Designing a non humanoid robot is the way to go. The design of new tools and appliances for hybrid human/robot use will eventually follow: the zip line for the shoe bag required way too much precision work.
I can't believe someone shares my point of view. We have already many non humanoid robots to do boring stuff (underwater maintenance, stuff like that). For some reasons people tend to think that for robots to do stuff close to humans, we need human like robots.
We do not. I want a swarm of insects-like robots to fight mosquitos. A snake one that fixes my pipe. A spider-like robot that cleans surfaces. Etc.
I think this perspective is now demonstrably false. It was basically the defacto position of most roboticists until a few months back. But we've already seen the cost of humanoid robots fall precipitously (even without the kind of mass production that genuinely useful home and real world intelligence would bring).
Which seems more likely, that cheap humanoids will continue to improve in dexterity, battery life, strength etc. Leveraging the vast investment in research into real world task training. Or - that we'll redesign millions of everyday objects to fit the limitations of current task specific robots?
If you answer the latter, I've got a whole bunch of mid century quirky labour saving inventions in the back room I'd like to sell you.
The robots linked above wouldn't be capable of vacuuming either. My point stands - the world is made for humans, we might remake an aspect of it for new vehicles that provided some radical advantage (as we did with airports or roads, although that would be a much larger undertaking with the level of complexities cities have today). But we're certainly not going to have twenty different labour saving devices roaming our homes, nor are we redesigning homes to facilitate such robots.
So if we do see domestic robots, they'll have to a) perform multi-domain functions, and b) fit into existing domestic spaces.
Long term, any generally useful domestic robot would have to have a pretty deep capacity for autonomy across a range of tasks - whether it's role specific or not. So it follows that it's much more likely we'll introduce humanoid robots (which already exist, starting at 30K), with the capacity for a wide range of subtle movements, and gradually add skills to them over time.
We already have roombas and dishwashers. I can't see us adding dedicated laundry folders, dedicated chef robots etc. There are social considerations in addition to the level of goofery that having numerous different devices to house and charge would involve.
Personally I’d love to see a general purpose machine, able to do all works demanded. This kind of vision doesn’t require any imagination: it’s easy to envision a world where you just replace humans by a human-shaped machines with perfect dexterity doing all sort of tasks. Voilà and welcome to the future!
But I still need to see a convincing humanoid doing even the simplest actions like grabbing a soda can from the fridge (from behind the cake), open it, and pour it into a glass and bring it to my desk, possibly in less than 60 minutes. It doesn't matter if it costs 30k if it can’t do anything useful for now. The gap is still too wide and far far away. Hence the missing “proof”.
Delivery robots in the hotels in China have the shape of a bin, not of a maid.
I will suggest mix of both: some everyday tools are already built for being used with hands and legs (e.g opening a door). But indeed adding some different grip types, additional arms, etc, could be helpful.
We do not. I want a swarm of insects-like robots to fight mosquitos. A snake one that fixes my pipe. A spider-like robot that cleans surfaces. Etc.