Comment by crnkofe
4 days ago
While I find robots cool they just don't literally "fit" in an average flat or house I lived in majority of my life. In order to squeeze one more member into your average household the lil thing needs to justify refurbishing the entire place so it can actually operate there without being a nuisance. Reminds of how my relative spent quite a bit of time making sure an old house being renovated was flat enough so automatic vacuum cleaner could traverse room to room without getting stuck. A humanoid robot is larger still. I can see them being adopted by businesses first though.
People who have the disposable income to buy $8,000 personal robotic assistants or $20,000 1X Neo are a lot more likely to live in larger spaces. I've got about 1,000 sqft per occupant in my home. Plenty of room for a C-3PO or Johnny 5.
Can Johnny 5 get between the sofa and coffee table without needing to move furniture?
It doesn't need to have a sleeping surface or stay sprawled out when it isn't in use. It could bunch up into a little ball and fit in the corner of your ceiling. And it doesn't need to be the size of an adult to do most household stuff, some of the unitree ones are really short in stature, a foldable step stool for reaching upper cabinets or changing lightbulbs is probably enough.
A bigger issue is whether it can really be as safe, not trip over wires, throw the baby in the trashcan, start a fire trying to make a cup of coffee and that kind of thing. Beyond accidents, lots of companies are talking about hooking these up to LLMs for planning that have horror movies in their training sets.
The ones with wheels are going to trip over everything. The moment a company has enough functional use cases for one of these that it's not limited to one floor of your house, that version will be bipedal and not trip.
By bunch up in a ball I just mean assume the fetal position when powered off, not wheels. They wouldn't have to take up more space in house than a large piece of travel luggage on a shelf.
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