There's a Simple Reason We Don't Already Have Robots in Every Home
Human lives are messy. Robots still need things to be neat. Amazon's entry into the "household robot" arena won't change that.
One reason this newsletter exists is that labs around the world are doing so much ingenious research around friendly, articulate, human-aware robots. Swept up in it all, I tend to forget that regular folks (including me) have yet to see, or want, such a machine in their homes. People love autonomous vacuum cleaners and seem open to a look at other one-use devices, like robot lawn mowers and robot weed-pullers. But these devices are robots in the same sense that a dishwasher is a robot. They follow instructions for doing a specific task that once required a person.
I don’t meant to diss the achievements involved in these devices. It is no trivial task to make a household machine that can move around humans and their stuff, and whack only weeds and not flowers or the cat. But once people get used to the mobility of handy gadgets that do one thing, I don't think they will even …