Furthermore, mobile robots currently in home use--vacuum and mop robots--are all wheeled, of course. We've shown we can accommodate wheeled robots in the home if we feel like the payoff is worth it.
Well I think wheels match the use case there, a small bot close to the ground with just the one job. I think there will be many wheeled bots to begin with. But long term I don't see that form factor scaling to "able to do all tasks around the house".
It's super easy to come up with scenarios that a wheeled bot can't cope with, but again "good enough, cheap enough" will probably see lots of wheeled bots on the market. I am just trying to show why the pioneering companies would be interested in bipedal bots, it's a long term play.
Lastly, the elephant in the room is that basically all general purpose bots are a euphemism for military bots that will need to operate in unknowable conditions.
Exactly, we need legs when they are specifically needed, and we already have wheeled robots so building legged robots that can move like a human will cover so many cases we currently cannot cover.
And even more important are arms and hands, and legs is a precursor to that, they are much simpler so its smart to start with legs to then try to make good arms and hands.
Give me the option of a humanoid looking across that takes care of all in house chores and one that's that utility based with wheels and arms, I will likely choose the humanoid one even with a 100% premium price.
I mean I wouldn't buy either unless I could be certain it's not uploading all data to the cloud and be fully controlled by a user hostile company, but if we're talking fantasy tech ala Detroit: become human... Yeah, it'd be willing to spend a lot of money to have all chores taken care of by a humanoid robot.
And in before someone talks nonsense again wrt "you already can, just pay someone to do it for you"... I do not want to have strangers in my home. This is also essentially why I wouldn't want any cloud connected bot anywhere innit.
The cloud situation is where it's probably going to fall down at first (haha). I don't see companies choosing to offer local model integration over the possibility of using the robot as a loss leader to a long term subscription model for access to the compute/inference.
But that's going to be hilarious. Imagine your internet goes down while the bot is half way down your stairs, or the in the middle of pouring a drink. Very fun.