9 ms·
I always thought this is how we should clean our houses (when we pay other people to clean our houses). Robovacs are great for smoothish floors, but most other
by matt_morgan 8y ago
I always thought this is how we should clean our houses (when we pay other people to clean our houses). Robovacs are great for smoothish floors, but most other cleaning tasks are too complicated for autonomous robots. With a good humanoid robot controlled by someone living anywhere, it would be easier.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoWhy not employ a human being directly?
- mikepurvis 8y agoThen that human being has to actually travel to your house and do the entire job start to finish. The idea of a robot vac (or similar) that can do 80% of the job itself but ask for help from a trusted operator over the internet is really interesting.
- hopler 8y agoSo this solves the problem of rich people who don't want to live near poor people but do want their labor.
- gammateam 8y agoFinally? And most “rich people” want to live in desirable neighborhoods and poor people cant afford to do so, the residents also want their houses clean It is currently incredibly unproductive to get your house cleaned It is simply going to be much more efficient to let Pakistanis on Fiverr control your automaton
- mikepurvis 8y agoYuck, that is a good point. At the same time, is the need to house residential cleaning staff really what drives the creation/maintenance of integrated neighbourhoods? For my part, I live in a pretty blended downtown neighbourhood (Kitchener, Ontario), and balancing the need for affordable housing with the constant pressure to "clean up" certain areas and turn brownfields into glitzy new condo towers seems to be something that's largely managed at the city council level.
- taneq 8y agoWhy yuck? I bet if you flipped it around and said "that opens the door for poor people to score lucrative contracts in richer markets which would be otherwise unavailable to them" then you'd think it was alright.
- vidarh 8y agoMaybe less now. It used to. Look at cities like London (UK, not Ontario), and you'll see lots of "mews" (1) that are rows of stables with associated housing for servants tacked onto the back of large housing and backing onto "service streets", so the rich could have their horses and servants housed where they were needed. Today, of course, most mews have been converted into expensive standalone housing units, and most new integrated neighbourhoods are the result of council planning offices. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mews
- BurningFrog 8y agoIt solves the problem of not letting random strangers into your house.
- y4mi 8y agoAnd you think that a random stranger controlling that bot is less likely to cause damage on your property? Even if the portal authenticates everyone... They'll still be one hack away from doing whatever they can to cause something to break for giggles
- slx26 8y agothough you could probably blur/censor many details automatically before sending the images, which might be a decent enough solution to the problem
- telchar 8y agoThat's an interesting thought - optical character recognition and obfuscation to blur things like text on paper from a live feed.
- BurningFrog 8y agoYes, I'm quite certain not having a person in my place will be less risky than having one. You sometimes see the idea that if a security feature can potentially be defeated, that is equivalent to that feature not existing. That's true for a small class of problems, but in general it just shows an inability to see nuance.
- Barrin92 8y agoAs the cafe job for disabled people, this also opens up the possibility of remote work for people with social anxiety, people in very rural areas with a lack of opportunity and so forth. According to the article the waiters are paid about 9$ an hour. For a person in a destitute, remote small town jobs like this could be a really sweet side gig. It's not like they somehow would meet insular rich people anyway. There's no reason to be cynical about this. Closing physical distance, which is one of the big contributors to lost opportunity is a good thing.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoExpensive in most of the developed world, possibly higher risk and less reliable depending on the specifics of the employer and employee(s) in question.
- donkeyd 8y agoI don't really understand why, but the idea of somebody sitting behind a computer somewhere, controlling my vacuum is just really weird and unsettling. I also understand that this could help handicapped people or people in less fortunate countries earn a decent wage, but then again, it feels odd. Also, paying for a vacuum and then paying a fee to the person using it feels weird... Even though hiring a cleaning lady is pretty much the same thing. Thanks for this, now I'll be thinking about this all day. And I'll probably have intense discussions with people about the ethics and their feelings toward this idea at parties... Because I know I'll bring it up.
- dpau 8y agoI feel the same unease. In China, blind people are often given jobs as piano tuners and masseuses. In a country with few resources and opportunities for disabled people, I first viewed these types of jobs positively. However, people can be pressured or even forced into taking on these careers in order to be less of a burden on their families.
- iseeyoubydesign 8y agotaking responsibility for your own life is reasonable. Even if you are disabled you still show have to care for yourself as much as you can. We are all being forced to do jobs , choices vary depending on skill but its part of being an adult. Im not sure where you line of reason ends. How much to the able bodied owe to the disabled? If there is a job they can do, they should do it. Being disabled is one thing, being lazy is a sin.
- whatshisface 8y ago>However, people can be pressured or even forced into taking on these careers in order to be less of a burden on their families. You could argue that able-bodied people are also pressured or even forced to take on careers. What fraction of piano tuners, sighted or not, could quit their jobs and live without being a burden to their families?
- 8y ago
- corpMaverick 8y agoInterestingly. You could remotely train a robot. Which things go where. After that the robot could do a lot on its own. And you could remotely manage a fleet of robots.
- airstrike 8y agoCue NieR Automata
- vkou 8y agoWith the current state of robotics, a robot would either be incapable of cleaning my apartment, or would be capable of doing serious damage to it, or, realistically, both. Maybe in a few decades, but right now, the last thing I want is an ai-controlled, or remote-controlled robot that is capable of scrubbing tile and cleaning caulking, moving my crap around, and wiping down hard-to-reach surfaces inside my apartment. Unlike humans, if it is using too much force for the task at hand, it will have no awareness that it's likely to cause damage. The hard part of cleaning isn't pushing a vacuum cleaner around.
- scarejunba 8y agoWait, how would a roomba seriously damage your home? Just curious because I’ve never thought mine could but maybe it could.
- vkou 8y agoA roomba[1] can't, but something that can put in the elbow grease to scrub tiles in my bathroom can trivially destroy the caulking, or damage the drywall. Something that can reach up to dust the moulding on my ceiling can trivially knock over a standing lamp/potted plant/etc. Even something as simple as the pin that switches my bathroom from shower to bathtub mode needs to be handled carefully (Otherwise, you'll snap the bathtub faucet off.) Futzing with my dishes? Thanks, I'll figure out how to do it myself. [1] And as I said, vaccuming is not the time-intensive part of cleaning. I have disposable income to blow on toys, I hate cleaning, but I'm not remotely interested in a roomba.
- ghaff 8y agoI've mulled getting one from time to time. But they'd do a fraction of my house. I'm sure they'd have issues with cords and stuff lying around waiting to be packed or to be put away. Etc. And that's just vacuuming. Properly doing my kitchen floor requires a mop (or a wet Roomba version) as well as a vacuum or broom. And we've still just talking about floors.
- clashmoore 8y agoInstead of at the consumer level, I can see this being viable at a commercial level. Robot vacuums and floor cleaners that clean office and retail building surfaces controlled by those who are not physically able to do so.
- SonnyWortzik 8y agoMy vision of the future for the cleaning service industry: Robot at home on stand by a la I,Robot movie :"Good morning Mr. Anderson, our remote cleaning specialist is ready to clean your home, do you comply?" pass code confirmation needed :"Thank you, our services will take approximately 45 minutes. Please stand clear while we complete our task. Thank you Mr. Anderson. Have a Wonderful day!" :"Please note that your next remote cleaning will require a renewal of your service agreement. Please take time to fill in the survey, confirm your subscription, and adjust your cleaning times, and thank you again for being a valued customer here at CleanTech" LOL day dreaming is fun.