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Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

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Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#211

Post by cptskippy »

spyckie2 wrote: post #26

Things it can't do: - go up stairs - get up after a fall / reset itself - pick up heavy objects - precise motion (so no cooking) - interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard) The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clea…

> The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs.

I think the 6x label on the dusting Spiderman scene is where I lost any interest. If it's that slow then it would take weeks to pickup the pile of Legos sitting on my floor right now, assuming it could.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#212

Post by Tenobrus »

espadrine wrote: post #201
fizixer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The robot is in your house the whole 168 hours a week, not just 4. You're assuming a good cleaning robot would be absolutely useless for anything else, like cooking, laundry, etc. - 4-year robot lifetime is overly pessimistic. If upgrade is not the reason (which has nothing to do with lifetime, it's your choice to upgrade), a robot could last way more than 4-years (especially with right-to-repair laws in place). -…

The first point has an obvious response and the last is speculative. I find interesting to address the middle one statistically. A given machine has a number of random events that can kill it. Each possible event type i can be modeled as a Poisson process Xᵢ with, in a given year, probability λᵢ. The machine survives in a given year if no occurrence of event i happens, with probability Pr(Xᵢ = 0) = exp(-λᵢ). For inst…

Why does your argument not show that cars would have a similar lifetime?

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#213

Post by enumjorge »

koheripbal wrote: post #199
mleonhard wrote: post #57

In 2014, I was at Google and went to an open house event at the Google robotics lab in SF. The people I met there were nice. I almost applied for a job there. Then I looked up the person who would have been my boss. He was scowling in his Google profile photo. His LinkedIn showed him as founder of a robotics company, with no mention of Google. He obviously wanted to be the CEO of a robotics company, not a director in…

Given the net number of massive companies that emerged from VCs, this is obviously not true.

A company reaching a massive size does not mean it’s been a net positive on society. In fact I’d argue that many previously beneficial companies have become net negatives once they got massive.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#214

Post by leetcrew »

espadrine wrote: post #131
spyckie2 wrote: post #26

Things it can't do: - go up stairs - get up after a fall / reset itself - pick up heavy objects - precise motion (so no cooking) - interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard) The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clea…

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares? A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year. Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost mu…

a human cleaner isn't really a perfect substitute for a robot. people might feel uncomfortable with having a human worker in their house for a variety of reasons. most people I know actually clean their whole house before the cleaning service shows up. you don't have to feel guilt/embarrassment at the state of your house when the robot starts working. I could imagine a lot of people might be willing to pay a premium for this, even if the robot doesn't do as good of a job.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#216

Post by enumjorge »

imtringued wrote: post #125
mleonhard wrote: post #57

In 2014, I was at Google and went to an open house event at the Google robotics lab in SF. The people I met there were nice. I almost applied for a job there. Then I looked up the person who would have been my boss. He was scowling in his Google profile photo. His LinkedIn showed him as founder of a robotics company, with no mention of Google. He obviously wanted to be the CEO of a robotics company, not a director in…

What if this created demand and funding for robotics companies? It's not like you are forced to sell your company to Google.

You’re not forced to but few people won’t take a huge bag of money if offered one, especially if it’s their first one.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#217

Post by leetcrew »

chosenbreed37 wrote: post #156
aptwebapps wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible angle is integrations, i.e. robot-friendly appliances. Maybe the washing machine has a powered door and an API that the robot (or some other software) uses to control it. No need to push buttons. Obviously, this won't cover all scenarios, but as someone upthread said, to be useful it doesn't have to do everything. The bigger issue, IMO, is avoiding distasters like Roombas trying to vacuum dog poop.

This sounds like a good idea. As you said it doesn't have to cover all scenarios. I'm happy with our Roomba. We don't have any dogs but is it really that bad!? :-)

it's the kind of thing that only has to happen once for you to remember it forever.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#218

Post by shiftpgdn »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #75
sbierwagen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually had a simple hack that reliably made children clean up after themselves, and could somehow sell it for money without it being instantly pirated, you would make rather more billions of dollars than Aaron Edsinger's robot ever would.

There is no magic trick there, just stop being afraid of hurting their feelings by being assertive and making your expectations of their contribution to the household known.

How many kids do you have and how old are they?

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#220

Post by caseysoftware »

leetcrew wrote: post #214
espadrine wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares? A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year. Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost mu…

a human cleaner isn't really a perfect substitute for a robot. people might feel uncomfortable with having a human worker in their house for a variety of reasons. most people I know actually clean their whole house before the cleaning service shows up. you don't have to feel guilt/embarrassment at the state of your house when the robot starts working. I could imagine a lot of people might be willing to pay a premium…

And humans can't come over during a pandemic.

For high risk people, this might be a good alternative for normally-simple tasks they can't do by themselves.

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