[qurren]

I'm bearish that they'll be economically viable in the house for a very long time.

For businesses the bar for adoption is very low: If the thing can work repetitive jobs for 24 hours a day and replace 3 shifts, the purchase bar is nominally anything less than 3 x human salary if your budgeting horizon is 1 year. That's a high number, and probably fairly easy to achieve.

For homes, it's a very different bar. You'd have a hard time convincing most American families to purchase anything with a >$1000 price tag. Currently that's pretty much impossible for a humanoid.

[si1entstill]

I'm not sure.

I think house cleaning/chores require at least a "part-time" job's work of work for the average household (especially with children). We may be atypical, but my partner and I don't want to hire out a cleaning service and deal with the whole human component. But, I think we'd gladly pay 15k+ if it allowed us to take on the additional gainful workload. Even at a 20k price tag, I suspect we would likely have made up the difference in under a year.

[qurren]

If you can even afford 20K you're in the top 10% of the US population. It's not a very big market, and even selling to that market is hard. Probably only 10% of that 10% will actually buy, and all of a sudden you're selling to 1%.

Selling to businesses is much easier, 99% of businesses can afford 200K if it replaces 3 x 70K humans.

[nsvd2]

Actually the high income households are becoming a greater and greater share of spending, referred to as the "K shaped" economy. For example, the top quintile of households accounts for about 40% of all consumer spending.

[underlipton]

But they only need so many robot housekeepers. And their standards are going to be higher than the average consumer's. If you're targeting that demo, slumming it with a $20k robot won't do; with the performance, bespoke service and maintenance, and other considerations, might as well bump up to $100k or more. But, in the current zeitgeist, you're not making an aspirational product, you're just creating another icon of class warfare that turns off the consumers you were hoping to eventually reach.

[jfaat]

Your napkin math only shows that the market is identical. There's about 35m businesses operating in the US. So by selling to 10% of those you sell the exact same number of robots...

[yorwba]

The difference is that some of those businesses might buy a lot more than just one robot. As many as they currently have employees doing robot work for a human salary.

[aantix]

Most people finance vehicles that cost much more than 20K.

I'd gladly pay or finance a robot that could have dishes clean, laundry folded, and carpets vacuumed by the time our family got home.

[drusepth]

I don't think a cleaning robot and a vehicle are in the same category, as vehicles are more a necessity (at the very least to get to and from your jobs, to buy groceries, etc) and a cleaning robot is squarely a luxury.

[rendang]

A car saves you time walking/biking, a robot saves chore time. Depending on depreciation, it's feasible that you could go do minimum-wage level work on Doordash using the chore time you save from the robot and still come out ahead. E.g. 5 hours/week at $20/hour = $5200/yr

[brailsafe]

> A car saves you time walking/biking, a robot saves chore time

Mileage varies. My impression is that on net, many people borrow money for the vehicle and end up adjusting their lives to depend on it, so much so that in their head they think they're saving time, but if they'd put that money into their home budget and moved closer to where things are, they'd get more exercise, be more socially healthy, and also waste less time and money driving. In aggregate, this makes everything worse and perpetuates the cycle. I sure as hell wouldn't move somewhere I had to drive to and from if I didn't already have the car, and I sure as hell wouldn't buy a car to get to a job unless the nature of my work required it. Not again.

[jader201]

Vehicles, when first invented, were 100% a luxury, not a necessity.

They only became a “necessity” once they went mainstream and the world started evolving with vehicles becoming a part of everyday life.

I can certainly see the same thing happening with residential robotics.

[nancyminusone]

Only way I can see that happening is if you somehow get fired for not folding your laundry, in the same way people are fired when their car breaks and they can't make it to work.

[stef25]

So many people talking like cleaning services don't exist

[si1entstill]

> I don't want to hire out a cleaning service and deal with the whole human component.

I've used on in the past, but I found that I was routinely dissatisfied with how they were doing things and I felt I needed to maintain a certain level of tidiness to allow them to clean properly. I think there is an intrinsic cost to having hired staff in one's home that most consumers would be factoring in, consciously or not.

