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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

#391

Post by coldtea »

letsgetphysITal wrote: post #384
coldtea wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. The scientific name is "diminishing returns". (And in physical life, if one overdoes it with laziness, they can get from obese to pressure ulcers)

Right, sure, but we're talking in a thread about a machine which folds your clothes for you, or a house with two dishwashers so you can use them straight from one and put them into the other afterwards. I'm not advocating lying in a La-Z-Boy wearing a VR headset, eating nothing but Cheetos and Mountain Dew for 6 days straight. I'm talking about dimming all the lights in the room when you put on a film, or having them…

>I'm talking about dimming all the lights in the room when you put on a film, or having them slowly brighten as you wake up in the morning.

Yes. And while that is nice to have, it's by no means as useful as "automatic clothes folding". A dimmer takes like 5 seconds to dim when you put on a movie -- whereas clothes folding takes up to tens of minutes.

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

#392

Post by kylesf »

ashelmire wrote: post #126
kylesf wrote: post #76

This folding robot was at least more impressive in person. https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16865506/laundroid-laundr...

Do you work for them? The video on that page never shows it successfully folding anything. The narrator gave it a t-shirt and it failed.

Fair enough, it just seemed more impressive in theory. I just did quick search because I saw it at the show.

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

#393

Post by Digory »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #176
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…

> 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…

Interesting to think about whether half-way solutions might be better.

A robot that puts my kids' clothes in a bag for pickup by a laundry service might be a winner.

Or one that sorts out intimates and drycleaning from towels and shirts, so that the latter can be sent out. My wife's primary objection to laundry service is that it's too personal to send out. Thus, the dream of a robot that can do it all in-house.

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

#394

Post by modoc »

bonesss wrote: post #326
booleandilemma wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point you could start washing your neighbors’ dishes as a service.

Connect those dishwashers to a cloud based backend, add in a little NLP onto the ordering interface, then slap an app and a nice slide deck on top and I think this KaaS offering could be ready for Series A funding before the summer :D

Then introduce a new blockchain payment coin (might I suggest DishCoin?) and you're off to the races!

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

#395

Post by autokad »

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…

a couple years ago, the big thing at events was everyone build a phone app. couple years before that it was a website. now its robots/drones. you can probably insert ML in there somewhere.

its just the natural progression of things.

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

#396

Post by ableal »

bigiain wrote: post #202
BigJono wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the Chinese knock-offs any good? I just looked up the price of a Roomba. $600 AUD to start for the shittiest model :(

I grabbed an iLife brand one from (I think) gearBest on special for ~$176AUD delivered (from memory as an impulse buy while shopping for quadcopter parts...) This one: https://www.gearbest.com/smart-home/pp_187246.html Turns out it's a few weeks short of 2 years old now, and it's still going strong. (It's kinda slow to charge, but at least thats kind to the batteries.) It works fine for me - and I've had friends who'…

I'm equally pleased with the iLife A4 I got over a year ago, also from Gearbest.

I admire its design - it's a fairly simple machine that gets most everything right, including climbing carpet, being fairly quiet, not bumping hard into furniture, not falling off steps, and even returning to its charging base (on command or when battery is low after a couple hours work).

It does not have fancy magnetic barriers to close off areas, but a simple door draft stopper pillow on the floor holds it off well enough.

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

#397

Post by gerbilly »

mikekchar wrote: post #94
mahmud wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that washes dishes immediately after use? No need to even use the machine. Wash immediately after use, let them dry on rack, wipe and put away. Dishes and laundry are a total non-issue.

Edit: Interesting to see this get voted up and down. I suppose because it appears to have a holier-than-thou tone. I don't really feel that way because I struggled to learn this stuff the hard way. I'm just hopeful someone will feel encouraged to try it. Not the only one. Admittedly I don't have kids, but I'm familiar with family life and I don't think this is really that much of a problem. I think a lot of people su…

I agree, it's a good idea to clean as you go when cooking.

In my opinion it's not necessary to be too strict about it, aim to have your kitchen 80% clean before eating, then clean up right after dinner.

The reason it helps is that if you build up a big mess in the kitchen, it makes the task of cooking seem overwhelming.

While this 'clean as you go' habit seems to be about cleaning,it's really about nutrition.

If your kitchen is well stocked and clean, you will find it easier to cook your own meals, which will do wonders for your overall health.

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

#398

Post by daveguy »

Pxtl wrote: post #26
beaconstudios wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For dishwasher, for me the big missing piece is Tupper I can use in my kids' lunches. I'm always suspicious of breaking things down in the Tupper with the scalding dishwasher treatment, and glassware is too dangerous, so I still do that stuff by hand.

I have been putting even cheap plastic tupperware in the dishwasher on the top shelf with heat dry. Never had a problem. I think that was a problem decades ago that have been resolved with better plastics and controlled drying temps.

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

#399

Post by jagger27 »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #312
bufferoverflow wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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.

> On-screen fingerprint scanner. From all the stuff I saw on CES this is the only thing which I _really_ want.

Apparently it uses IR and is easily fooled. I think Android manufacturers have it right by putting the scanner on the back or side. We can keep our good capacitive fingerprint sensors and still get bezelless displays.

I wonder how far off a transparent digitizer is that can make out fingerprints?

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

#400

Post by intrasight »

duncanawoods wrote: post #213
intrasight wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a young robotics engineer, I designed a house with a hidden ceiling that hid the mechanical parts for such a robot. There were 4'x4' panels with releases and actuators to open up a hole for the arm to descend through. A 28'x28' space would only need 10 actuators (edge panels can't open). But alas 30 years later I've still not built it.

25 years ago, in a high school English exam, I wrote a short story about just such a design. As is the way of such stories, the arm throttled a small child after a miscommunication! I was a little bothered that I might have unconsciously cribbed it from Asimov that I read at that age. Mechanical ceiling arms seem likely to be terrifying even if they work.

Doesn't have to be terrifying. Make it soft and squishy and use artificial muscles not gears and motors. It doesn't have to be able to lift my piano.
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