
CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work - tlb
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ces-was-full-of-useless-robots-and-machines-that-dont-work
======
bane
Here's what I want robots to do:

1) Wash my dishes, dry them and put them away completely automatically.

2) Wash and dry my clothes, fold them and put them away completely
automatically.

These two things would save me hours of work per week. FoldiMate simply isn't
even close to being good enough, but I'd be willing to spend about that much
for a robot that could do #2.

I can vacuum my floor by myself and greet people at the door, thank you. I
have no use for drones, or bipedal robots, or some kind of other walking robot
at all. Alexa and similar provide nothing to me that I've been able to
ascertain.

I wouldn't mind some kind of thing that can hold stuff and follow me around
(and up and down stairs) on occasion, but that suitcase isn't going to do it.

Anybody who can crack either #1 or #2 is going to break the robotics industry
wide open.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
1) Get two dishwashers. Alternate them clean/dirty. Think of them as self-
washing cabinets from sci-fi.

2) Get a laundry service or maid service.

Save thousands of dollars.

~~~
mahmud
Am I the only one that washes dishes immediately after use? No need to even
use the machine. Wash immediately after use, let them dry on rack, wipe and
put away.

Dishes and laundry are a total non-issue.

~~~
S_A_P
Have a family of 7 and get back to me on that one. Edit: not trying to be
snarky but a use case for a single person or small family breaks down quickly
when you have young kids and have special diets(that require an entirely
different set of dishes) then you can see where automation is useful.

~~~
mikekchar
On the other hand, according to the US census, as of 2016 the number of
households with 7 or more family members is 1.27% while the number of
households with 1 family member is 28.13%. If we take into account the
households with 3 or fewer family members we are talking over 75% of the US.

I think it is completely reasonable not to consider your circumstance when
giving general advice. The vast majority of people can choose a much simpler
solution because they have much simpler problems. It's interesting to hear
what people in your situation need to do, but I wouldn't expect many people to
relate because they have no such experience.

~~~
verroq
And how about the purchasing power of a family of 1?

~~~
uxp
Is the purchasing power of a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) any higher
than someone living alone, specifically when talking about purchasing home
appliances?

I mean occasionally my wife and I will both purchase bread on the way home
resulting in us having a lot of bread, but I can't think of a time we both
accidentally bought a refrigerator or oven on the same weekend.

~~~
Tyrek
Well, a decent chunk of people living alone are probably renting, so that
changes the whole appliance-purchasing dynamics already, but to directly
answer your question - yes? The increasingly common dual income family has
more income than a single person, and furthermore benefits from the ability to
share certain costs efficiently - how would that not result in higher
purchasing power?

~~~
mikekchar
Statistics for disposable income by family size is hard to get (I don't think
the US census measures that). My gut feeling is that dual income, no kids
families are going to be at the very top because not only are kids incredibly
expensive, but not having kids means that you can concentrate on work. Having
said that, family size will also skew around age so it's really hard to say.
I'll just say that I've never met a family with kids that isn't concerned
about money.

But even having more money, will people buy robot appliances? Again, my gut
feeling is that singles are actually more likely to buy things like that
because the downside of making an ineffective purchase is dramatically lower.

------
phreack
A weird aspect of CES is that it's THE trade show that blows up outside the US
on developing countries. News programs send people to report on what is
absolutely certainly the future and coming up if they were to be believed.
I've always found it surprising, as no true disruptors are revealed there, and
every year it seems to get worse as the article notes.

------
raitom
We are talking about machines but during my last trip to Japan I’ve been blown
away by the domotic present in the appartment I rented. There was a self-
filling bathtube that I could program directly from the kitchen.

Is there any « bathtube auto-fill/alexa » product in the US? I never been able
to find something like that. I’d like to be able to ask alexa to prepare my
bath while I’m cooking.

~~~
visarga
Self fill bathtub? That's a good one. I have a "smart" self-adjusting faucet
that can be set directly in temperature.

... but I can't live without a washlet (electronic bidet/toilet). I have come
to the conclusion that dry manual wiping is out for me, because in the end it
just smears a thin film of shit all over. The washlet is nice - the seat is
warmed, water is warmed and it dries me "hands free". It's an amazing yet
unassuming robot.

~~~
raitom
I will definitely invest in a washlet.

Any link for this smart faucet?

