> The near impossibility of building a robot to do something as simple as taking out the trash Part of this issue is that we think we need the robot to do it l

> The near impossibility of building a robot to do something as simple as taking out the trash Part of this issue is that we think we need the robot to do it like a human would; in this example of "taking out the trash", we imagine the robot grabbing the bag of garbage from wherever, going outside, and throwing the garbage away, then returning. Instead, what if the robot was the garbage bins themselves? You have an inside robot garbage bin, and an outside one. The inside one would - once full - wheel itself outside and interface with the larger one to dump, then return. The outside one would periodically wheel itself to the curb to be dumped by the (probably someday fully automated - it's already most of the way there) garbage truck. Essentially, make each robot a slightly smaller "garbage truck" that can be dumped by the larger units. Of course, that still means the robot needs to be able to navigate a home, open and close doors, etc. If the home had automatic doors, that would make things easier. Then it would become a navigation problem mostly. It's kind of like something I told a guy at my work who said he wanted to build a robot to bring him a beer. He was wondering about all the complexity, etc. I told him - why don't you make the robot be the refrigerator, then you'd just summon the fridge to wherever you were, and it would dispense a beer, then return back to the kitchen. Dish cleaning? What if the cabinets were dishwashers instead? Plumbing would be a nightmare - but in theory it would be possible. Basically - think of ways to make the problems more tractable for the machine, instead of trying to make the machine act like a human (note the automation in many factories that does jobs humans use to do - they didn't make the machines/robots look like humans to do them, right? In many cases, the tasks and such were even changed for the sake of the machine handling/assembly - such home tasks could be looked at in the same manner, to an extent).