[aantix]

I'd want cleaning to happen every day during the week/

Probably $80/day for someone to do everything I want done. 20 days a month.

$1,600/month.

It'd take two years, and the robot has paid for itself.

[ACCount37]

People in the US buy cars.

Can a household robot provide as much utility as a car? If "yes", the market gets pretty big.

[cj]

How does it compare to hiring a human?

I pay $200 every 2 weeks to have a 3000 sq ft house cleaned.

That's about $5200 a year to fully clean a house. And it's a human, so they can also tidy up, clean out the refrigerator, do my laundry, water my plants, etc.

[scotty79]

You'd have to pay me this much to let a human inside my house to do that.

[cj]

Where I live, you typically share house cleaners with your neighbors or family members.

My parents, aunt/uncle, grandparents, and one of my neighbors uses the same house cleaner.

If she stole from me, I’d immediately tell my family and she would lose basically all of her clients.

That makes it easier for me to trust her.

(It works similarly in NYC apartment buildings - a single cleaner often services many people in the same building, so they have a reputation to uphold)

I would never use random online cleaning services.

[qurren]

Not really. The car is a non-negotiable, like food, unless you live in Boston/NYC/SF or something. The robot is not.

[jryle70]

The economy would be very dead if people only spend money on non-negotiable items. Why would one fly to Colorado if they could just go to the park near by?

Robots may not be very useful for now, but they will be at some point, and people will buy them, financing if they have to. Even if what the robots can do are not non-negotiable.

[scotty79]

People in Europe also buy cars, even though most of them doesn't really need to.

[nancyminusone]

You don't even "need" to clean your house (yes, yes, I know). You do need to drive to work.

[NichoPaolucci]

As far as household expenses go, we've never really budgeted for this type of purchase. But we DO budget for... utilities, groceries, internet, and vehicles. These are needs, to a degree - but most people (even on the border of poverty) have things like vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, etc...

I could definitely see people baking in money for certain automations, if they have a comparable ROI.

Of course, the initial prices will be significantly higher than "end result" or commoditized prices, at which point maybe even people on the brink of poverty can afford some level of home automation. In the interim, yes - it will be largely for the wealthy and business applications.

[DrScientist]

To your point - in terms of domestic services - ownership isn't the only model. After all human cleaning services don't work like that either these days ( even in the American south.... ).

Some people might feel that a robot cleaner is less intrusive that a person.

[si1entstill]

The median working American earns something like 60k. Part time working adults are around 24k.

People might not have 20k in the bank, but if most are doing a part-time employment's worth of work which could be replaced by a machine, it would make sense on paper.

Granted, people aren't rational. Anecdotally, my partner and I probably could be hiring out some of this currently, but we choose not to as we don't want to have to work around a cleaning service's schedule. I think we'd be more apt to buy something which we own, have control over, always does things in the manner we'd like, doesn't have to work around our messy lives/schedules, etc.

[didibus]

> We may be atypical, but my partner and I don't want to hire out a cleaning service and deal with the whole human component

I kind of understand where the feeling comes from, but this also saddens me. What happened to our generation? We're scared of people.

[si1entstill]

Eh, I'm a pretty social and outgoing guy. I think its fair to have some reservations about people in one's own home. I'll admit I'm slightly neurotic in my own household in that I like things to be done a certain way. I'd also feel like I needed to maintain certain levels of tidiness to enable a traditional cleaning service to perform well.

[didibus]

I don't think it's about being social/outgoing or not. There's clearly an anxiety we have, we avoid confrontation, or awkward dynamics. For example, you like things done a certain way, that's irrelevant, its that you feel anxious working with a human and have them understand how you want it done sounds stressful, but would be comfortable doing so with a robot.

I share those feelings too, it's self-reflective.

[idiotsecant]

Sometimes I forget what a bubble HN really is.

[jameshart]

Robot lawnmowers are mostly over $1000 already and they only do one thing. Heck, a lot of lawnmowers are over $1000.

You can pay over $500 for an automatic cat litter box. Robot vacuums can be cheap but run to $600 or so. Household appliances is a robust sector where people have a proven track record of spending a lot of money.