~~~
visarga
yes, something like this: [https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Teka-Pro-Thermostat-
Bathtub-Faucet-...](https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Teka-Pro-Thermostat-Bathtub-
Faucet-Fitting-Single-Lever-Mixer/942144911)

------
zitterbewegung
I used to work in the event services industry and CES no longer needs to
exist.

All of the major companies can hold their own press events and promote their
products. Why buy an exhibitor booth at CES when you could take the same money
and DIY. Apple , Google and Microsoft get this. Also, things like Kickstarter
do the same. In a few years CES , E3 won't really exist anymore they are
already dead.

~~~
jandrese
CES is for brand recognition. There are thousands of products that come into
existence and disappear every year. Having to find the website for all of them
would never happen. Even aggregators like this site are going to miss most of
them. Walking the floors of the convention is a great way to get a huge
infodump on what people are planning to sell.

I agree that a lot of what goes on there is a stupendous waste of money, but
you are guaranteed to see dozens of products that you've never heard about
when you walk the show floor.

The other reason people set up booths there is that they're looking for
distribution partners and investors. It's a long shot, but it's better than
every distributor and every investor getting a call from every company that
wants to make/sell products in the US. This is why you see a ton of Chinese
companies with tiny booths with names like Shenzen Happy Fun Heavy Industries
just waiting for someone with an investor badge to walk by and make an offer
to sell their phone cases and USB cables.

~~~
zitterbewegung
I think that Linus Tech tips could singlehandedly eliminate CES.

------
abalashov
I have never been to and didn't follow CES, but the little I learned about
this one just made me depressed about our civilisational priorities: an
unimaginably gargantuan space of Chinese electronic junk largely devoted to
servicing the whims of pampered and effete digiratti, all of which will be
obsolete, discarded and piling up in landfills a mere few years after it's
taken to market. I got about 30 seconds into the news clip about the
highlights and had to turn it off.

------
pishpash
I feel this cycle of hype of several technologies (not just robots) has a
larger-than-ever component of the MBA culture wherein pseudo-understanding and
handwaving are rewarded. It has the same smell as reading crackpot imaginings
about "the body electric" from the 19th century or "quantum neurology" from
the 20th.

------
adventured
CES 1982: full of useless computers that don't do much of anything, have
little to no software available for them, very expensive. (should not be taken
literally, the point however is obvious)

Check back in about 5 to 7 years.

------
jl6
> A giant banner in the main hallway read “A better life. A better world.” But
> all I could think of is how much I wanted to be back home in the real world
> where, even if it’s primitive, most technology just works.

To be fair, most real world tech doesn’t just work either.

------
apsec112
Is it really that surprising that a convention whose whole focus is new and
experimental technology would have lots of things that don't work very well?

------
erik_landerholm
Don’t care! It’s the golden age of tvs! Oleds are a technology that’s actually
living up to the hype. I have an lg wallpaper tv and you can roll it up! The
new ones look even more flexible. One even rolls up into a box.

Robots will catch up. The future of TVs is now!

~~~
pitaj
I want my OLED monitors. I've been waiting for years for an OLED monitor, it's
my dream. The closest thing is VA+Quantum Dot monitors, but they just aren't
the same.

~~~
gnode
What do you want it for? I recently got an OLED TV which I'm now using as a
monitor for games and video, and it's brilliant (although you might think
otherwise if you have extraordinary latency demands). I also find the large
size of the display more immersive than a conventional monitor.

I still use an LCD for static content (programming; web browsing; etc.) as I
want to avoid burn in, but I don't really care about high contrast and wide
colour gamut in that use case.

