
Amazon is said to be building home robots - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/amazon-is-said-to-be-working-on-another-big-bet-home-robots
======
mabbo
Never trust anonymous sources with over the top promises.

In 2010, I was an intern at Google working on a team doing the very early
prototypes of touch screen stuff for ChromeOS. I was in the room the first
time we scrolled the screen with a finger (initially, the wrong way). That
same week, a bunch of tech blogs with "insider information" announced we'd
have a consumer ChromeOS tablet by the end of the month. Spoiler: they were 8
years ahead of themselves.

~~~
akhatri_aus
Bloomberg isn't a tech blog.

------
soylentcola
As much as my inner kid (and probably outer adult) is grinning at the thought
of having a real personal house robot, the idea of it being more mobile Alexa
than Giskard takes away some of the appeal.

~~~
mfoy_
Wake up in the middle of the night with your Amazon robot standing over you,
laughing.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I'd be more worried that my Amazon robot figured out how to order batteries,
nuts and bolts on my Amazon tablet.

------
RobertDeNiro
It's probably not top secret if its on bloomberg.

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah, you have got to love their sense of irony.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Trying to work through the algorithmic burden. Would a home robot's navigation
software be more or less complex than a self driving car? No lane markers,
stop signs/lights. Environment changes constantly with doors open/closing,
pets, humans moving around, stuff on the floor. It would be more like apples-
to-apples if we were talking about a self-driving off-road vehicle.

Not to mention, the auto is doing something useful simply by moving. Perhaps a
security robot in the home could be valuable by simply moving, but otherwise,
it needs an additional layer of application. Interacting with humans,
manipulating objects which it would have to identify, ...

~~~
mholmes680
A part of the burden of cars is the table stakes though... cars can
potentially kill people. A home robot worst-case is a potential pooptastrophe
[0] (I guess.. unless people can trip on it and fall down stairs).

[0] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
now/2016/08/15/po...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-
now/2016/08/15/pooptastrophe-man-details-night-his-roomba-ran-over-dog-
poop/88667704/)

~~~
ben_w
Depends on the robot. A mere vacuum cleaner is as you describe, but a fully
general household bot could turn a gas hob on without igniting it, combine
unsafe combinations of bleach when cleaning the bathroom, fail to recognise
when food has expired before cooking it, mistake bleach for a drink when
serving dinner, mistake the owner’s fingers for carrot or a sausage when
making dinner, or lock one or more doors in an open position overnight.

------
geodel
I think it will come as RAAS or Robots As A Service. The features or
enhancements will be enabled by service provider. There will be monthly fee
plans based on how many functions calls are invoked on it.

~~~
joncrocks
Connect a robot up to Mechanical Turk and you've got a winner!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Basically, globalizing the domestic worker market. That's... both brilliant
and disturbing.

~~~
fenwick67
This has to be a Black Mirror episode

~~~
joncrocks
There was a film called 'Sleep Dealer' which dealt with the potential for
remote-controlling of robots.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer)

------
iandanforth
Why does the robot move around the house? Mobile robots are non-trivial. Doing
a mobile robot for an incremental publicity or novelty gain is a net-loss.
Moving robustly in a cluttered space is an unsolved problem in robotics so to
attempt it you need a really really good reason.

I think the project would be a blast to work on and I certainly think research
in this area should be supported, but I would love to know what they want to
accomplish that couldn't be done by selling 2 or 3x additional static devices
for less.

~~~
mkempe
I want a robot that travels around the house to clean up after my tornado
kids. Maybe a little bit at night, very quietly, and definitely during the
day, while they're at school.

I also would appreciate robots that empty the dishwasher; move the laundry
from the washing machine to the dryer, and then put the dry items into closets
and chests of drawers; wash windows; clean ovens and fridges; and so on.
Basically furthering domestic robots that free us from routine labor, just as
the current, limited robots have done for us (I tell my daughters the washing
machines are simple robots, and we should expect better in the near future).

~~~
photojosh
Absolutely. A clothes folding and sorting robot would be #1 in terms of time
saving, as that feels like 80% of the housework I do.

------
mrep
I think Amazon is uniquely positioned to come out with the first broadly
applicable consumer house robot. To me, I would buy one if it could move
around the house and handle some daily chores like taking the dishes/trash
out, laundry, and the always classic getting me a beer. That would require 1:
the ability to move around my house, 2 the ability to accept and interpret
commands, and 3 the ability to recognize objects visually and how to interact
with them.

Amazon has 1 partially solved with kiva, 2 with Alexa, leaving the big problem
as 3. Amazon is well aware of 3 though because that is their main problem
blocking them from automating hundreds of thousands of jobs in their
warehouses. They even hold competitions for it:
[https://www.wired.com/story/grasping-robots-compete-to-
rule-...](https://www.wired.com/story/grasping-robots-compete-to-rule-amazons-
warehouses/)

With all of that potential labor savings in solving that problem, and the
possibility of a home robot using the same technology, I doubt anyone spends
more R&D on this problem.

~~~
larkost
Kiva is not quite what you seem to think it is. Those robots navigate in
specially constructed, human-free, spaces with QR codes on the floor to keep
them positioned right. It is a highly developed system, but not one designed
for anything remotely like a human home.

And I would separate your #3 into two items: recognizing household objects (a
very significant bit of work), and then interacting with individual objects.
Single instances of each of those are tasks that whole companies are devoted
to. General-case systems are just not in the cards at this point.

------
gene-h
I'd be surprised if they didn't have some project on home robots. While I
would like to see Amazon have a program for making robots that do useful tasks
like dishes they are probably going to make something more like an echo on
wheels. The technology needed to do this is fairly mature. Robot vacuums have
been on the market for years, robot vacuums with SLAM have also been on the
market for years. They aren't perfect and can't operate in a very cluttered
room, but this is probably acceptable for an 'echo on wheels' application.

In my opinion this is a bit creepy. Now one would be putting an Amazon device
capable of sensing and actuation in their home. And not just sensing, enough
sensing to map a house and perhaps keep track of where people are. If the
robot does image recognition, so one can say hold up an empty box to buy more
on amazon, that's even creepier. As the only practical means of doing this
would be to send images to amazon's servers.

------
jacksmith21006
This is not at all surprising and been surprised we do NOT see Amazon trying
to play in the SDC space like Google is doing.

SDC - Self Driving Cars

Really SDC is much more of a software thing and surprising we have not seen
other big tech playing in the SDC space. Some rumors on Apple but not shown
anything.

------
brian_
This is just an aside but why do websites (and browsers) still auto-play video
content in this day and age? I thought we ended that disturbing trend..

------
justinclift
Wonder what they're using for the motor motion control software? eg g2core,
TinyG, GRBL, or something custom

------
txsh
Is it just an Alexa that cleans floors? I can’t imagine what other tasks this
could perform.

~~~
marban
Ordering stuff for you on Amazon.

------
wysewun
Of course they do..

------
numbsafari
Unlike the ones they've already built that mechanically turn their paychecks
into dozens of little brown boxes?

