I am not interested in a roomba because I don't see it getting in around and behind the toilet, the place I most hate to clean. Sweeping the wide open floors is easy enough to not even be worth $50.
But something like the above, that has:
Enough hand eye coordination to catch a rolling ball.
Enough facial recognition to sort of be able to tell people apart, like a human who's bad with faces.
Enough speech parsing to understand simple command even if you have to repeat them a few times.
Enough knowledge, I'm thinking something like Wolfram Alpha here, to able to be instructed to perform simple tasks.
Then it could do simple tasks like clean behind the toilet or work the fryolator at McDonald's. And if it's mass manufactured and cheap enough to build and cheap enough to buy, then we could see something interesting.
The slow uptake of humanoid robots into the everyday workforce. How long before we have robot janitors?
It single-handedly licked my kitty-litter tracking problem. it keeps my place completely swept on a weekly basis (I've a small studio loft, nothing huge) - preventing me from stepping on the odd tiny rock that was drug in by my workboots. It devours dust/hair bunnies which come with long hair and a cat. I never swept so the 120$ woot price on the roomba has changed my place from gritty to well kept.
Altho damn, now I wish it scrubbed the floor behind the toilet.
Back to the meat there - I think that the next advance in robotics is going to be alongside artificial limbs and human assistance devices. AI introduction into society seems to receive such strong philosophical opposition that I doubt we'll see much in the next 10 years.
But something like the above, that has:
Enough hand eye coordination to catch a rolling ball.
Enough facial recognition to sort of be able to tell people apart, like a human who's bad with faces.
Enough speech parsing to understand simple command even if you have to repeat them a few times.
Enough knowledge, I'm thinking something like Wolfram Alpha here, to able to be instructed to perform simple tasks.
Then it could do simple tasks like clean behind the toilet or work the fryolator at McDonald's. And if it's mass manufactured and cheap enough to build and cheap enough to buy, then we could see something interesting.
The slow uptake of humanoid robots into the everyday workforce. How long before we have robot janitors?