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CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

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Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#131

Post by SubiculumCode »

sixdimensional wrote: post #118
bane wrote: post #5

Here's what I want robots to do: 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. 2) Wash and dry my clothes, fold them and put them away completely automatically. These two things would save me hours of work per week. FoldiMate simply isn't even close to being good enough, but I'd be willing to spend about that much for a robot that could do #2. I can vacuum my floor by myself and greet people…

Actually, I'm not a product designer or engineer, but I feel like I have an idea for #1, and I'm interested in doing it, even for myself. Maybe it's something like "dishwasher v2.0", I 'm not sure. I basically want a standard set of plates, bowls, cups and silverware, which is designed to work with an automated washing box that has slots (or maybe holders) for each to be deposited inside. The idea is, you use the ite…

Standardized plates. Add DRM so no one can feed it knockoffs. That is how the coffee pots do it.

But seriously, standardized is the only way such a system could work unless you have a robot at the sink.

That said, a left and right washer is the easier approach. One is dirty,the other is clean. This obviates the need for putting dishes away. This also obviates the need for dishes to sit in the sink (ie because you hadn't put the clean dishes up yet.). Once the dirty is filled and the clean is empty, the washer runs, and the clean and dirty designations switch.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#132

Post by itronitron »

chrischen wrote: post #125
bane wrote: post #5

Here's what I want robots to do: 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. 2) Wash and dry my clothes, fold them and put them away completely automatically. These two things would save me hours of work per week. FoldiMate simply isn't even close to being good enough, but I'd be willing to spend about that much for a robot that could do #2. I can vacuum my floor by myself and greet people…

For #1 why not just use a dishwasher and keep the dishes in there? If that's not acceptable, what about a dishwasher designed for keeping dishes in there?

based on my use, at least one third of the dishes vary between each use of the dishwasher, and getting stuff out is a hassle, it is very low and the dishes are relatively packed in.

Based on your suggestion I suppose an ideal design would be to put all the dishes back at the end of the day into their respective cabinets and then the cabinets (high-tech dishwasher) wash and dry them during the night.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#134

Post by BarkMore »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #105
CapitalistCartr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Get two dishwashers. Alternate them clean/dirty. Think of them as self-washing cabinets from sci-fi. 2) Get a laundry service or maid service. Save thousands of dollars.

https://www.remodelista.com/posts/appliances-dishwasher-draw... I've heard that's how these are used, never tried it myself.

I had the Fisher Paykel double dishdrawer and found that it works great. We loaded dirty in one drawer and took clean from the other. We always had to put a few clean items away when swapping drawers, but that's a quicker than unloading everything.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#135

Post by visarga »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #42
Blazespinnaker wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well,just list the things you do on a weekly basis for a family - making meals - driving kids - laundry - grocery and other shopping - picking up - finances and planning I think all of these are ripe for (more) disruption.

Most of these things have long since been disrupted: Making meals :- go to a cafe, been around for centuries, uber eats etc. Worst case, get frozen meals (some are really good) and bung them in the microwave. Driving Kids :- Taxi, bus, chauffeur, again have been around for ages, auto drive cars are not that far away, but will you be willing to abandon your kids to the machine? Grocery and other shopping:- Amazon, onl…

There is one exception - the robo-vacuum. It's good enough today to run 99% unattended (you still have to empty the dust bin by hand and clean hairs from its wheels). It does a more thorough job than a human already.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#136

Post by flukus »

Pxtl wrote: post #69
flukus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My floor isn't flat enough for my roomba clone, it get's stuck on a lip. More importanly though, my floor has all sorts of stuff on it, the clothes I wore yesterday, that box I haven't thrown out and various other random things, along with myself. My ceiling is remarkably free of obstacles and has a lot of unused space.

If only you had a robot to move those things you leave on the floor.

That requires either some decision making from the robot or a lot of prompting me for answer's, neither of which I enjoy. A pair of shorts on the floor? I might want to wear them later, I don't want them back in the drawer or in the washing machine, I want them there to slip on when the pizza guy comes. The box I might want thrown out instantly but I could have other plans for it.

