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Walked through a robotics lab at Georgia Tech last month and felt like an idiot
They had a robot that could fold laundry in 90 seconds flat while my $2,000 machine at home just spins wet clothes. Has anyone seen real-world automation that actually works better than the stuff we buy for our houses?
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anthony7634mo ago
That thing about "the real world is way messier than a factory floor" really hits home for me. It's like how my smart thermostat never seems to get it right, it'll kick the AC on when I'm already cold or ignore a hot afternoon because it's stuck on some schedule. Meanwhile the heating and cooling systems in big office buildings have people monitoring them constantly and tweaking things. I think we expect home automation to just work perfectly out of the box but the stuff in factories, labs, and warehouses has teams of engineers babying it all day long. Same with my Roomba that gets stuck on a rug tassel while the ones in warehouses can navigate pallets and people without crashing. We're basically asking our home stuff to solve problems that companies pay specialists to handle.
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aaron8803mo ago
Man come on, you're giving the home stuff way too much of a pass here. That folding robot is a perfect example of what smart automation actually looks like, it does one simple task perfectly and fast. Your $2000 washing machine is the exact same thing, it just spins clothes. The difference is the robot is actually useful while your machine is basically a dumb bucket with a motor. I get that factory floors are controlled environments, but that's just an excuse for lazy product design. A roomba that costs the same as a decent phone should be able to handle a rug tassel. That's not asking for a million dollar arm, that's asking for basic software that works. The real problem is companies keep pushing cheap junk with flashy features and hoping we don't notice it barely functions.
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sarahpark4mo ago
My cousin works at a Toyota plant in Kentucky and I used to joke that he was basically just a button pusher. Then he showed me video of their assembly line welding arms that can switch between six different car models in like 30 seconds. I always thought factory automation was just big clunky arms that do the same thing over and over, but that stuff is way smarter than I gave it credit for. Now I kind of get why home robots are so far behind, the real world is way messier than a factory floor. Honestly it made me feel less bad about my own washing machine, not more.
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ruby6594mo ago
True but a factory can spend a million dollars on one arm. Your Roomba costs 300 bucks.
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