[genmon]

My take is that this is an opportunity to re-think what chores are, and what white goods are for

Like -- let's say you rent (as we all do, increasingly). Instead of buying different special purpose kitchen gadgets, white goods, and cleaning equipment to haul around with you, why not a general purpose robot that does the easy 80% of all chores?

[modeless]

Yes, it's an opportunity to simplify the home. You don't need labor saving devices if you don't need to save labor.

[actionfromafar]

Hmm… like how smartphones replaced the stereo (badly, but still), Walkman, tape recorder, radio, camera, telephone, etc.

[ragebol]

You're saying: why buy a dishwasher and a washing machine and a dryer and a vacuum robot etc if you could buy a home robot to do all of those chores by robot-hand?

[Filligree]

The answer is going to be energy efficiency. Your dishwasher uses dramatically less power and water than you would use, if washing them by hand.

[Semaphor]

> Your dishwasher uses dramatically less power and water than you would use, if washing them by hand.

Only if used optimally, or the handwashing is very wasteful. There is one study I know of, it was paid for by washing machine manufacturers and has quite a few issues (like not removing outliers).

And yes, I measured my usage of water and power.

(I’d still get a dishwasher if my kitchen had space for it)

[ragebol]

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure most people only care about money efficiency: what choice is cheaper, now and over time.

[Filligree]

That’ll still be the dishwasher, then.