Our robot-and-phone setup is not very safe around liquids haha. Hopefully the hardware experts among us can solve that problem sooner than later.
We are also working on learning multi-stage skills, and early results are promising (See section 4.1 on the paper). However, with multiple steps the chances of failure also goes up, so that's something we will have to make more robust :)
One of the problems with home-cleaning robots is how to keep the cleaning robot clean.
You don't want the same grabber that's scrubbing the toilet and picking up your dirty laundry to also be picking up your kids' toys, or packing away your groceries, let alone preparing food.
Actually, this is why it's such a great business opportunity, see you have to buy a 2nd robot that cleans 1st robot and then a 3rd robot to clean the 2nd and so on.
More seriously, Stretch actually looks pretty straight forward so I could imagine a combo-charging/dock/cleaning station where it can swap tools (ie, grab a vacuum, drop off mop, etc) and get cleaned by the cleaning station. Also once the robot is in a more finalized version, its not unthinkable to make one that is waterproof enough to go through a carwash type device.
Tool usage is one of the next ideas we would like to explore; because, if you think about it, the reacher-grabber that is currently used as an end-effector is just another tool.
If we can switch between tools quickly we can possibly unlock a wide range of applications: imagine a robot that can switch arms from a whisk to a spatula to a duster to to a mop all over the course of preparing a meal, and then switch to a screwdriver or a wrench for fixing something afterwards. Will take work to design modular parts like that, but the end result can be quite exciting indeed.
