
Reach Robotics is closing - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/03/reach-robotics-is-closing-up-shop/
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jefft255
They didn’t have a lot of money; 6.5M $ isn’t much to do robotics development.
As someone else pointed out, consumer robotics is hard because shitty robots
are still expensive for everyday users and are mostly useless toys.

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grizzles
You can't build a business if you need 10-15 half baked assumptions/bets all
to be true for it to succeed. Robotics startups need to internalize an
attitude that consumer robotics will never be a thing. Of course they will,
but the comparative ease of targeting industrial applications makes consumer
robotics such a challenging path forward for a startup to take.

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fpvracing
People _are_ buying consumer robots. We just call them drones.

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nosianu
I would think that vacuum cleaners are the prime example for household robots
at this time? As an IT guy who nevertheless has zero desire to buy anything
"geeky" for myself, still prefers analog dials and controls, still doesn't own
a smartphone, those also are the only ones I could find a use for in my own
home (but at this time I still vacuum manually). People with a lawn might be
interested in robot lawn mowers, I don't know if they work as well as the
vacuum robots (I imagine there might be a power issue) but if they do that too
sounds like a good use. Same for swimming pool cleaners.

What I would really pay a lot for: Small _hunter-killer robots_ to hunt
insects in my home!

A bunch of small robots equipped with night-vision and some tiny weapon(s),
mechanical and/or laser, crawling around catching bugs. Sure, spiders do that
too - but I really, really don't want to live with (actual) spiders. It's
psychological. A few well-armed mechanical spiders for bug hunting would be
nice. I had bed bugs once, if I had had small insect hunter-killer robots
well-equipped with sensors to see them crawl to me at night it would have been
a godsend. Anyone producing something like that that actually works, you'll
make billions! And it really doesn't have to be all that intelligent: Think
about it, mosquitoes, bed bugs, they really don't have much of a brain, and
how well they work. It should be doable to build robots that can compete with
that low level of intelligence.

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msg3
I can confirm that my robot vacuum cleaner at least is excellent - runs every
day without a problem and leaves the house noticeably cleaner. For under £200,
I have almost entirely eliminated a weekly chore.

I suspect future attitudes to manual vacuum cleaning will be similar to manual
clothes or dish washing.

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nategri
I'm definitely an outsider but I get the distinct impression that starting a
successful consumer robotics company is like 1000X harder than the baseline
for other kinds of tech ventures.

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jpm_sd
Unfortunately the reason it's hard is because nobody wants these products.
They don't do very much, they cost hundreds of dollars - where is the value?

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ackbar03
Agree, I feel like aside from the roomba maybe there hasn't really been a
consumer bot useful for anything

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mc32
I wonder if the tech is mature enough to make an indoor flying-pest control
robot. There is the salt pellet shooter to annihilate some indoor pests. There
were attempts to make laser armed pest killers.

Obviously even the salt pellet solution would be problematic if automated (say
pest lands or is near your face or eyes).

However, a robot which could attack a pest niche where pests are endemic could
have a chance at success.

Summer mosquitoes, Florida roaches, ants, stink bugs, etc.

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robotresearcher
How many dollars did you spend this year on these problems?

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mc32
The annual cost of a pest control contract is about $200. Now that’s for
vermin as well, so it’s apples and oranges. But, something which will rid your
house of flies and mosquitoes as they appear, I’d buy something in the few
hundred dollars range because it’s more than a toy. It takes care of an
annoyance just as a roomba does.

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xnyan
It probably varies from where you live, a single visit alone would be around
$200 where I live, you get a big price break for multiple visits, $50 a pop if
you buy a years worth.

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lacker
I think the lowest hanging fruit in robotic household automation right now is
folding laundry. An interface like, put your clothes in the in-basket and this
device folds them. I could imagine a world where instead of washer and dryer,
a nicely equipped house will have a washer, dryer, and folder. This is
especially useful once you have kids.

Anyway, email me if you’d be interested in building this :P

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robotresearcher
If the the lowest hanging fruit is a loosely structured hi-DOF dextrous
manipulation task we gonna lose our shirts before we fold 'em.

Laundry is the domestic equivalent of de-mining: the perfect robot task if it
weren't for the technical and financial challenges. You have a laundry robot
at home already and it does everything except folding for a reason.

Here's a video of the state of the art not too long ago, using a $500K robot.
Video is 50X speed.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo)

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codesushi42
Hardware is hard.

And robotics is 10X as hard.

Then make it a consumer product that no one needs. And snap, you're dead.

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nomel
I want a robot, owned by my apartment complex, that I can schedule to pick up
my trash.

Getting it to come up the stairs shouldn't bee too hard, right?

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Aromasin
That's not hard. The hard bit is adding capabilities for when people leave
obstacles in the hallway, or little kids are running around and playing with
it, or some arsehole decides to tip it over, or the bin is damaged, or is over
filled, or isn't positioned correctly, or the dumping spot is full, or the
stairs just got new carpet.

The problems with consumer robotics rarely are to do with the actual
mechanics. Most electrical undergrad degrees have a module where you program a
robot to follow a line or course, and it's quite simple to do. The problems
occur when you take it out of it's test environment and 'leave it to the
elements' as it were.

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choonway
Robots have to beat domestic servants in cost / ease of use first.

I'd say when that is achieved, the killer feature would be privacy.

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lacker
In the US, every domestic robot is far, far cheaper than a domestic servant.
The main problem is that domestic robots don’t handle any of the main chores,
besides Roomba doing vacuuming.

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gooddadmike
How about before robots doing chores maybe a whole house volume (TV's,
Doorbell, Phones, Microwave) level control to keep kids asleep. There is a lot
of simple improvements that could go a long way toward making everyday life
better that could happen before domestic robots.

