Anyone reading this who works/runs a robotics company, I really want to encourage you to build a robot to pick up trash on city sidewalks as an early product.
Picking up trash requires a lot of dexterity and will come with many challenges, but I think it’s a simpler problem than many household tasks and it’s probably on par for what these tests show is doable.
I think you’re going to have to PR challenges getting people to welcome robots into their homes. If you have robots out in cities providing a public good, not only do they serve as walking advertisements for your company, you’re going to earn some trust before you’re ready deploy them into private spaces.
Plus, governments (or perhaps HOAs for wealthy communities) can be good early customers since you can have a focused sales strategy. Politicians love these types of visible quality of life improvement projects. If you can show that your robots, working round the clock, can decrease litter at a low cost, many cities are going to want to buy them.
> I think you’re going to have to PR challenges getting people to welcome robots into their homes.
I think it's important that someone point out this isn't a 'PR problem'. It's a practical resistance to commodified surveillance. All these domestic robotics companies train on video of users homes, many sell such data, each and every one are a vector for state domestic state surveillance. Not to mention criminal hackers, stalkers and others with an interest in who is at home when and what precisely they are doing. Short of having non-internet connected, locally processing domestic robots - something unlikely to exist in the foreseeable future - they are a privacy nightmare. Bad as google home, alexa and such devices are for privacy - a walking, controllable, camera and set of mechanical arms running loose in a home is infinitely worse.
> interest in who is at home when and what precisely they are doing.
That is pretty far down the list. For the most part, they just want to see what products you have so they can sell you more.
Also, didn't Roomba already leak non-consensual bathroom videos?
I think internet people care about some theoretical surveillance angle more then anyone else actually does. People hire cleaners and tradespeople into their homes all the time.
The practical problems with robots are effectiveness, cost and safety in roughly equal parts.
It is absolutely a PR problem. Privacy is a real concern, but it's the PR that companies are scared of. As, say, Flock have been starting to find out lately. Public backlash matters.
And PR is the problem you have to overcome for people to let smart devices into their homes too. For instance, people started avoiding Ring cameras once it got out that they're a privacy nightmare -- that's PR. Sure, the people that avoid them care about privacy -- that's why they're listening -- but PR is the reason they even had anything to listen to. Likewise, PR is how people get creeped out by robots scanning their homes. They already never wanted that, of course, but they weren't creeped out until they learned about it. That's PR. Now people are wary to let any new devices into their homes, especially robots, because of historical PR like this. And so now it is a PR problem to get people to give you a chance in the first place.
Edit: I want to be explicit here that I'm saying you avoid bad PR by not only being good but having people discover the good. And waiting for people to sufficiently discover it can be a struggle. It doesn't matter how good you are if people don't know. That's what I mean by it being a PR problem -- PR is how people know.
I find your comment bewildering. It seems so focused on the perceived effect of an issue that it leaves no room for the actual material effect of the issue.
Frankly I couldn't give two hoots about the impact on sales of future robotic devices of the 'PR problem' of their perceived privacy intrusions. By contrast the actual danger of their real material privacy intrusions is deeply concerning. Similar to Ring - or more pertinently Flock cameras.
The media discourse is interesting, but only sociologically. The fact that these devices are actually spying is significantly more pertinent.
> PR is the problem you have to overcome for people to let smart devices into their homes too.
Why on earth should real material concerns be 'overcome'? These concerns focus on real and deeply serious issues. They concern child safety, marital privacy and a host of other real issues.
> PR is the reason they even had anything to listen to.
This is factually incorrect. You're confusing the shadows in the cave for reality.
Just about sums up the attitude.
It’s not that the robots are surveilling and that would be morally wrong… it’s that people are upset by it and that impacts the bottom line.
“I’m sorry that you chose to feel that way”
Nowhere did I ever say anything is not a real issue or that people don't have reasons to be upset or any of the things you people seem to be putting in my mouth. By PR problem I literally mean that people have to discover and spread that your product is genuinely not a violation of privacy, which of course requires that your product genuinely not be a violation of privacy. Nowhere did I ever say that the problem is that people have a problem with it. The problem is that people don't know you don't do it until they know. For business that is a struggle because you can't necessarily control what people know like that. All you can do is make the same claims everybody else makes and hope that someone will independently investigate and discover that yours are claims that actually hold up.
> Frankly I couldn't give two hoots about the impact on sales of future robotic devices of the 'PR problem' of their perceived privacy intrusions. By contrast the actual danger of their real material privacy intrusions is deeply concerning. Similar to Ring - or more pertinently Flock cameras.
