[adventured]

Any task that humans really hate to do, but like or need to have done.

In one giant category: cleaning. That includes dusting, cleaning walls and ceilings, cleaning showers and tubs and toilets, cleaning windows.

Cooking food. Starting initially from simple things, evolving to more elaborate combinations. Chef3000 can now cook over 500 things! Self-cleaning!

Mowing the grass. Some companies are already deep into trying to solve this of course.

A total laundry system (this is decades away from being practical, and may require the classic sci-fi robot that does everything). Give the system the clothing, it sorts and understands fabrics and colors, or can be trained to identify specific clothing, washes it, dries it, folds it.

[mikepurvis]

The total laundry system strikes me as something that's unlikely to be first deployed in a domestic setting. The initial iterations will be large enough and expensive enough that they'll need to be installed in malls, streets, airports, etc as a kind of very large vending machine: dump your stuff into the chute, swipe credit card, come back in 90 mins.

[prawn]

Cleaning bathrooms is horrible. I don't know why we haven't built bathrooms that can be sealed, towels/art put in a cupboard, and then a button pushed to pressure spray the interior and blow dry it. Waterproofed components, lighting and cabinetry wouldn't be impossible.

We pay a cleaner mostly because the bathroom is little joy to clean.

[jamessb]

A woman called Frances Gabe essentially did this with her entire house ('the self-cleaning house'): http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/17/garden/son-of-carwash-the-...

[gwern]

> I don't know why we haven't built bathrooms that can be sealed, towels/art put in a cupboard, and then a button pushed to pressure spray the interior and blow dry it.

I recall that Buckminster Fuller tried to build that sort of bathroom: the idea was that it'd be basically a one-piece metal thing with no seams or cracks for mold/dirt and all rounded corners, so one could just spray it down. I guess it didn't work for the same reason a lot of his ideas never got picked up.

[prawn]

There are self-cleaning public toilets in many places these days.

I think it would be possible if the right suppliers set their minds to it. I guess it requires the spraying and drying technology and that won't exist until the bathroom hardware itself exists, and that won't change until the spraying/drying is an option.

[riffraff]

there used to be public toilets like that in my town. The first I used it I fell in love and I've been dreaming of a similar setup at home (minus the obscenity on the wall, probably)