Ask HN: What 5+ things would a home robot need to do to sell?

3 points·drzaiusapelord··7 comments

Let's say I sold a home robot for about $1,500-$2,000. What 5-10 things would it need to do before you would consider buying it. I'm curious as to what niche a home robot would fit into. Between smart devices, mobile, the internet of things, etc is this even something that's desirable to have?

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HN people might have higher, less-easily-attainable demands for home robots. If you haven't already, read (at least the first half of) Alone Together: http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Together-Expect-Technology-Other...

Robots have to do surprisingly little for many people to significantly bond with them.

1) clean up and order my rooms + toilette + bath 2) wash+dry closes and put them into by cupboard 3) do the windows 4) 5)

I don't know about the other for, but if one of them is sex, then consider yourself a billionaire.

Answer the door

Walk the dog

Fold laundry

Pick up dirty laundry

Wash the floor

Actually, any one of those things, plus act endearing, would be enough

Load/Unload the dishwasher... or be a truly hands-off dishwasher that just robot-hand washes...

It could swallow dirty dishes, and poop out clean ones!

^^ This.

I don't care how, but please just make it clean (we're talking 99.999% clean). Clean dishes come out the front; biodegradable bags full of "compostable goodness" come out the back.

Just let me hook it up to my hot water and pop in a capsule of dish soap (even better if I can use a whole box/bottle/etc and let it ration the stuff out).

Once you finish with the DishBot3000 maybe make one for clothes. Dirty undies go in, clean ones come out. Compostable bags of filth. Same deal.

TIA!

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