[garbageman]

Automatic litter box is a great example. We've had one for ~7 years and it's still going strong. High initial cost that pays back every day over the course of what will likely be a decade+ of usage. Absolutely worth every penny if you look to the horizon. I imagine the robot mowers and robot house maids will fall under the same type of payback but with even higher upfront costs - perhaps this will turn into yet another subscription scheme.

[xnx]

> We've had one for ~7 years and it's still going strong

Interested. Which one?

[entropic]

Not OP, but I have a litter robot 3 that is still going strong after 10 years, and a litter robot 4 that is around four years old. The only problem I've run into is occasionally the pinch sensor will get bits of litter stuck in it and I have to take the globe off and tap/push on the sensor housing, then it will allow cycling again.

Great machines!

https://www.litter-robot.com/

[lp0_on_fire]

Do you use it with multiple cats? I know they advertise it that way but I'm curious where the rubber meets the pavement.

[entropic]

Yeah, I've always had two or three cats using them, they like to use them as an opportunity to hide and pounce on one another as one exits the litter robot globe, inside the globe they have a pretty limited field of view.

[jvidalv]

Also interested.

[f6v]

Yeah, I heard all it does is smear shit all over itself. Any good brands?

[codegeek]

It is all about the ROI. A lawn cut from a professional can cost anywhere from $25-$100 on an average (per cut). So with a $1000 lawn mower, you will get the return back in 10-40 cuts at most. That is less than 1-2 seasons. Sure, there will be some maintenance cost over the years but if you look at a 5-10 year period, it is totally worth doing your own. Even with the $1000 price tag. Of course, you cannot count the labor time.

[vladgur]

There is more to yard work than mowing the lawn unfortunately. Trimming. Fertilizing Etc etc

If I can get a robot replace a gardener who I pay $170/mo for 2 visits per month, i probably would. But I suspect that would kill lawn

[codegeek]

Agreed. That's one thing I realized I cannot do myself. I bought an expensive Mower Rider and tried it myself only realizing how much work it is for do trimming, blow, cleanup, weeding etc other than just mowing. Granted, I have a large property. I hired back a landscaper and focus my time on other things :)

[memonkey]

For all of these things, then what's the point of having a humanoid robot then? The last thing is a folding laundry bot that I would happily also pay $1000 for.

[mrexroad]

> folding laundry robot

This is my dream for a house chore robot. If I could dump hampers of clothes into a receptacle and get stacks of folded clothes out, I’d happily pay $1k. Household of 5; my kids each produce 3-4 sets of clothes a day (sleep, school, sports, after school). I run wash in AM so dryer finishes before 3pm (pg&e ToU) and then I’m focused on other things for rest of day. More often than not, I get to bed to find a near full hamper of clothes dumped where I sleep and then have to sort/fold/deliver. Bonus points if robot can sort different items to different stacks/bundles.

I don’t need AI/robotics to save me time from having to think, research, or code… I need AI/robotics to save me time so I can think, research, or code.

[imtringued]

A foldimate costs a fraction of your $1k.

[76SlashDolphin]

And is vapourware. They went bankrupt in 2021 after failing to make it work and the domain is run by scammers.

[lowbloodsugar]

My wife hates having other people in our house and we both hate cleaning. If it worked, we’d drop $5k no problem. It’ll be $5k and a $50/mo sub? Sold!

[traes]

I have personally never met someone with a personal robotic lawnmower, and I suspect that if you have you live in a bubble that is severely biasing your view of the average American.

[alnwlsn]

My cousin has one. But he also lives on 5 acres, which is also not average either.

Apparently prices on them have gone way up. The one he has now would cost something like $6K today.

[jameshart]

A product doesn’t need to appeal to or reach the average American to be a viable product.

[traes]

Perhaps not, but I interpreted it as an intended counterexample to the GP's claim

> You'd have a hard time convincing most American families to purchase anything with a >$1000 price tag...

Which I am skeptical of.

[supern0va]

> For homes, it's a very different bar. You'd have a hard time convincing most American families to purchase anything with a >$1000 price tag.

