Robots like this will have a small market until they can handle obstacles. The cat toy that the cat left in the middle of the floor, the papers that an open window blew off the table, the toys the kids left scattered about, the pencil that rolled off the desk while you were away, the dirty laundry you left laying on the floor, the ridge between carpet and hardwood floors, doors left open or closed, and more. That means there may be several tasks that intervene before a primary task can accomplished (move the toys, pick up the papers, pick up the laundry, open the door). Some obstacles will semi-permanently block a wheeled robot, such as cables, things stacked that you don't want moved, furniture, a sleeping pet, stacked unopened packages from the mail, etc. I believe this means general purpose home robots can not have wheels, they must have legs, perhaps more than two legs for stability. It may sound weird but I think the ideal design might be somewhere between a large friendly spider and a dog. It's odd how robotics has mostly fallen into this idea that the world is two dimensional and flat. They've idealized away the really difficult problems of dealing with mobility in a 3D world. Note that everything this robot does involves only planar horizontal surfaces. Basically it looks like a person had to go through the rooms and clean them up for the robot to function. Roomba's have the same problem.
Firstly, I think many people will want to make the sacrifices necessary for the convenience. You don't have to have cables stretching across the floor. You can put marker tape on furniture. You can have the robot picking stuff up and putting it away rather than leaving it as a trip hazard. You can even replace human-centric objects with ones that are both human-friendly and robot-friendly (say, dinnerware that the dishwasher can easily grasp, move and clean). We already do this by buying microwave and dishwasher friendly stuff, to the point we are shocked when we discover that something isn't. Or we go to the expense of putting pet-doors in our human-doors so pets can use them independently. We are a highly adaptable species.
Secondly, I always liked the idea where your robot is suspended under rails in the ceiling (which you can see in the excellent movie 'Moon'). Advantage is it has more mobility than you because it can hover over furniture.
that's an indictment of the exact platform used not the general concept though. "all" that has to happen is for the arm(s) to be able to pick up things on the floor in front of the robot. it doesn't seem insurmountable, the demo connecting all those models together to be able to say "move the Takis to the nightstand" and have it be able to execute on that is amazing. it's just a "small" matter of robotics to make it so the arm is articulated enough to reach the floor.
I'm not sure I'd use a robot that can "move x to y", but I'd love a robot that can run after my daughter's bedtime to tidy up her toys. This is an end in itself.
The issue I see is that is by far the most challenging corner case. It's not the largest market, but it's the most difficult to capture.
Good business sense would dictate that you should try to capture the largest market, that is simpler to capture first, then go after these more difficult corner cases.
these "invented problems" that software engineers (such as myself) find in every project are basically why we can't have nice things. why did software in the 90s run faster than the same functionality in the 2020's? it's this right here.
I have had good discussions with a colleague about this, where developers lean toward getting roadblocked by all possible engineering problems, they advocate checking to see if there are solutions to the problem that don't require engineering.
In this example, I think they'd suggest communication first then solve the engineering problem later.
Eg: just tell people they need to clear the floor or it can get stuck. People will still want it.
Perhaps the next step is lower touch engineering, ie: beep when it's stuck.
I tend toward engineering stuff, but I have come to realize you can't always afford the engineered solution, and that doesn't have to stop you from delivering stuff.
