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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

The cleaning robot might still be a good test bed. But I suspect if you are only in it for efficiency, you would use something like a street sweeper truck. Just like the dishwashing robot that everyone uses at home (the humble 'dishwasher') doesn't use robot arms to mimic how humans wash dishes.

Btw, Singapore shows that we already have proven, low cost techniques for keeping cities clean without robots.

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On some level, you must also be into humanoid robots for the cool factor.

There is no reason to ever have a humanoid, except to make humans feel warm and fuzzy.

I wouldn't be so categorical. There might be some applications, or combination of applications for which a humanoid form factor would be useful. It's just that for most applications, more specialised forms are better suited.

Exactly. Existing paths, entryways, factories, etc. are human-sized and -shaped (or car, or other vehicle).

Only once you build greenfield, e.g. new factories, making specially shaped and sized robots for automation jobs becomes worth considering, IMO.

Pretty much all existing factory automation has _not_ used humanoid robots.

Hm, true that. I’m guessing because the typical factory was already larger/taller than human height? (Thinking of e.g. car production)

I'm guessing it's because making specialised robots was so much cheaper and easier than usable humanoid robots.

See also the humble domestic dishwasher. It's a robot that washes dishes and works in an environment that's otherwise sized for humans and hasn't really been redesigned to accommodate robots. Similar also for washing machine and dryer etc.

So basically, humanoid robots are just good for prototyping before the big boy robots show up to do the real work.

Exactly what humans already do cheap and easy.

No reason for humanoid robots.

> So basically, humanoid robots are just good for prototyping before the big boy robots show up to do the real work.

That might be our future. However at the moment humanoid robots aren't good enough in general to be good at prototyping.

> Exactly what humans already do cheap and easy.

Human work hours are becoming every more expensive, thanks to lucrative outside opportunities.

> No reason for humanoid robots.

At the moment. This might change in future.

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