There are plenty of white collar employees in cities paying $500+/month for someone to come clean their home. As one of those people, I could easily see paying low five figures for something like this if it actually worked well and could replace most household labor.

[qurren]

Most consumers don't think like that. Businesses do.

Part of the reason is upfront commitment is scary and risky for personal money, but not scary for a business.

[supern0va]

Most consumers? Sure. Upper middle class consumers? They're the sort more likely to buy cars with cash if they're dissatisfied with the value of the financing offered.

As with most things, it'll cater to that demographic and then filter down.

[heaney-555]

>You'd have a hard time convincing most American families to purchase anything with a >$1000 price tag.

Like cars, they'll likely purchase them through finance deals, with a monthly payment. Or perhaps even rent/lease them.

[qurren]

Cars are an absolute necessity in the US unless you live in one of the small handful of cities that have viable public transit. Different thing altogether.

Robots aren't a necessity, and for a price tag in the tens of thousands, most people will just mop their own floors and do their own laundry.

[georgemcbay]

> Robots aren't a necessity, and for a price tag in the tens of thousands, most people will just mop their own floors and do their own laundry.

And (regardless of the costs involved) if I were going to pay money to not do this stuff myself, I'd rather pay a human to do it because I know there are humans out there that could use the work and I value them much more than I value Google and other corporations making even more obscene amounts of money selling future e-waste.

[micromacrofoot]

$45k cars are not neccessary though, and that's the average american car loan today

[bigfishrunning]

That's really more of a financial literacy problem though. People don't see $45k car, they see $600/mo payment. And car dealers very much sell on the payment and not on the actual price.

[pessimizer]

Why would it be different for a robot?

[bigfishrunning]

People *need* a car, and a salesman manipulates them into buying more car then they need. People aren't convinced they *need* a robot.

increasing your spend by 25% is a smaller change then increasing your spend by infinity%

[drusepth]

nit: 45k is the average car loan for a new car, but average for a used car is $25k. Purchasing a car is a necessity but purchasing a new car is a luxury.

[micromacrofoot]

Average monthly payment for both new and used cars is $500-$700

[lovasoa]

Of course we'll rent them! I don't even want to keep a robot in my flat all the time.

But that means speed does matter after all. The renting company will need to clean as many flats as possible with a single robot in a single day.

[mbil]

Leasing seems like it could make sense given rapid upgrades in the technology. Why spend $15k on a home robot that will be obsoleted in the next few years?

[garbageman]

Leasing is out, but locked-in subscriptions are in!

[michaelmrose]

People are financing small consumer goods with 3 digit price tags because they can't afford their mediocre already leveraged life. They borrow high 4 to low 5 figures for a car because they can't get to work to earn money so they don't have to join the bums sleeping on the cardboard. They will not be borrowing high 5 figures to low 6 figures for Rosie the Robot.

If Rosie was the only output she would never happen. Rosie might happen as a side benefit of replacing American workers but only for the rich people.

The vast majority which may be replaced would probably be better off burning down the factory rather than celebrate their upcoming domestic helper.

[randomNumber7]

If you have a robot doing household work you can spend more time at work /S

[kelvinjps10]

At that point why not have a human cleaning service it will probably be cheaper

[luckydata]

it's not cheap at all and the privacy and logistical implications of letting a stranger inside your house is something not everyone wants to deal with. I would rather have a robot.

[infinitezest]

Suggesting that a robot is the more privacy friendly option is an interesting take.

[Marha01]

Why not? A recording from a robot can be potentially viewed by a real human, if the company is not reputable (happened with robotic vacuums). But by default, no humans will view it.

A human house cleaner by definition is a real human looking at your home every time.

[defrost]

One human, with a single set of human eyes and a limited network of associates with few immediate criminals looking to take advantage (although, yes, that does happen).

Versus a small army of roomba's and equivalents mapping out floor plans and tangentially exposing human occupation times with that large data set almost certainly exposed to criminal and surveillance networks that will almost certainly use some of that choicer data to their advantage.

It's literally trade offs in both cases.