------
sirmike_
Heatworks made this $300 wonder.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4UgIijI0Z0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4UgIijI0Z0)
I am down. Sad to see more hype than substance re:robots.

~~~
jbob2000
Too small, completely useless.

I don't need a dishwasher to wash a couple of glasses and cutlery. Those take
2 seconds to do by hand.

I need a dishwasher because 20 people were just over and I don't want to be up
all night washing. Or we just made an intense meal that needed lots of
equipment and I don't want to wash 10 bowls, 3 knives, 4 spoons, a spatula,
and a cutting board.

------
ThomPete
This article and many comments here completely misses the bigger picture.

Robots is only one way for AI to be expressed. To expect us to be much further
ahead with robots shows how wrong most discussions about robots are.

In most industrial settings, robots is the standard and works just fine, in an
increasing number of warehouses and other semi controlled environments it's
gaining popularity.

Consumner robots ai needs to be much more generalized for them to feel "smart"
as they are in much less predictable environments.

To expect consumer robots to be much further than they are makes no sense.
Thats not where the primary progress is made just yet and no one maybe besides
media and a few opportunistic companies are under that illusion.

------
cdoxsey
The next 20 years will be a constant stream of half broken robots and ai
systems. At least until we either get them to actually work or we figure out
how bad they are and go back to using people again.

It will be like setting up video conferencing, except for everything.

Your car will go to the wrong place because it failed to account for a leap
second, thus breaking gps.

Your fridge will put itself in eco mode because it thinks you're on vacation
from misreading your calendar and spoils all your food.

Your front door will forget who you are after you get a haircut and lock you
out.

After an automatic system upgrade your shower will no longer produce hot
water, because a bug results in the system using Celsius instead of
Fahrenheit. Your bug report is ignored for a week and after a dozen people
complain you get in an argument with the engineer about whether the place you
live in actually exists.

Wait. Who am I kidding... You won't be able to talk to an engineer. All
support will be automated and it will be impossible to get the robot to
understand your complaint. You'll just have to replace it. I suspect you're
going to have to replace things a lot.

On the bright side it will probably be really cheap though.

And then there will be all the outages.

One of these days Uber is going to accidentally send all drivers in a big city
to a single location. It'll be the great ai outage of 2018, the first of soon
to be monthly occurrences of bizarre system failures we can't begin to
imagine.

I feel like someone should write a pg wodehouseesque novel about the "smart"
future.

~~~
rimliu

      > Your car will go to the wrong place because it failed to
      > account for a leap second, thus breaking gps.
    

I am taking a hard stance on this: if the car cannot drive without GPS then it
is not autonomous.

~~~
pjc50
It's reasonable to require a GPS to _navigate_ , but not for moment-to-moment
driving, e.g. knowing which lane you're in. Otherwise it won't work in
tunnels.

~~~
hinkley
Or cities, or elevated roads.

Tall buildings can occlude GPS satellites. And current driving software
decides I’ve gotten on the freeway, with no onramp, going the wrong way mind
you, when I’m actually under it

------
Pxtl
Love the Simone Giertz shout-out.

And yes, as a father of 3 who spends half his weekend on laundry, I would pay
a lot for a really functional laundribot.

~~~
rorykoehler
Why not pay a maid?

------
dpweb
There are a lot of solutions looking for problems nowadays.

------
pishpash
This is what you get when you can borrow money for zero or negative interest
rates for ten years, and every "investment" looks like gold. Thanks Uncles
Bernanke/Draghi/Kuroda.

------
Feniks
Well TRULY life transforming tech doesn't happen all that often. Oh sure the
tech companies are going to say that 2018 TVs and smartphones are so
disruptive from last year...

------
maurits
I get the sentiment, but I have faith. The RAND computer was probably also
quite irrelevant for the household at its time.[1]

[1]:
[https://bwithers.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/rand_home_compu...](https://bwithers.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/rand_home_computer.jpg)

------
Laura-Vieujean
What was your favorite product at CES ?

~~~
jandrese
One thing I'd thought about for years finally appeared at CES. They had a
mister you attach to the outside unit of your heat pump. It included the
deionizer/water softener to prevent the minerals from building up on your A/C.