What I'm saying is that PR influences how the masses perceive your product and therefore whether it gets mass adoption or mass avoidance. Yes, the so-called "material effect" (whether privacy is actually undermined by the product) results in PR one way or the other, but most people don't do the digging to figure out exactly what the material is, they rely on what has reached the public eye.
> Why on earth should real material concerns be 'overcome'? These concerns focus on real and deeply serious issues. They concern child safety, marital privacy and a host of other real issues.
You overcome it by being able to prove you don't invade privacy. That's overcoming the preconceived notion that products in your category are not to be trusted in general.
I never, ever said or meant that the goal is to still undermine privacy but just not have people find out or have a problem with it. (Even though most companies in practice have this goal)
Zero VC funded companies in this space will not eventually invade privacy if they're able to. The only way to avoid that is open source and self-hosted - actually owning the equipment AND fully controlling the open software stack. Anything else will eventually be exploited for spying by a VC funded company. Rug pulls always happen - "Don't be evil" always turns into "Be nearly maximally evil" for financial reasons in corporations configured to be exploitable in this way by their shareholders...
That's like saying a law and order problem is a PR problem because word got out that crime is spiking.
The PR problem is downstream consequence of what can be measured, but the root cause is upstream. Focusing directly on solving the downstream problem is basically Goodharting the metric -- thereby ensuring the upstream problem never really gets solved, and the downstream metric becomes fake and decoupled from the true situation.
Once you "solve the PR problem" what is the incentive to ensure that the root problem is actually solved now that you have successfully blinded yourself (society) from measuring the true problem?
Well, it is a PR problem. It's bad for business to cause a crime spike... that's my point.
I never said focus directly on downstream. I thought it would be obvious that I'm talking about why you bother with upstream, because the downstream effects are important.
It seems I phrased something very wrong because it looks like everybody is assuming I'm saying that you should do as much bad as you can possibly prevent people from noticing.
Places that have lots of trash around will vandalize an unsupervised robot.
Places that will leave alone an unsupervised robot don't have lots of trash around.
Entirely disjoint sets.
How are the two correlated?
Local wealth & social class. Also population density.
People want streets cleaned. Not only will people not pay for that, they'll steal from anyone who tries to clean the streets.
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> If you can show that your robots, working round the clock, can decrease litter at a * low cost *
The idea sounds good, but I'm curious about the "low cost" part. How do you account for vandalism and theft? A sidewalk robot seems like an easy target for being damaged, stripped for parts, or simply stolen.
You just do it in a more civilised country where things don't immediately get stolen or destroyed. East Asian/some SEA countries.
Plenty of delivery robots in Finland at least, with apparently not much problems with them getting stolen or destroyed.
Starship alone seems to have running operations also in UK, Sweden, Estonia and Czhecia.
the countries where this isn't an issue don't have trash all over their streets either lol.
Trash ends up on the streets in non malicious ways all the time. Bins fall over in the wind, stuff flys out of the back of truck beds, etc.
Japan has plenty of trash on steets.
Coincidentally, Asia is a lot more receptive to AI as well. Turns out having strong job protections means that companies actually need to figure out how to make humans more productive with AI, instead of replacing them.
Are you talking about Japan? Because when I think of "Asia" strong job protections are just about at the bottom of the list.
Most of my reference is Japan and South Korea, yes. You're relatively hard to fire there unless you genuinely in the red as a company. They have their own loopholes around this, but you can't just do forever layoffs for no reason like the US.
My much less researched understanding of China is that there's much less protections in terms of well-being (no federal minimum wage, absurd work hours as standard, etc), but China also comes down much harder (at least, compared to the US) on companies that violate laws. Actual punishments will depend on loyalty, but companies take care to avoid that situation to begin with.
I can't speak at all for the rest of SEA.
> much less protections in terms of well-being (no federal minimum wage, absurd work hours as standard, etc)
There absolutely is minimal wage but is set by local governments, because different places have different cost of living.
There are better protections for work hours for salaried workers than America. Anything above 40 hours get paid at 1.5X and anything above 60 hours get paid at 2x.
For layoffs in China, you have to pay N+1 of months of salary in terms of severance. N being the number of years an employee has been there.
And talking about absurd work hours, SK and Japan aren't better than China.
So China overall has far better labor rights protection than the U.S.
>talking about absurd work hours, SK and Japan aren't better than China.