[blacksmith_tb]

Not to pull on the tinfoil hat, but I would assume most commercially available home cleaning robots will be covered with cameras, mics, and other sensors, and connected to their manufacturer's cloud... I don't pay for housecleaning, but I would vet humans quite differently.

[stirfish]

I don't trust a robot with my privacy, but I know Linette isn't building a profile of my shopping habits and Wi-Fi traffic. She is also careful to not let my cats out.

[meowkit]

Much easier to remotely brick a robot too I imagine

[jaccola]

Another huge blocker (that is essentially just cost too) is maintenance. These things are like 1000x more complex than a car, need to work in a diverse range of environments, handle water, household chemicals, different humidities, kids, etc… maybe eventually robots will service robots but that seems very hard!

And talking of kids, these will have to be exceedingly safe, a 6ft machine falling on a child is probably a worry most households could do without.

[tartoran]

We'll probably get there in some shape or from but I agree, we're absolutely not there yet. I don't see humanoid robots normalized in households anytime soon but at the same time they'll probably be a thing outside the home.

[pessimizer]

> You'd have a hard time convincing most American families to purchase anything with a >$1000 price tag.

They all have cars. Turns out you can finance things, and turn them into forever debts. Paying $30K to never have to do chores again, or maybe even cook again, and live in a clean neat environment is not only an amazing proposition that opens up a lot of free time for people, but will also have a lot of social pressure behind it. We have social pressure that causes people to buy >$1000 phones to virtually no marginal benefit over $20 phones.

They will be paid off at $500/mo over 10 years, and most renters might just use the one that came with their apartment. If they're more like $80K or $100K I could see having a problem selling them. But if they basically turned apartment buildings into hotels, they would be a bargain for landlords; just give them the keys.

edit: of course, sci-fi has already rehearsed this. You can watch any number of movies and tv shows with families walking through a robot showroom guided by a guy in a cheap suit offering to give them the best deal. I'm sure you could find written examples from the 40s.

[nearbuy]

Unitree's R1 humanoid robot is only about $6000, and it's still a nascent, smallish scale technology. They will come down.

If the future home robots are any good, it saves you from buying a dishwasher and robot vacuum. It can replace a maid/cleaning service and gardener/lawn-mowing service. For anyone paying for those services, it pays for itself.

$1000 isn't that high. Probably about a third of American households have an appliance over $2000, which is still a massive market.

[monknomo]

I doubt it'd save you from purchasing a dishwasher - those things are very efficient and not very expensive. Perhaps it'd save you from loading and unloading a dishwasher

[xnx]

Have 2 dishwashers, and you never need to load or unload (as an extra step).

[nearbuy]

I have a dishwasher and I still usually just hand wash. It takes about 10 seconds to wash a dish.

The side benefit is all your dishes are always available. With the dishwasher, up to one full dishwasher load are dirty at any time, which means you need more dishes and more cupboard space than someone without a dishwasher.

If the robot is going to clear your dishes and wash them for you right away, what's the dishwasher for? To save the robot 10 minutes?

[imtringued]

Just use the shortest two cycle program while following the two stage powder suggestion by Technology Connections. Obviously, if you are American you have to make sure the water going into the dishwasher is hot.

Honestly I don't even bother with two cycles and just use a 45 minute program in a 45cm wide dishwasher while throwing the extra powder in there anyway because it is too cheap to care about the waste vs tabs.

[imp0cat]

Mostly to save water and energy. I have a hard time believing the robot would be more efficient washing dishes by hand.

[qsera]

If someone can make a robot that can keep a house and surroundings clean and pretty, it is going to sell like hot cakes..

[Dumblydorr]

Price point: they’ll be very low volume and very high price. There’s enough inequality and plenty of cash at the top to support such luxury robots. Everyone else will be doing their chores the old fashioned way, with their own hands.

[codegeek]

You never know the future but imagine the people who were bearish on personal computers when it wasn't a thing yet but was being discussed. Imagine Email, Internet etc etc. Now they are commodities. I am sure one day AI Robots will be a commodity that we could buy for $1000. May be 10 years from now. But it is coming.

