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I'm definitely an outsider but I get the distinct impression that starting a successful consumer robotics company is like 1000X harder than the baseline for oth
by nategri 7y ago
I'm definitely an outsider but I get the distinct impression that starting a successful consumer robotics company is like 1000X harder than the baseline for other kinds of tech ventures.
- jpm_sd 7y agoUnfortunately the reason it's hard is because nobody wants these products. They don't do very much, they cost hundreds of dollars - where is the value?
- ackbar03 7y agoAgree, I feel like aside from the roomba maybe there hasn't really been a consumer bot useful for anything
- quaquaqua1 7y agoThere are some interesting developments in the food robotics space but they are almost entirely contained to the manufacturing and sometimes restaurant industries-- the issue is that few users can justify large capital expenditures for marginal "nifty" benefits like "it looks cool and saved me a few minutes"
- MegaButts 7y agoWhat are some of the cool developments in the food robotics space?
- de_watcher 7y agoCrab disassembler.
- candiodari 7y agoThis one ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdmIe6qVG6I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdmIe6qVG6I
- mc32 7y agoI wonder if the tech is mature enough to make an indoor flying-pest control robot. There is the salt pellet shooter to annihilate some indoor pests. There were attempts to make laser armed pest killers. Obviously even the salt pellet solution would be problematic if automated (say pest lands or is near your face or eyes). However, a robot which could attack a pest niche where pests are endemic could have a chance at success. Summer mosquitoes, Florida roaches, ants, stink bugs, etc.
- robotresearcher 7y agoHow many dollars did you spend this year on these problems?
- mc32 7y agoThe annual cost of a pest control contract is about $200. Now that’s for vermin as well, so it’s apples and oranges. But, something which will rid your house of flies and mosquitoes as they appear, I’d buy something in the few hundred dollars range because it’s more than a toy. It takes care of an annoyance just as a roomba does.
- xnyan 7y agoIt probably varies from where you live, a single visit alone would be around $200 where I live, you get a big price break for multiple visits, $50 a pop if you buy a years worth.
- robotresearcher 7y agoOK. Now how much robot does, or should, $200 a year buy you?
- xnyan 7y agoMonthly pest control services, in the US south at least, start around 50 bucks a month. It’s over used in my opinion but I also understand that fear of insects is deeply rooted in the minds of many people.
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- bluedino 7y agoYou’d think automated robots to clean carpets and hard floors, and mow lawns would be easy sales and easy technologically. But they can’t clean toilets.
- jonathankoren 7y agoI think you can buy an autonomous lawnmower, but I don’t know how effective it is. My roombas sadly haven’t replaced our normal vacuum. Of the three companies listed in this article two of them were (expensive) toy companies, and the third was a crappy Alexa clone. A Roomba solves a problem. Maybe not as well as we’d hope, but most of the time, it does a good enough job. Dishes and clothes can be cleaned mostly automatically. The other household tasks are hard to solve. I’m thinking dusting, taking the trash out, ferrying the clothes to and from the washer. Loading and unloading the dishwasher. I’d love to have something do these for me, but they’re very hard problems, and I don’t expect them to be solved in my lifetime. Until C-3PO becomes a consumer product, I don’t see this space making any money.
- mikepurvis 7y agoThey're also occasional problems. A typical household does 1-3 loads of dishes per day, and a few loads of laundry per week. The easy-to-automate parts of these tasks have already been automated, and now only the hardest/suckiest parts remain. Restaurants and hotels do dozens of loads of dishes and laundry every day, so that additional expense and complexity required to automated the final 10% of these tasks is much easier to justify. So if you want to build a machine the folds laundry, don't build something ridiculous like the Foldimate, build a machine that folds bedding for a hotel.
- stevekemp 7y agoIf you've got a child or two you might find you do laundry every day. We certainly do, although I appreciate using cloth diapers makes that more necessary than it might otherwise be. But yes, hotels, prisons, hospitals, and similar places would be the initial target-markets for anything laundry-related.
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- CamperBob2 7y ago- Mow my lawn. (Done, kind of expensive) - Weed the garden. (Done, or at least in progress) - Keep mice out of my garage (Not done, seems like an obvious application) - Clean my gutters (Likewise -- this alone is worth hundreds of dollars a year) - Keep my driveway free of leaves and debris (does anybody make a "Broomba"?) These are all applications that I'd pay for, and/or am already paying humans to do. I don't think generalized pest control via robotics is going to be workable, but certain specific pest problems like rodents seem like they would be easy to tackle.