.

They also rinse and clean many things before putting them in the trash or recycling. They don't even drink sugary sodas, but every Diet Coke can is meticulously restored to pristine metallic gleam before Dad stomps and crushes them.

I was pleased to augment Mom's magnet collection by traveling to Europe via London. Now there is an official TfL notice on her refrigerator to "MIND THE GAP".

Bradbury's 451 speaks of a world of wall sized TVs. More time for entertainment and pleasure seems to be the selling point of technology, yet once achieved, the target then moves again.

What people really want is to have purpose, not pleasure.

It'll be a US or Japanese or South Korean robot since it's not allowed to come from China.

I'd be in favor of Apple entering that market.

I think they'll be a huge first-mover advantage because of the Chinese blockade preventing cheap clones.

Roomba made some of the first robotic vacuum cleaners and they were based in the US.

Nowadays, they are just more expensive and inferior to the Roborock ones though. But thanks to the wonder of protectionism soon the customer won't be able to pick the better product.

What's "better" for the individual is not necessarily better for the society.

Also I think a better policy than blocking Chinese imports (which is probably not sustainable anyway) would be to require that the software be audited and comply with regulations. Same rules and regulations should apply to robots from all countries.

> What's "better" for the individual is not necessarily better for the society.

Are you a commie? Everybody knows the free-market self-corrects itself if you are not performant enough or good enough, and that personal greed and egoism are the best proxy for society well-being. Nurture them and you will get the best possible society!

(yeah, I'm being sarcastic)

IMO the solution is antitrust enforcement that considers hardware, software, and services all different products/markets, and prohibits anticompetitive tying between them. Having a piece of hardware should not force you to use specific software to operate it. And choosing specific software to control your robot vacuum should not force you to use specific network services (for mapping or whatever else the software developer leaves out). Rather there should be competitive markets for software onto existing hardware, and for network services to provide features to that software. If a company develops software for a piece of hardware they manufacture, then every bit of documentation used to write that software should be made publicly available so that competing software can also create an implementation.

Then, casual auditing of the hardware/software would suffice to make sure they weren't bundling other types of product. And the main concern would boil down to data collection by Chinese services - for which the US Software industry could step in with alternatives. And then rather than merely banning "Chinese services", a US GDPR would go a long way towards setting general rules to alleviate the specific concerns regarding data collection / abuse. It would then be up to Chinese companies whether to comply or not.

We've been missing these general approaches because our domestic surveillance industry wants to continue abusing the market, and has stymied any such regulation that would encourage competition with them. But these are the types of general approaches we actually need, rather than simplistic import bans and other ham-fisted protectionism.

Sorry, in the US it's, AFAIK, now not allowed to come from anywhere but the US: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/fcc-bans-future-roomba...

The admin seems to have a tendency to fearmonger over China and then ban or tariff globally. Allies don't exist apparently.

> Allies don't exist apparently.

Aren't our only "allies" Russia and North Korea now?

And Israel, so there shouldn't be any tech shortage.

Central vacuum systems are not uncommon in higher-end homes.

Amazon Alexa. You're a decade late.

Fair point.

I find the presence of a microphone sufficiently creepy that that was a non-starter for me, and I didn't pay attention after the initial launch.

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