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It's quite astounding when you think about how much of our life has been automated or made virtual. But basic house hold tasks like cooking, dishes, tidying up,
by zubspace 7y ago
It's quite astounding when you think about how much of our life has been automated or made virtual. But basic house hold tasks like cooking, dishes, tidying up, folding clothes are still fully manual. Also shopping for food, vacuum or tending your garden (for the majority of us). Tasks which all together take many hours each week.
Think about all the time going to waste. Yes, there are tasks which some actually want to keep manual (maybe you love cooking) and there are (subpar) online service, which try to replace that labor, but there is no automatic option otherwise. And outsourcing labor is not what I mean. I want a washing machine at home, which is a lot simpler to handle than outsourcing it to a washing business.
I sometimes wonder, if the reason is really a technical one or if there are other factors, social or incentive problems, which hold progress back in those areas...
- lisper 7y agoWhen it comes to folding shirts it really is a technological limit. Folding shirts just turns out to be incredibly hard. Try folding a shirt with mittens on some time to get some idea of what a robot with a standard manipulator would have to deal with.
- Animats 7y agoHere's a Willow Garage PR2 doing it.[1] Very, very slowly. [1] https://youtu.be/YdStbvguvwU https://youtu.be/YdStbvguvwU
- lisper 7y agoI don't want to denigrate this effort in any way, because this robot is very cool and represents real progress. But that's not a shirt.
- perl4ever 7y agoI mean, I'm not very good at folding shirts anyway. Maybe the solution is lower standards? Reminds me of some story about a person doing something and another person saying "that looks painful, what's the trick", with the answer being "not minding that it hurts".