Tesla bets on bot smoke screen as political and market realities bite Speaking to Tesla investors last night, CEO Elon Musk was optimistic about the future of his automotive manufacturer. "There will probably be prototypes of Optimus three by the end of this year, and then scale production next year. We will scale Optimus production as fast as possible and try to get to a million units a year as …
I'm not saying this to be pro or anti Tesla, but Optimus is a gimmick. Humanoid robots in general are, really. The human form is great if you're living in it, but it's a mess from the outside. Pretty much any application you could apply a humanoid robot to, there are better formfactors. Humanoid robots were the darling of naive science fiction writers who were unable to predict that the cost of manufacturing robots would decrease by so much that you wouldn't need a single all-in-one human robot to control all your appliances - the appliances can simply control themselves. No hulking metal mannequins needed, your coffee brews itself and your vacuum cleaner not only moves itself, but it doesn't even look like a vacuum cleaner.
Maybe a humanoid robot would have some use if the AI was sufficiently advanced, but Optimus' is not. Any niche it could fill, it's too dumb for it.
Maybe a humanoid robot would have some use if the AI was sufficiently advanced, but Optimus' is not. Any niche it could fill, it's too dumb for it.
I think there are plenty of places where they could be used. So a Bisected Man (or woman) set into a counter that can do bar work, be a barista, pick a burger off a conveyor or just pretend to do customer service. The AI doesn't need to be that smart and until it is, won't try to unionise for better pay & conditions. But that becomes a cost thing, and regular meatware can be cheaper. For now, anyway. There are also videos where some retailers have tried this that can be entertaining, like the bot not noticing a coffee cup isn't where it should be and merrily pouring anyway.
Half an Optimus would be cheaper and easier. Lower torsos could be flogged as full-sized foosball games, or if feeling brave, full-sized Luggage.
Why do you need an entire humanoid robot to flip burgers? That's something a single arm could do.
And barista is a terrible idea, there's a reason vending machines don't typically serve alcohol.
The customer service bit has potential, but then that's essentially just an animatronic. It's also kind of overkill, we already have customer service automations and they're just screens on wheels, and that works perfectly fine.
Why do you need an entire humanoid robot to flip burgers? That's something a single arm could do.
You don't, and a robot arm probably wouldn't be a great solution either. Why try to flip a burger when you could just run it on a conveyor between heating elements to cook both sides. Then drop it on a bun and dispense the other ingredients.
And barista is a terrible idea, there's a reason vending machines don't typically serve alcohol.
Vending machines do in Japan and some other parts of the world. A robot could dispense precisely metered cocktails, beer or margarita mix for the perfect drink every time.
The customer service bit has potential, but then that's essentially just an animatronic.
Yep, but then so is Optimus. Which is really back to the question of why bother with a humanoid robot when for the majority of the cases where you might want to use a robot, other form factors would be cheaper and more reliable. Like a lot of Tesla stuff, it's a gimmick, but not actually that useful.
"A robot could dispense precisely metered cocktails, beer or margarita mix for the perfect drink every time."
Perfect is more about the bar owner knowing to the drop how much expensive booze is going into each glass. In the US, there hasn't been as much adoption of metered alcohol dispensing over bartenders free-pouring drinks. An Optimus robot couldn't be nearly as precise. It also would be useless for going out from behind the bar to bus tables or fetch items from the back. The video of a robot delicately squeezing lemon into the drink is nice, buy how good would they be sliced up those lemons in the first place?
In the US, there hasn't been as much adoption of metered alcohol dispensing over bartenders free-pouring drinks.
Overpouring or handing out free drinks is one of the reasons why US bar owners can lose money. I've spent time on both sides of the bar, and know this to be true. Plus sometimes when I get really bored, I watch Bar Rescue. Don't mess with John Taffer, he's GOING IN! I also know that a big part of a good bar is good bar staff.
But having spent time over on your side of the pond, you have more table service than this side. Which includes things like ordering systems at the tables, or wait staff with tablets. So take order, instantly send that to drinks dispenser and cut down on the time spent waiting for a human to figure out what a Bulls Eye Martini or a Bubble Bath Margarita is. But still not something that would really need a humanoid robot mixologist to create.
The video of a robot delicately squeezing lemon into the drink is nice, buy how good would they be sliced up those lemons in the first place?
Oh, they could be very very good. You don't remember Bishop, the android in Aliens playing chicken with a stiletto and someone elses hand? There are many similar examples of why androids or robots can be very very good at slicing things up, and why we might not want them armed. Or if they are, then C-SWAT are gonna need bigger Tasers..
"ou don't remember Bishop, the android in Aliens playing chicken with a stiletto and someone elses hand? There are many similar examples of why androids or robots can be very very good at slicing things up"
Movie magic! Would an Optimus robot be very good at slicing up lemons? Maybe, if you provided them with nothing but ISO standard lemons. Would Optimus be good at teasing out the pips? I just bought a couple of boxes of "ugly" veg. That often means cucumbers that aren't straight and carrots with 2 or more roots. I'm chopping them up and putting them in pies, so I really don't care if they don't fit the requirements of a grocery buyer's ideal. I was going to load up the freeze dryer this weekend, but work has become incredibly crazy and I'm booked solid. I'm hoping the watermelon will hold on until Monday so I can try some freeze-dried melon.
Movie magic! Would an Optimus robot be very good at slicing up lemons? Maybe, if you provided them with nothing but ISO standard lemons. Would Optimus be good at teasing out the pips?