On paper, no. Japan has overtime bonuses too, but you're culturally discouraged from reporting overtime. So 12 hour days are common with no OT. And thats not including "optional" after work outings.
Yet, it's also not uncommon for Japan to bring about the "appearance" of working more than really working. Whether you judge that appearance of work as more or less stressful than China's work standards is a more personal question.
Either way, my main comparison was Asia to the US rather than countries within Asia. US has higher salaries, better minumum wage (but still nowhere near good), and usually better hours. But stability without unions is non-existent as we've seen the past decades.
I don't want to make this sound rude. I'm curious what job protections are there in various Asian countries?
Most of my understanding is based around studying Japanese law, so I wouldn't extend it to all of asia. But the main protection is that much of Asia is not at-will employment. So you can't easily create mass layoffs like the US without good reason (some regions won't do that because wage floors are pathetic or non-existent, but it's still some protection).
Was just in a Waymo in SF and we were attacked by a gang of cyclists repeatedly swerving at and trying to cause our waymo to crash. Really powerless feeling. And they were doing this knowing humans were inside. I don't pretend to know their motivation other than perhaps misplaced social rage, but I'd imagine a litter robot would be immediately destroyed.
Indeed, I was surprised to hear about “Lowell students” robbing people on Muni and “bicyclists” causing trouble in Mission Bay but when I observed some of this anti-social behaviour (when I saw them they were doing wheelies and swerving at people walking) I was rapidly able to discern why the statements were relatively vague as to the categorization.
I suppose it shall be the case for the short term at least that we must admit that “humans” really cause harm. Though perhaps that’s over specific and I should recognize that most crime is committed by eukaryotes.
In SF they would be taken quickly by the homeless for parts, probably the batteries most of all. That and rummaged through for drugs, or repurposed to deliver drugs.
Is this what happens with scooters and lime bikes etc? Because it always strikes me that they’re easy targets for cannibalism yet nobody seems to do it.
They do. Tons of them are stolen or destroyed regularly. The company just keeps buying new ones.
It was common for people to vandalize and throw them in bodies of water for a while before people got used to the idea. I still occasionally see some repurposed from time to time
Surely the robot will have the beta crime fighting package installed.
Pay a little extra for the M134 Minigun attachment and you’re good to go.
Having expensive high tech robots picking up litter while there is an ongoing social crisis like homelessness sounds pretty dystopian.
Have you seen San Francisco right now?
I haven’t been to the city in 12 years. What is it like right now?
Like every downtown in the US. In short: not good.
I don’t want to say you guys overstate things, but literally every downtown in the US? Might be time to move. I was regularly visiting San Francisco in the late 2010s when the tech bro community was really ginning this story up. Was it an ugly clash of both the promise and the failure of US economics? Yeah. Was their shit on the streets? Also yeah. Did I ever feel unsafe? Not really. Anecdata but I remain skeptical because of these Helen Lovejoy-level overstatements.
Just do it in China or Japan.
Cities with the social order required for robotic street cleaning rarely require robotic street cleaning. One might as well suggest a novel heart surgery that works only on healthy patients.
China has very little street crime but they pay street cleaners very regularly. You can actually find videos on YouTube. I just watched one with a 65-year-old man who manages 600m of street and has managed the same street for 28 years. Just using big brushes, dust pans, and putting it all in garbage bins. the city pays him between $600 and $800 a month in USD.
Japan has much, much less litter to pick up. Turns out when your windows aren't broken, that you take pride in the rest of your community too.
How do you account for it? You simply account for it. Viz. if the cost outweighs the projected benefit, you don't do it.
Then people will say "you're doing this for the rich, and say it can't be done for the poor". Not even for long-term ill or old people living in poor areas.
And it will of course be true to some extent.
The robot is likely to have a constant internet connection so it could just call the police.
Alternatively they could add a chain gun to the robot to deal with the vandals
But who is going to pay for all that ammo? That sounds expensive to the tax payer and not ideal for re-election. Perhaps you could employ the robots in ammo factories first to bring the cost of ammunition down and then the frequent use on the lower cla.., I mean criminals, wouldn’t be so costly.
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>add a chain gun to the robot to deal with the vandals
Asimov reeling in his grave.
Incoming vandalism because of stolen jobs or something.
How do you account for vandalism and theft?
You don't consider the problems. That's how you can pretend it'll be low cost.
