What Comes After the Roomba?

If the definition of a robot doesn't need to include mechanical operations, then I have robots that regularly pay my bills, automatically record tv programs, fetch the news, rebalance my investments, clean my floors wash my clothes and hopefully soon, drive me around. All that I do these days is be a lump on the couch.

Roomba is an incredible device and even the lowly 690 will vacuum your floors better than you ever could. Under the couch and bed and dressers like a disc shaped anteater it goes. Simple tasks in two dimensions seem perfect for a robot.

I see plenty of lawn-mowing robots whenever I visit my old home in Europe. The ones I have experience with are made by Husqvarna, and are similar in concept to the Roomba vacuuming robot. Except that these are obviously outdoor creatures and thus weatherproof. They drive around for a few hours daily, keeping the lawn trimmed within an area delineated by underground guide wires. I find them to be more useful than my Roomba, which gets stuck a bit too often. (And they are really safe too.)

Why does it need to be humanoid? Why a robot? These seem like totally unnecessary criteria. Look at all the things we have automated that make life easier/more efficient—none of them humanoid. It’s not clear to me why this aspect is necessary (?) If you want something less machine-like, well trained service dogs can do many small, but essential, every day tasks.

What about putting the elderly out on ice floes? I know we don’t have a lot of time before climate change melts them, but surely it’s more efficient than robots.

What will replace the Roomba? A robotic vacuum that actually cleans the floor...

So in about 50 years The Jetson will have come true

I decided paying a really nice human to clean my apartment every week was better than buying a robot.

i had purchased a roomba for my elderly dad whose apartment was 90% carpet. for 750$, it was awful. when he passed away, i brought it to my home. it couldn't get from the wooden floors up onto a rug. it ignored most of most rooms. didn't get near corners. i gave it away.

A decluttering robot would be fabulous. But where would all that clutter go?

Here is an idea: maybe make some kind of "exoskeleton" that senses what an older person wants to do and assists in doing it (like putting a TV dinner into the oven or using the bathroom), while preventing the old person to fall?

So exciting! I can't wait for a more robotic and technologically advanced future!

The problem is not with technology but rather our vocabulary and expectation of a "do-all" machine. We don't expect aiplanes to be submaries, such inventions are specific as are mechanically and computer assisted devices. Best we stop trashing such progress and teach others to learn more with greater understanding.

I am a retired robotics researcher. Back in the 1970s we realized that success or failure of a robot depends crucially on the task you give it and the environment you put it into. A dishwashing robot with two arms that grabs dishes and scrubs them with a brush might work but it would not do a good job and would cost too much. Automatic dishwashers (robots?) cost about $600 at Best Buy or Home Depot and use a technique unavailable to the two arm gizmo or a person, namely a watertight box with a spray arm that gushes scalding hot water at the dishes for 45 minutes. The Roomba does not demand much in the way of a prepared environment but all the others mentioned in the article do, or else they operate without much physical contact with their surroundings. Making and serving a cup of coffee the way people do it is probably not the right approach. You need to redefine and redesign making and serving to make them possible for any machine. A window washing robot seems perfectly feasible as long as windows are equipped with places for the machine to grab as well as some way to find the edges. This does not seem hard to do. But another approach is to use glass with the right surface properties so that it sheds drops of water and cleans itself. This exists now.

We tried a window cleaning robot but it had too many glitches, getting stuck in inaccessible places. I think there is a huge market for a successful version: there are a lot of glass towers and not all have systems for professional cleaning or windows that open enough to clean from inside.