[tootie]

I think domestic robots will make a lot of incremental progress and that few, if any, will be humanoid. We'll see a laundry folder and sock picker-upper and they'll be more like roombas or just big cubes. And tethered.

[kibwen]

The more likely scenario is that the hucksters currently hyping the idea of humanoid robots will gradually move the goalposts so that, when we eventually get a big, soft, stationary cube with six inflatable robot arms they'll point to it and say "behold, a humanoid robot!" and declare their predictions vindicated.

[jonplackett]

Yeah if you can afford the probably 10x it will actually cost, you can also just afford a cleaner to come twice a week and be able to do a wider variety of tasks (anyone going to trust this with ironing?)

[luckydata]

if you give me a robot that cleans the house and can do dishes and laundry I'll easily pay the cost of a compact car for that. I know a LOT of working families that would feel similarly.

[neutronicus]

I mean, a twice-monthly house-cleaning service is running you ballpark 5k/year and people treat that shit as non-negotiable. I tried to claw back that line item after our second baby was born (wife didn't want them in the house anyway when we had a newborn), and it was completely unsuccessful. She claimed misery and all our friends were on her side.

So the lifestyle stayed inflated.

[soperj]

> ballpark 5k/year

How big is your house? When we had a cleaning lady it was $70 a go. Under $2000 for every second week.

[infecto]

$70 a go? That’s got to be the cash only person to person handshake agreement. That would never buy you laundry too.

I think I remember maybe around $100 including laundry almost 20 years ago and that was a cash type arrangement, weekly including laundry (multi hour visit).

[pertymcpert]

I have a 1300 sqft house, 3b2b. Costs me around $200 for a cleaning.

[soperj]

Ours was a 1300 3b1b. It was $35 an hour, they finished everything in under 2 hours. I'm guessing(hoping!) they have to be there for more than 2 hours for $200?

[drusepth]

Same, it was $150 for 1400 sq ft house last I did it, so roughly same ballpark. I do remember it being closer to $80 10ish years ago though.

[neutronicus]

Similar here for 2500 finished sq ft.

[rfrey]

There is a lot of variance in the price of cleaning tied to location. Cost of living in the area for sure, but also presence or absence of economic migrants and new immigrants.

[neutronicus]

2500 finished square feet in a MCOL east coast metro (Baltimore).

Wondering if you're closer to the southern border or something.

[soperj]

Southern border of Canada yeah.

[qurren]

Yes, but:

1. 80%+ of Americans can't afford house cleaning services. I'm a software engineer in silicon valley and even I clean my own house because I don't think I can afford it. My rents have gone up by more than 5K in the last year, my salary hasn't, so that's coming out of my house cleaning budget.

2. Even if you can afford 5K/year on it, the cleaning service is not an upfront commitment. You can bail anytime when you get laid off and clean your own house.

3. Consumers don't budget rationally. Businesses do.

[neutronicus]

Well, to be honest, a cleaning service is a much more logical purchaser for a cleaning robot. Since you can truck it all over creation, work it 60 hours a week, and undercut all the human cleaning crews on price.

As opposed to a household which might not have enough work to fully utilize it, or just have trouble scheduling times where it can work without causing disruption.

[verdverm]

I think ~car is a more likely range, there's a lot of value in cooking / cleaning, Americans buy cars pretty frequently

[lanthissa]

if all it could do was operate a lawn mower and a shovel, the annual value to a homeowner in the north east is ~1-2k depending on lawn size assuming they value their free time at the same amount as their hourly wage.

what you have to keep in mind is homeowners salary is way above avg salary so anything you can do to effect them has a much larger impact than it would seem at first.

[phyzix5761]

Just slap an Apple logo on it and you can charge whatever you want.

[f6v]

Self-driving car brings a robot cleaner to your door step once a week.

[badpun]

They could be shared, and work practically non-stop (minus nights, as that would wake people up). That'd bring the per-consumer cost down by a large fraction. The sharing would likely be organized by a commercial third-party, but still, it could be much cheaper than human cleaners.

Having said that, it could still be decades till the robot is ready to be released into human homes unsupervised. The variation in human homes, what people store in them etc. is not easy. However, it could be ready for hotels much sooner.