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22 years after the Roomba debuted, vacuums are still the closest we’ve come to Rosey the Robot
“ The Jetsons ” debuted September 23 , 1962 . The first episode , titled “ Rosey the Robot , ” was an origin story of sorts for the nominal reference , describing how an overwork Jane employ the housekeeper . Sixty - two years after her first appearance , Rosey remains an important pop cultural touchstone for the unrealized promise of dwelling house robots .
The home of 2024 is n’t necessarily wholly devoid of robots . According to its own figures , iRobot has sold more than50 million Roombas . That , meanwhile , is a fraction of the overall telephone number of golem vacuum cleaner that have been deal around the globe . automaton lawnmowers and pool cleansing agent have gained traction as well , though those figures blench in comparison to their vacuuming counterparts .
nursing home robots ’ unrealised potential is n’t because of a deficiency of consumer need or lack of effort from manufacturing business . It ’s more complicated and nuanced than that , though ultimately it ’s a topic of pricing , functionality and efficaciousness . Outside of the aforementioned economic consumption cases , today ’s house golem do n’t do enough or do what they do well enough , and make a golem that can tick off both of those boxes would essay prohibitively expensive for those of us who ca n’t give our own islands .
Vacuums make for good home robots
During his farsighted tenure as iRobot CEO , co - founder Colin Angle was lovesome of say that he did n’t become a successful roboticist until he became a vacuum salesman . It ’s a fun crack that gets to something much deeper about the industry . Before the Roomba came along , the company had try out with everything from baby dolls to military equipment .
iRobot found achiever when it centre on a simple task : scavenge floors . The earliest models were crude by today ’s standard , but they got the line done well enough to rationalize their cost stage . In addition to marking 62 yr since Rosey ’s telecasting debut , next calendar month is also the Roomba ’s 22nd anniversary . The robot vacuum is old enough to legallybuy a case of Sam Adams .
In the nigh quarter century since the Roomba found , much of iRobot ’s R&D has gone into making the system smarter , adding sensing , mapping , and AI and integrate with smart assistants . The ship’s company has invest into other robotics categories as well , including gutter clearing , pool cleaning and a lawnmower that may never see the Light Within of mean solar day , but all have failed to retake the Roomba ’s magic .
Work/home balance
year ago , I seem on a panel to talk over robots . The moment the conversation ended and the Q&A begin , a fair sex ’s paw shot up , front and inwardness . She was eager to narrate me about her billion - dollar idea : a drone that vacuums , dust surface and does the washing . I tell her it was a great idea and I would mirthfully buy one from her when she got it up and running .
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Everything in robotics is easier said than done . It is n’t that no one before her came up with the concept for a article of furniture - dusting drone ; it ’s that no one before her figured out how to establish a reliable and robust translation at scale with a price tag end that is n’t higher than my 30 - yr mortgage .
I thought back to that moment when Tesla announced itsrobot by fashion of a professional dancer in a spandex onesie . Elon Musk identify a mechanical man that would toil aside all day at the factory and then clean up your groceries on the way home , before get up your dinner . Musk has been in the public eye long enough to know on the button how much farm animal one should put in his timeline .
Before the to the full functioning Roseys of the world arrive , wide-eyed machine are going to have to pave the way . golem have had a place in manufacturing for X , but they ’ve been build to do one job well over and over again . The more complex the machine , the more expensive it gets and the more potential point of failure come forth . Think about how many mode your Roomba has failed and multiply that by the complexity of a humanoid .
Most expert agree that other domicile robots will be design for a handful of dim-witted job : societal automaton and those providing caregiving and doing housekeeping . For the foreseeable futurity , each will be plan with one or two function in mind .
Laying the groundwork for future robots
There ’s a sense of frustration that home systems are nowhere near where expected by this point in time . What regularly gets lost in that conversation , however , is the amount of groundwork that has already been laid . Whoever builds the next not bad home base golem wo n’t have done so in a vacuum .
Their success will be built not only on top of on-going enquiry , but also on the home robot that came before . Navigating in an environment as unstructured and dynamic as the abode in all likelihood felt impossible for many before the first Roomba arrived . Again , it was a simple political machine by today ’s measure , but it laid the foundation for what come next .
One can see reflexion of this in the current harvest of home robot . TakeHello Robot . As design give-up the ghost , it ’s an extremely simplistic political machine . It ’s an weapon attached to a rod bind to a Roomba - like base . Its simpleness is , in part , because it ’s more ontogenesis platform than production . But systems like this or , say , Matic ’s automaton vacuum , are continuing the surd piece of work of building foundations , be they mapping , handling or seafaring .
Antisocial social robots
Social home robots had a rough year in 2019 . Anki , Kuri and Jino all fell in quick succession , each for a combining of price , limited functionality and reliability . More recently , Amazon ’s Astrohas beendead in the water , effectively kneecapped after Amazon ’s belt tightening wiped out a significant portion of the ship’s company ’s consumer ironware headcount . Of course , had the $ 1,600 golem been a wild achiever , the retail giant almost certainly would n’t have let it die a quiet death .
Amazon ’s struggle are a well-disposed monitor that being one of the universe ’s large companies does n’t guarantee success in such a treacherous category .
And following the Vision Pro ’s lukewarm reception , one has to wonder whether Apple might be walk a similar road with itsreported home robot swordplay .
A more recentreport suggested that the first project out of the group could appear less like Amazon ’s Astro and more like its Echo Show 10 . The potential product has been described as something along the telephone circuit of an iPad - like tab mounted to an arm . These are report of nascent projects , which could go any number of ways , but as it stands , this sounds more in line with where the society ’s robotic ambitions ought to be .
Home robots are coming , but when they get in , they ’ll still have a long way to go . That said , Jane wo n’t bring home Rosey until 2062 , so we ’ve got time .
Update : Amazon tells TechCrunch that study of Astro ’s demise have been greatly exaggerated . The society notes that the robot is still available through its Day One program and “ Amazon is still fully committed to our vision of bring world - class consumer robotics solutions to the home and excited about the in - dwelling house experiences we ’re inventing for Astro . ”