Robots need to be able to work around humans, not make more work for them.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#137

Post by cdoxsey »

The next 20 years will be a constant stream of half broken robots and ai systems. At least until we either get them to actually work or we figure out how bad they are and go back to using people again.

It will be like setting up video conferencing, except for everything.

Your car will go to the wrong place because it failed to account for a leap second, thus breaking gps.

Your fridge will put itself in eco mode because it thinks you're on vacation from misreading your calendar and spoils all your food.

Your front door will forget who you are after you get a haircut and lock you out.

After an automatic system upgrade your shower will no longer produce hot water, because a bug results in the system using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. Your bug report is ignored for a week and after a dozen people complain you get in an argument with the engineer about whether the place you live in actually exists.

Wait. Who am I kidding... You won't be able to talk to an engineer. All support will be automated and it will be impossible to get the robot to understand your complaint. You'll just have to replace it. I suspect you're going to have to replace things a lot.

On the bright side it will probably be really cheap though.

And then there will be all the outages.

One of these days Uber is going to accidentally send all drivers in a big city to a single location. It'll be the great ai outage of 2018, the first of soon to be monthly occurrences of bizarre system failures we can't begin to imagine.

I feel like someone should write a pg wodehouseesque novel about the "smart" future.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#138

Post by darepublic »

sixdimensional wrote: post #118
bane wrote: post #5

Here's what I want robots to do: 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. 2) Wash and dry my clothes, fold them and put them away completely automatically. These two things would save me hours of work per week. FoldiMate simply isn't even close to being good enough, but I'd be willing to spend about that much for a robot that could do #2. I can vacuum my floor by myself and greet people…

Actually, I'm not a product designer or engineer, but I feel like I have an idea for #1, and I'm interested in doing it, even for myself. Maybe it's something like "dishwasher v2.0", I 'm not sure. I basically want a standard set of plates, bowls, cups and silverware, which is designed to work with an automated washing box that has slots (or maybe holders) for each to be deposited inside. The idea is, you use the ite…

So dynamic vs batch processing

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#139

Post by itronitron »

beaconstudios wrote: post #6
bane wrote: post #5

Here's what I want robots to do: 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. 2) Wash and dry my clothes, fold them and put them away completely automatically. These two things would save me hours of work per week. FoldiMate simply isn't even close to being good enough, but I'd be willing to spend about that much for a robot that could do #2. I can vacuum my floor by myself and greet people…

for 1, a dishwasher covers (wash) and in some cases (dry) - the putting away is the least time-consuming step so I'm not convinced a robot would be a massive innovation over dishwashers unless it also collected not-in-use washables but that's robot butler levels of complexity. for 2, I don't know about the US but in the UK you can get small local companies that will wash and iron a sack of laundry for you, and return…

ideal case for 1... the robot rinses dishes in the sink and places them in the dishwasher, starts wash at end of day (midnight) then in the morning transfers clean and dry dishes from dishwasher to cabinets. This could be a counter mounted device (with arms) that sits above the dishwasher (next to the sink) and below the cabinets that it fills.

Re: CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work

#140

Post by visarga »

raitom wrote: post #82

We are talking about machines but during my last trip to Japan I’ve been blown away by the domotic present in the appartment I rented. There was a self-filling bathtube that I could program directly from the kitchen. Is there any « bathtube auto-fill/alexa » product in the US? I never been able to find something like that. I’d like to be able to ask alexa to prepare my bath while I’m cooking.

Self fill bathtub? That's a good one. I have a "smart" self-adjusting faucet that can be set directly in temperature.

... but I can't live without a washlet (electronic bidet/toilet). I have come to the conclusion that dry manual wiping is out for me, because in the end it just smears a thin film of shit all over. The washlet is nice - the seat is warmed, water is warmed and it dries me "hands free". It's an amazing yet unassuming robot.

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