[ghshephard]

I'd suggest 20 years, and 10% of jobs can be replaced by machine is a more accurate assessment. The latest revision of the Atlas is an interesting technology demo - but I think progress in this space will be much, much slower than automated driving (which I expect to see 25% penetration in 10 years - that is, 25% of all driving, based on miles driven, will be hands/foot free).

Even something as simple (and very, very low cost) as making up a room in a hotel, is probably 25-30 years off at least.

[gnarbarian]

Now you make me want to try and design a self cleaning hotel room.

I think the trickier aspects of hotel room cleaning could be mitigated by creative design of the accommodations.

If it was a stark room with a bed a couple tables and a flat screen there would be little to knock off tables or break.

Make the whole bathroom operate like a giant dishwasher and come up with a more robot friendly fitted bedsheet then use some kind of industrial roomba.

It wouldn't be cheap but it can be done.

Depending on how far you are willing to stretch your definition of hotel room I bet we could automate the cleaning of those Japanese pod/tube hotel rooms right now.

[seren]

The automatically cleanable bathroom already exists. I have used them years ago in cheap hotels. After taking a shower, it locked the door once you exit and it rinses the whole room with some detergent and water for 30 seconds.

[Razengan]

I just had a mental image of it bugging out and flooding the room with detergent with an occupant still inside...

[kimburgess]

Self-cleaning public toilets, that worked exactly like this, went through a bit of a phase in Australia 10-20 years ago. They started decommissioning them after they began trapping children during the cleaning cycle: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/auto-toilets-a-flush-....

[EwanG]

Heinlein in the 60's suggested rooms that would have a daily "wind" cycle to blow off any accumulated dust and anything loose would be forced to one area where it could be picked up to place back in the room, recycled, or disposed of.

[davidiach]

I think you're right. And I would add that part of the challenge is not just the technology, but the cost as well.

You don't just need a robot that can make up a room as good as a human does it, it also needs to be cheaper than that human to "hire".

[slfnflctd]

This whole current thing with foaming at the mouth over bots taking all our jobs in the next few years reminds me a lot of how VR was being talked about in the early 90s. It's still early in the game, folks.

This stuff is not small. The cost reductions achieved through shrinking transistors are irrelevant here. You can only go so cheap with moving parts that need to be strong and durable.

For widespread adoption, cost is probably the biggest factor. Actually getting close to the same performance of a full time worker who grosses under $20k a year for a lower price is going to take a lot longer than many people seem to think. Throughout human history, we've repeatedly solved labor problems by throwing heaps of desperately poor human slaves at them, and we continue to do so-- competing with that model will be difficult.

[ghshephard]

Absolutely correct - keeping in mind that most of the (often undocumented) people cleaning your room in places like California are making around $10K/year or less.

Fully automated "Cleaning a hotel room" is actually an insanely complex task across tons of disciplines - solving that problem will also result in you solving a lot of the Artificial Intelligence challenges.

I think what we'll see much earlier, is a hybrid solution, where automated bots that can do 99% of the tasks send an interrupt to a controller when they encounter something they aren't certain of, such as, "Is that a lifelike doll laying on the floor, or a child lying very quietly."