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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

#291

Post by NKCSS »

iandanforth wrote: post #215
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FoldiMate Is this a joke? A machine that, when you take a piece of laundry and after de-tangling each piece (fixing inside-out/sleeves/etc) and then orienting it properly, insert it into the machine in a specific way, will fold laundry in "a few" minutes. All this for the low price of $1,000 USD and they claim to deliver in two years (which we all know will slip). If this machine let me dump a dry bucket of laundry…

I know the guy behind FoldiMate a little bit. I've met him at trade shows. One thing I have to point out is that he has pursued this dream for years. Lack of interest, team, funding ... nothing has stopped this guy. It's a really hard problem and he keeps at it. I can't say I'm rushing out to buy one myself, but there's a human story here too, and I think that's been lost in the coverage.

If it could do that, a 5-10k pricepoint wouldn't be a problem either.

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

#292

Post by swarnie_ »

jstanley wrote: post #273
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…

> 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. I had a thought about this some time ago. What if every cupboard was a dishwasher? You just put dirty dishes away in the "cupboard", and then they get washed once the machine detects that there are too many dirty ones, and it can blow air through the cupboard to dry them off once it's done, and then you just open a cupboard and take out some cl…

Its already becoming fashionable to have two washers. One to store the washed, dry items in and another to put the dirty in. You rotate which washer is the dirty one each time to save putting stuff away

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

#293

Post by imron »

flukus wrote: post #23
imron wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no use for drones, or bipedal robots, or some kind of other walking robot at all Bipedal is the hard half of the fold clothes and put them away

Why? Personally I'm hoping for some kind of telescopic arm in the ceiling, bipedal robots still take up storage space and get in the way, ceiling arms could work around me, are probably easier to deliver and are probably better to interact with "hey arm, can you give me a reading light and put my book away when I fall asleep".

Doesn't work so well if the laundry is in the basement and the bedroom closet is on the 2nd floor.

A general purpose bipedal that can perform basic human actions is considerably more flexible that telescopic arms fixed in the ceiling.

And if it's capable of folding clothes it's not much of a stretch to imagine it could also provide a light an put your book away.

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

#294

Post by mxfh »

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #165
cdoxsey wrote: post #137

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 becau…

> Your car will go to the wrong place because it failed to account for a leap second, thus breaking gps. I do get the implication you're going for, but GPS actually ignores leap seconds for this reason. The time scale on the GPS system was fixed when it was deployed, and is 18 seconds ahead of UTC because it does not account for leap seconds. Sometimes we design horrid systems that are harder to use than analog count…

Also GPS, now a part of all GNSS, is not an as essential system for fully automated driving, as pretty much all the other sensors (See also GNSS-denied navigation research).

If your navigation system didn't fail so far, it won't in the future. Navigation is the solved part.

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

#295

Post by distances »

LandR wrote: post #261
joeframbach wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really spend hours on these chores? I can understand if you have one arm, or suffer from narcolepsy, or something else. But most people should be able to clean up after dinner in less than ten minutes, and wash and fold a week's work of laundry in less than half an hour.

It's the ironing that is the time killer for me. It can easily take me 2-3 hours to do a weeks worth of ironing. On top of that it takes an hour to wash and spin the clothes, and I need to be home for that finishing since wet clothes can't sit in the machine too long. On top of clothes you ahve bedding that needs washed and ironed and that is a proper pain, especially on my smallish washing machine. That's 2 washes e…

Why would you iron bedsheets? I basically only iron my white collared shirts, and even them just for weddings and funerals. Meaning about one ironing session every second year.

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

#296

Post by lagadu »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #264
crdoconnor wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laundrettes?

Maybe if you had a guy whose job was to feed clothes into it in just the right way. TBF an experienced laundry person can fold them manually, much faster. Don't let a robot do something a human can do better.

A robot doesn't have to do something better than a human to succeed; it just has to do it well enough for us to accept the trade-off.

A good example is robot vacuum cleaners: I have had one for a few years now and it's easily the best purchase I've ever made: it doesn't vacuum as well as we do but it does it everyday which is something I'm absolutely unwilling to do. Having it in my home greatly reduced the amount of time we had to dedicate to cleaning the floor and dusting non-floor surfaces (it turns out that daily vacuuming the floor has a huge impact in the amount of dust collected everywhere else).

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

#297

Post by liamzebedee »

jstanley wrote: post #273
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…

> 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. I had a thought about this some time ago. What if every cupboard was a dishwasher? You just put dirty dishes away in the "cupboard", and then they get washed once the machine detects that there are too many dirty ones, and it can blow air through the cupboard to dry them off once it's done, and then you just open a cupboard and take out some cl…

The Finns have had something similar to this for decades: dish racks that are cupboards [1]. I wonder why such cheap solutions are not thought of first

[1] https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a8/d0/d5/a8d0d5ce749c4ad9e8dc37a1c...

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

#298

Post by swarnie_ »

xg15 wrote: post #281
jstanley wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. I had a thought about this some time ago. What if every cupboard was a dishwasher? You just put dirty dishes away in the "cupboard", and then they get washed once the machine detects that there are too many dirty ones, and it can blow air through the cupboard to dry them off once it's done, and then you just open a cupboard and take out some cl…

> You just put dirty dishes away in the "cupboard", and then they get washed once the machine detects that there are too many dirty ones That would mean either you wash every time you put in a dirty dish (which would be wasteful) - or you accept that you always have some dirty dishes mixed between your clean ones, including the food remains, fluids, smell, etc that come with them. Sounds really unpleasant. More pract…

> you'll have random parts of your kitchen inaccessible at random points of time.

Rethink how we store things. Rather then all plates in one place, all bowls in another ect. you mix everything up so each cabinet has the same variety of objects in it.

I know this only deals with one of your extremely valid points. I know some of the sorting/organizing people on here (the ones who label their label guns) would freak.

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

#299

Post by bufferoverflow »

Laura-Vieujean wrote: post #2

What was your favorite product at CES ?

- 8K TV with HDR going to 10000 nits. Where bright objects actually do look bright.

- The new LG Gram ultralight laptop.

- On-screen fingerprint scanner.

- Intel's voxel tech, but that's a very expensive system.

- Pretty much all of NVidia's machine learning tech.

- The dual-perspective projector system, very clever.

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

#300

Post by raducu »

jstanley wrote: post #273
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…

> 1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically. I had a thought about this some time ago. What if every cupboard was a dishwasher? You just put dirty dishes away in the "cupboard", and then they get washed once the machine detects that there are too many dirty ones, and it can blow air through the cupboard to dry them off once it's done, and then you just open a cupboard and take out some cl…

A lot of people have two dishwashers; that way you don't have to move the dishes to a cabinet; you use one dishwasher as a cabinet.
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