One robot shared among a whole block doesn't seem realistic. That just doesn't happen, not in the US. You'd never get everyone together to agree on it and all pay their fair share up front.
Much more likely would be a robot-for-hire service, like existing maid services, with the robot being driven in on a set schedule. The robot would have the digital key to your IoT lock and would let itself in.
Re:What Comes After the Roomba?
by barrow-rider on Thursday October 25, 2018 @12:58PM
(#18302387)
Maybe not a whole block but I could see 2-3 average-size houses splitting costs and times effectively. Outside of an hour or two of dishes, an hour or two of laundry, and a couple hours cleaning, there will likely be a lot of idle time.
Like, my grandmother has a maid come once a week and the maid doesn't even use up all of her 2-hour appointment getting the place squared away.
Uber for Roombas
Re:What Comes After the Roomba?
by GlenTheMachine on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @05:54PM
(#18296786)
Then you're still competing with Merry Maids. Which pays minimum wage. Sure, there's a point at which the robot works fast enough for long enough with a sufficiently high MTBF that it becomes cheaper than a minimum wage worker. But it's still a very hard price point to hit.
I would more for a robot cleaning service than a human one. The rich stopped using servants in America more because of social reasons that cost ones, although that idea seems to be fading away as Silicon Valley tries to get people to pay to have everything done for them. Call it "single serving servants", for everything.
and you can't tell it simple non-standard instructions as efficiently. 'Leave the sheets in the spare bedroom, and please use our non-allergenic cleaning solution on the bottom shelf in the laundry'
Re:What Comes After the Roomba?
by blacksmith_tb on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @06:10PM
(#18296910)
I like the idea of the shared bot, but the gotcha is that my neighbors and I likely all want the cleaning to happen when we're at work, children are school, etc. Spreading the times equitably means everyone having to put up with it whirring and bashing around in the middle of the night once a week...
If the robot is humanoid or not is beside the point. It may be an expensive robot, but if it lasts years, and can service many households, it becomes affordable.
A 500,000 dollar robot, if it lasts a decade, and can service ten or twenty households is between 2,500 and 5,000 a year, 200-400 dollars a month plus maintenance and travel? It's not inconceivable. If it has 100 operational hours a week it could spend 5-10 hours at your house cleaning a week.
I'm not familiar enough with the price of house cleaning services to know if this a good deal or not. But if that first cost falls from 500,000 to 100,000 or 50,000 then surely this starts to be a great deal.