But then the company ruined it by selling it only as a $100/year service.

~~~
knodi123
I bought a pair of those several years ago. It worked for about a year and
then broke down. I tried to sell the remaining unit for 90% off on craigslist,
and there were no takers. It was the kickstarter version 1.0 of this:

[http://mistbox.com/](http://mistbox.com/)

------
kulu2002
We are still improving flat panel displays and making smartphones over smart.
It feels like there is atleast a decade for AI, Machine learning, NLP, AR/VR
to come into mainstream and do some meaningful stuff for mankind.

------
Symmetry
Robotic technology is slowly making its way from more structured environments
to less structured ones. Most of the work in factories is now done by robots.
The invasion of warehouses is underway (and I'm helping with that). Probably
you'll be seeing robots stocking shelves in retail. And folding clothes is
substantially harder than stocking shelves and you, the consumer, aren't
willing to pay nearly as much for a robot to fold your clothes as a store is
for a robot because the amount of labor being replaced is much smaller. So
it'll be a while.

------
jeffreygoesto
Didn’t we have that topic already? [http://www.businessinsider.com/san-
francisco-tech-startups-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-
tech-startups-replacing-mom-2015-5?IR=T)

------
trisimix
I dont like the article. First of all the simone giertz intro was pretty
cringey. Second of all you just wrote about yourself being a dick to a bunch
of people.

------
RandomInteger4
Anyone here go to CES who can corroborate the linked story?

~~~
jandrese
That stupid laundry folding robot was there. They had a "show" every 15
minutes or so where they would pick a person from the audience to stuff
clothes into the machine and have them not folded (the demo machine only had
the loader).

I didn't see the crashed companion robots. They were working when I walked by,
but I didn't pay them much mind because I thought they were stupid. There were
also a number of advertising robots which show up every year. They have
screens for heads/chests and don't do much of anything useful. The new
addition this year was a French model that was built like a Heroin Chic
Supermodel instead of the superdeformed look that most of the Japanese
companies opt for.

IMHO, Google's voice stuff was more common than Alexa this year. It actually
got annoying to hear someone say "hey Google" for the millionth time. Even the
goddamn Monorail was saying it.

~~~
throwawaybbqed
The companion robots were there last year too (in Sands IIRC). They were also
working when I passed them .. singing a creepy old McDonald had a farm. I
spoke to a rep and she said kids can get rough with these things so they are
targeting seniors. Yeah.. I dunno about this one.

Cruzr was a big robot from a Shenzen company. I really liked it. I have seen
Jibo in action .. the Cruzr I saw had a personality that surpised me!

I thought there was another laundry robot that won a prize. I went to a "demo
time" but it wasn't a demo .. it was just a talk. They had a video from inside
the robot and they were obscuring things. My personal opinion but I was very
annoyed at the lack of demo (so were others) and felt they might be hiding
something.

The table tennis robot was pretty awesome and so was the dobot magician. I
could hardly believe that the same arm was used as a 3d printer, a lazer
engraver and a paint brush.

Some of the VR stuff I saw was disappointing. The pimax guys were running the
Blu demo .. what a horrible demo to show case their tech. I couldn't tell a
difference between it and my oculus. I tried the HTC vive pro at the Intel
booth and it was decent (I was able to clearly read text). But what blew me
away was the Sansar VR demo.

I was stupid and skipped the Intel wireless headset demo .. kicking myself
over it. Saw a bunch of engineering demos that were very cool.

~~~
jandrese
That table tennis robot looked like it cost a million bucks.

I will say that VR was kind of absent last year and was absolutely everywhere
this year. It still feels like we need a couple of years before the VR stuff
is fully baked though.

~~~
duwease
VR is very much here and functional.. I've been playing a few hours a week for
the last year. There are certainly less AAA games than the main platforms
(which is expected due to the economics of having <5% of the install base),
but the ones they do have blow my hair back. One of my favorite things to do
with visitors is strap them in and hear them rave when it's better than they
expected.. which it always is.

------
y3sh
Still in the era of the sharper image. Gimmicky tech with rush-to-market
sensationalism.

------
m3kw9
The pitch deck for the investors must be all drawing boards then

------
ProAm
CES is a dying trade show, its not worth much of anything of relevance these
days.

------
kylesf
This folding robot was at least more impressive in person.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16865506/laundroid-
laundr...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16865506/laundroid-laundry-
folding-machine-foldimate-ces-2018)

~~~
ashelmire
Do you work for them? The video on that page never shows it successfully
folding anything. The narrator gave it a t-shirt and it failed.

~~~
kylesf
Fair enough, it just seemed more impressive in theory. I just did quick search
because I saw it at the show.

