"People also expected Wakamaru to take over household duties like sweeping and cooking"
That is actually annoyingly common. Lots of people have no idea of how hard those "basic" things are for AI. Funny story: my aunt (age 50) thinks that those "Johnny 5"-like robots, that are remote controlled and whose voice is simply the operator taking into a microphone, can ACTUALLY TALK AND UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING YOU SAY!
Though I couldn't justify spending $14,000 on a robot for household chores that can't even sweep...or vacuum. Wait, having it open doors is an future upgrade? What CAN it do? Weather forecasts and email? My Pentium 1 can do that...
The market is certainly there for a robot that can cook and clean. It's just a matter of getting AI up to snuff while keeping battery life acceptable.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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"People also expected Wakamaru to take over household duties like sweeping and cooking"
That is actually annoyingly common. Lots of people have no idea of how hard those "basic" things are for AI. Funny story: my aunt (age 50) thinks that those "Johnny 5"-like robots, that are remote controlled and whose voice is simply the operator taking into a microphone, can ACTUALLY TALK AND UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING YOU SAY!
I blame Hollywood.... :P
Though I couldn't justify spending $14,000 on a robot for household chores that can't even sweep...or vacuum. Wait, having it open doors is an future upgrade? What CAN it do? Weather forecasts and email? My Pentium 1 can do that...
The market is certainly there for a robot that can cook and clean. It's just a matter of getting AI up to snuff while keeping battery life acceptable.