The problems you list (if they even are problems) are nothing to do with robotics. They're AI problems. And that's AI in the sci-fi novel sense, not the oh so hip "let's build a cluster of 10000 GPUs running a convolution network to recognise cat pictures" sense.

But most of robotics is about AI. The electric and hydraulic aspects are old technologies.

I think the battery problem still remains unsolved, other than that yes it's old technology.

I am not sure batteries would be a problem for a household robot. There are power sockets everywhere. And the robot can take a break from most tasks to charge itself (and like a dog it would spend most of the day sleeping anyway!).

An advanced household robot would not even have to take charging breaks because it would be well up to the task of plugging itself in wherever it would work (except for the dog walking part, obviously)

In a similar line of thinking, I am actually kind of surprised that there are no wired quadrocopter swarms yet, that would form a bucket line of short cables to trade range for the power and infinite endurance of a grid connection. I am quite sure that there must be applications where this deal would be worthwhile.

The idea of Thethered UAVs isn't new. Problem is probably the danger of high voltage tethers that they use.

Why do they need a high voltage tether? They don't need a high voltage battery.

To transmit power, its better to use high voltage and low current. Reduces transmission losses; uses much lighter cables. Then where the power is needed its stepped down with transformers or 'buck converters'.

Thanks, those were the trigger words to conjure up an interesting Google results page.

If you need to connect them with a wire, you might as well sustain them in the air with a long stick and spare the energy.

Might still be cheaper (storage, transport, setup, investment) than a crane or scaffolding when you don't need to support heavy loads. And scaling would only be limited by how much power you can push through the chain, whereas sticks need to be quite massive just to support themselves once you go beyond a few meters of length.

It's not a swarm, but I think the one drone from 3D Robotics can be tethered for essentially unlimited flight time. So that's some progress towards what you have in mind.

True, but you also need the interface for AI, which was BD developing. Human facing AI has a serious limitation if it lives 100% in the box.

I'm genuinely curious: why would someone want to have a dog and have someone else (in your scenario, a robot) interact with it.

Because the dog needs to be walked several times a day, whether you need to work late / go on holiday in a non pet friendly place / go out that night / wake up late, or not.

Is it cheaper to buy a robot, than just hire a dog walker?

I love my dog, but I work and It would be nice to have someone come to my house in the middle of the day to interact with her. Take her for a walk and make sure she didn't accidentally flip over her water bowl, etc. It would be peace of mind for me and entertainment for her.

There are lots of situations when you have to leave your home and you can't take your dog with you or it would be very difficult to handle.

Our society is at a point where it can debate having robot butlers for our cats.

What a wasteful time to be alive.

It's still more useful than what 90% of startups are doing, so I wouldn't complain about it. Being able to provide care and entertainment for pets in situations in which you can't be with them is not a bad thing.

If the alternative is for the dog to poo in your flat...

Add:

- Get hacked

- Kill under order

I am actually surprised that we haven't seen assassinations by drones yet (I mean non USAF drones). Consumer drones can't carry a big payload, but I'd guess they can carry enough explosive to kill someone. And even someone super protected like a US president would be helpless facing 5 drones travelling at 50km/h coming his way. I guess most terrorists are dumb and all recent attacks in the west have shown to be low tech, but I'd rather not count on that to protect us.

But in the US it's fine, since the drones have to carry a license number. That will protect us!

Agreed, and I can't imagine why you were modded down.

It's certainly true that most terrorists are complete dumbasses, but not all of them are. In this case, the scenario includes technology that can carry out asymmetric warfare without placing the bad guy in any personal peril, allowing fanatics other than the suicidal variety to play the game.

I don't think there's much that can (or necessarily should) be done to mitigate the risk, but I'm sure that efforts will be made soon enough.

Disney film crews, can take down drones, Secret Service can too.

Ha ha. The Secret Service is not nearly as vicious as Disney film crews...

"drones don't kill people, people kill people"

- AUVSI, in the future

I am not arguing that drones should be banned. But I'm just surprised it hasn't happened already.

I think you are right; and what you're saying reminds me of a story from Malcolm Gladwell about the 1981 Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament [1] that Doug Lenat won. He used some type of genetic algorithm (he never released his source) to find that swarming the challenger with many small boats would dominate as a tactic. Miniature swarms, which drones are cheap enough and more than capable for, are not a tactic that people are use to. I fear that a swarm could be terrible in its destruction if used to hurt people, individually targeted or for mass harm.

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/05/11/how-david-beats...

Same idea as Gen. Paul Van Riper's strategy in the Millennium Challenge war games ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 ). He spammed the enemy with cheap speedboats and motorcycles, forcing the organizers to rewrite the rules to make the game "fair."

I guess a cloud of drones can probably be shot down with some sort of EMP. It's unclear to me how to ensure the EMP is powerful enough to go through the shields of the drone without damaging the systems of the warship it protects.

Both of these articles are fascinating - underdogs with clearly superior strategies dominate, and rather than learning from that, the powers that be just change the rules to prove themselves right. How shortsighted

Yeah, simply say butler next time. Someone made the joke on HN that it always comes down to people wanting a butler.

In short, we're wasting our fucking time on HN AGAIN.