A Boring Dystopia

Funnily enough my Roomba is the ONE thing I rely on to argue against the "robotic uprising". When people fawn over 1X’s Neo or Tesla humanoid I can happily testify that as relatively long term mobile robot owner... it sucks! In theory it's amazing right, in theory you program it, go out while it clean the place, go back to charge itself, etc. So much free time for you now, right?

No... you need to make way for it. You need to actually setup the place for such a basic task. Think you can just "wing it" and let it work while you sip on a cocktail outside? Sure, come back to find it in an enraged BDSM session, rope all over it as it pulls over a char with cable entangle deep inside.

Honestly it's like AI more broadly : the concept is so simple to understand and the result is something we ALL want... that every single time there is an improvement, no matter how small, we love to speculate that truly this time we are getting "close" to make it work. Truth is, we have no idea of the complexity of the problem.

Related https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dexterity/ who did make Roombas and more.

The perfect anti-publicity.

iRony

She's not cleaning because the floors dirty, she's just trying to pass the time, when I worked at a small shop that got fuck all customers, I cleaned that floor so much, I think I stripped the top layer off.

This image is 10 years old - I bought the 980 (top shelf, third from the left, highest model pictured) as my first bot. Black friday 2016.

For anyone wondering, iR bots have great smarts but suck ass for hardware. I went through a total of 6 iR bots across 3 models, spending up to 1.6k USD for a model (and extended warranties by the store, which I used every time each failed, again, out of warranty). Oh and iR customer support is staffed only by certified assholes - I'm a disabled tech enthusiast and literally every single person I spoke to, both phone and email, was a condescending motherfucker. Every, last, one.

I've tried almost all the brands sold in the US, and I prefer Neato, which was bought by a German company and killed, so uh... that's great. Shark is absolutely literal garbage, the one I bought failed after 28 days, Ecovacs are designed to fail after about 9 months of moderate use every other day (a wheel will start to fail to rotate, causing it to go I'm circles; two models, 3 units, across 2.5y did this). I'm testing a Roborock that has been okay so far, but it's only been in use for two months...

Usually, extended warranties are bullshit. Here, I implore you to get one if you're getting a bot. I'm now on bot make/model 8 (not counting replacements of the same model!), in 9 years. Seriously.

Anyway, 'lol funny picture'.

This is what their customers will be doing in 6 months when they have to shut down the app.

Got a Roomba for my previous place and it eventually sabotaged itself by scratching the cover of the alignment beam for docking until the unit could no longer align itself with the station. It was an obvious bug in the system, but iRobot wouldn't provide any customer service without extensive repair costs.

That was the end of my adventures into home robotics.

This pic always confused me. The outlet should have had two running throughout the day for redundant cleaning duty just to show off the technology. It shows a lack of confidence in the product.