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points by bryanlarsen 4 days ago | 0 comments

Much smaller robots will co-exist in a world with humans a lot more smoothly than anything human shaped & sized.

I'm not so sure. If you could rebuild every human space and tool from scratch, you are probably right. However, we live in buildings filled with stairs. We've got tall cabinets with things tucked in them. We've got lawn mowers and snow blowers and leaf blowers and cars. Making a humanoid robot is a much harder problem if you want a cool demo. If you actually want to deploy robots in billions of homes, it might just be the only answer.

[–] makeitdouble 4 days ago

Rebuilding and replacing tools doesn't sound that big of an issue to be honest.

I'm starting from the assumption the vast majority of people won't want a robot in their home, even just on principle. Then most people will not need it to do every possible action an human does.

For the remaining people in the target, having adapted/compatible cabinets or furniture is probably less of an issue. If someone requires assistance for instance, they'll probably also don't want hard to access shelves or crazy weird stairs.

The same way people have started choosing furniture that can accommodate a roomba(RIP irobot), we'll adjust our newer homes to whatever makes sense when we get the next wave of home robots.

[–] Gasp0de 4 days ago

Why wouldn't everyone want a robot that does all your chores, given that it is affordable? Everyone I know uses a washing machine. Do you wash your clothes by hand?

[–] makeitdouble 3 days ago

For better or worse, there is a fundamental difference between a tool that does a specific task under command (e.g. a washing machine), nothing else, never by itself, and a general purpose machine with some autonomy (a "robot") .

Many people will want full control over what happens in their house, and potentially feel unsafe having things that move on their own. Where's the line is for "full control" will be personal.

[–] MisterMunchkin 4 days ago

That’s a flawed assumption. Everyone wants a live-in bangmaid. They’re just normally too expensive. If you could buy one for 30k, they would fly off the shelves.

[–] makeitdouble 4 days ago

Everyone wants a perfect robot at a low cost.

Except it won't happen, so the amount of people wanting a pretty flawed and compromised yet expensive robot will be pretty low.

[–] olelele 4 days ago

Sexist much?

[–] swiftcoder 4 days ago

While Hollywood may portray the whole fuckable-robot thing as a male-dominate field, reality suggests the reverse. It's mostly not males that the current generation of powertool-like sextoys are marketed to...

[–] derektank 4 days ago

Against which sex?

[–] tjoff 4 days ago

Just have to be compatible?

The xiaomi-robotics-1 concept is but one that seems very doable and very near term.

https://robotics.xiaomi.com/xiaomi-robotics-1.html

[–] kovarr 4 days ago

If the end-goal is robot maid, aka cooks and cleans for a household, it at minimum needs to handle stairs and uneven ground like gardens.

Something to get the laundry from each room, wash, dry, fold, put away.

Cut and cook ingredients then do the dishes.

Mow the lawn, water the plants and do basic weeding etc.

Maybe even climb a ladder to empty the gutters / clean windows.

A non-humanoid will never be able to accomplish that without dedicated implements.

[–] tjoff 4 days ago

No it does not. And the type depicted will do all of that except ladders (ridiculous) with small modifications.

I really look forward to that, even if the first versions can't clean the gutters...

[–] kovarr 3 days ago

The type depicted has one inch castor wheels lol?

It won't be going up stairs or over lawns.

It won't be dusting into the corners of rooms.

If the end goal is something that can do everything a human can do, it'll have to bare the form of a human.

[–] gf000 4 days ago

Why not just robo-dog? They can go pretty much everywhere a human can. You just add a strange neck/arm thingy as head and it can do pretty much everything. It's not accident that that became one of the best known robots.

[–] pulvinar 4 days ago

Yes, once they can be made to quietly jump on to a counter, like a cat.

[–] bryanlarsen 4 days ago

They need a way to get onto counters, climb stairs, manipulate objects, et cetera. But all of the necessary capabilities do not need to be self-contained. Humans achieve their amazing flexibility through tool use, and so will robots. And in many cases those tools will be other robots. One robot could boost another onto the counter and then they both could get out of the way, unlike a robot large enough to reach up to the counter.

[–] mrandish 4 days ago

> once they can be made to quietly jump on to a counter, like a cat.

That would be cool. But also a little scary if it has an onboard AI which, based on it's embodiment, decides to develop a cat-like personality. Pretty sure if my cat had a better world model and long-horizon planning, it would kill me in my sleep.

[–] solyin 4 days ago

Why? If you're dead, then it stops getting food and pets. If you're dead, it'll eat your face off if your neighbors don't break in first because of the smell.