The cleaning robot might still be a good test bed. But I suspect if you are only in it for efficiency, you would use something like a street sweeper truck. Just like the dishwashing robot that everyone uses at home (the humble 'dishwasher') doesn't use robot arms to mimic how humans wash dishes.
Btw, Singapore shows that we already have proven, low cost techniques for keeping cities clean without robots.
On some level, you must also be into humanoid robots for the cool factor.
There is no reason to ever have a humanoid, except to make humans feel warm and fuzzy.
I wouldn't be so categorical. There might be some applications, or combination of applications for which a humanoid form factor would be useful. It's just that for most applications, more specialised forms are better suited.
Exactly. Existing paths, entryways, factories, etc. are human-sized and -shaped (or car, or other vehicle).
Only once you build greenfield, e.g. new factories, making specially shaped and sized robots for automation jobs becomes worth considering, IMO.
I would like to run a robotics company. But raising for that is super challenging, because you have high execution risk combined with low margins on the final product. It's like the opposite of what western VCs want to see. That's why this type of company is usually founded in China.
And I disagree with you. I'm pretty sure parents worldwide would love a clean-up robot. You can avoid a lot of the risks by making it work only for empty rooms, which is OK because you need to clean up and let the vacuum robot run anyway (when the kids are away sleeping in their bedroom). There's been multiple attempts at building DYI robots to vacuum LEGO bricks off the floor. (Because stepping on them at night is such an immediate pain point.) Unless your product is soaked in hostile behavior and surveillance tech, parents will probably be happy to buy an in-home cleaning robot, no PR needed.
I think the main issue here is that parents are typically busy, which makes them bad startup founders, which is why they cannot "scratch their itch" and turn it into a business.
=> home cleaning robots do not exist because western VCs don't like it and parents aren't usually startup founders.
Same for recycling. A robot that could sort through trash would be phenomenal. You need computer vision, maybe other sensors and also dexterity. After visiting a recycling facility I think nobody should have to work there. It’s just horrible.
As a tech demo sure. But the current tech for this is much better where you just have a camera pointing at the trash falling, and either flipper paddles or air jets to push the trash in to the correct buckets as it’s falling.
Why do we then still need to sort the trash? Honest question
I feel like robots that could do this with 100% accuracy might shine too bright a light on how well recycling currently works. And I say that as a proponent of the three Rs.
There’s quite a few companies in that field already. Keen to hear their feedback if they are reading this.
Burning trash works fairly well.
Techno optimism, meet tragedy of the commons.
I’ve had exactly the same idea! Living in LA I sometime imagine how the city will look like in hopefully ten years or less when robots pick up all the litter! Hopefully there will also be landscaping robots and sidewalk/road repair bots too.. those three pretty much are what you need to turn any rundown neighborhood into a sparkling oasis it seems. My other near term idea is just robotic city trash cans, that slowly crawl down the sidewalks on a loop and empty themselves into a big bin in the alley or whatever as part of that loop. I think people probably wouldn’t mess too much with the litter bots either, especially if they work a lot on the sides of freeways. Also people don’t seem to mess too much with the cocos out there delivering food three blocks..
The cost would need to be much cheaper than the PSA then. At a buck per picked up cigarette butt, you could pay a person to do this much faster and more reliably. Heck… I’d do it at that rate.
A buck per?
You could just buy cartons of cigarettes and chop off the butts, at that rate.
And for the illogical conclusion: buy factory equipment to make just the butts to minimise your running costs and limit supply chain dependency.
I joke, but this is surely what would eventuate.
There was a line in Discworld about some people in Ankh Morpork taking to breeding rats to collect the rat catching fee.
> There was a line in Discworld about some people in Ankh Morpork taking to breeding rats to collect the rat catching fee.
That is maybe based on Hanoi rat massacre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hanoi_Rat_Massacre
"Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome."
> perhaps HOAs for wealthy communities
I doubt wealthy HOA communities have much random trash to pick up in the first place
They don’t because they hire people to pick it up
Hmm never seen that in a residential neighborhood, is that a thing? Typically there is not a trash problem simply because the residents are careful enough. Trash doesn't just appear out of nowhere
Landscapers tend to suck up trash while gathering leaves and such. So it's not as obvious as a dedicated trash pick up crew.
But yes, it does also help that a richer community correlates with more care about littering to begin with.
+1 if they can also scoop the human feces and power wash the sidewalks in SF.
It’s an outstanding idea.
"your child has been recycled. Here's why that matters."
yeah but how do you contend with me beating the shit out of it
This is a great idea!