That could be easy. We manage thanks to opposable thumbs and evolving into tool users. And thanks to cranial capacity, also bioengineer seedless fruits like grapes and watermelons. We've created seedless oranges and probably lemons. So all an android would need to do is scan subject to orient for best slice, and be able to select a tool to cut. Or just do what some bars do and order in pre-sliced lemons, and then it just needs to figure out how to move slice into glass, or onto the edge. And then maybe do the trick where you run a knife along a strip of peel to rupture the oil, make it curl into a spiral and apply that as garnish.
All the stuff a human can easily do, but something like an Optimus would struggle with.
I'm hoping the watermelon will hold on until Monday so I can try some freeze-dried melon.
Heh, I did that before I overworked my drier and it died. Fun to do with seedless watermelon, but as it's mostly water, you don't end up with much. But what you do end up with is great for making melon flavored stuff. My favorite experiment was still adding chunks of dried cherries to make choc chip and cherry cookies. Trick was figuring out best rehydration level to keep a bit of chewiness and not robbing all the moisture from the batter. Rehydrating in a cup of rum also works! <hic>
"Fun to do with seedless watermelon, but as it's mostly water, you don't end up with much."
Yeah, it turns out like Silca Aerogel from what I've read. I thought it would be fun as melons were on offer. Other things I'm looking to make powders from and also create some freeze dried meals I can take on trips. Many cheap motels have a microwave or kettle in the room so I can make something up fast and cheap, yet tasty on road trips. The freezers are stuffed with strawberries so that's another thing I'd like to freeze dry and be able to store on a shelf. Next year may be worse as the hydroponic strawberry experiment went exceptionally well this year. I've found that heirloom strawberries have a major trade benefit along with my strawberry-apple jam.
"So a Bisected Man (or woman) set into a counter that can do bar work, be a barista, pick a burger off a conveyor or just pretend to do customer service. "
The fast food trade shows are loaded with automation and none of them are humanoid. It's silly to create a robot to flip a burger in the same way as a human would do it. Dispensing drinks has long been automated at McD's which is about the only item I'll get at one. I've used several others that are self-serve which seem too high-tech for fizzy drinks.
I'd suggest that the robots on 2125 probably will be ubiquitous. And very useful. But they likely won'i be humanoid. More likely a central chassis with sockets for appendages -- legs, arms, tentacles. And specialized tips for those appendages -- viewing, gripping, cutting, welding, etc, etc, etc... And many will swap appendages frequently as they work through a task -- observing, testing, analyzing, and finally performing the task and verifying the results. Y'know, that's WAY, WAY beyond anything we can do today. Or next year. Or the year after.
I suspect that the major near term use case for Optimus and its cousins might turn out to be modelling the latest styles in upscale clothing stores.
But that would just make them showroom dummies
A mannequin was originally a young woman, not a plastic dummy, then they became models at launches.
There are inevitably sex dolls. Only mannequin and sex "dolls" need huminoid robots.
See Metropolis (1927). The Cyberman styled robot (Maschinenmensch) is restyled to look like Maria and takes her place. Now remastered on DVD/BD with almost all it it recovered.
Or read R.U.R., a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek also novelised that brought the word Robot. "R.U.R." stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots in English). Actually Czech for Worker. They are more like SF would call an Android now, like the Replicants in Blade Runner.
Robotic lifelike "sex dolls" seem to sell for big money. That's the only established market for "Optimus three". Not a barista, bar keep, check-out operator, servitor. or conveyor belt operative, because those don't need humanoid robots and likely Optimus three would be too expensive and poor performance.
Perhaps a chorus of Optimus robots could take over the tedious human task of praising musk, admiring his genius, and enduring his abuse. Put faces on them, hint that they have families that could be destroyed, and musk would be in paradise. Add a pleasant -sperm extraction module- and he'd be ecstatic.
He could have one dedicated to carrying and administereing his recreational chemicals.
The most convincing benefit of humanoid robots I can think of is that it might be easier to train them to do a task that a human was already doing without redesigning the process. For anything done at scale, that would be inefficient, because a machine specifically built for the task connected to a process specifically designed for that machine would be able to get the most out of both. However, for smaller things where that would cost too much in designing and manufacturing those custom machines, something that can be mass-manufactured and has the physical capabilities of a human might be a way to reduce the cost to automate. Similar to how an embedded device with a board that only contains the components you use is the most efficient if you're going to build thousands of them, but that if you need six, sticking in a Raspberry Pi can be cheaper because those already exist and don't need any board design, manufacture, or firmware writing.
The problem with the idea is that humanoid robots would need to be adopted in so many places to bring their manufacture price down to a level where they'd compete with just having a human there to do it. I doubt Tesla's going to manage that. Without some adoption, the prices can't come down, and without prices coming down, the cheapness argument isn't available.
Unfortunately not the first incident though. In very limited conditions, ie good weather, daytime only, safety driver present, it has also managed to go the wrong way after not turning left in a left turn only lane just to name one other one I know of. There are 10 deployed in austin, and only south austin with a very small area of service and only since June 20th I think, so a month of attempted service. This for a car that supposedly had full self driving capabilities years ago. Nah, I view it more like when my mom took away the car from dad after he backed into another car in the parking lot. Time to pull the plug.
They're also having major competition issues with Volkswagen who is now using a Buzz with an astonishing array of detectors and LIDAR and every other trick you can think of as a self-driving vehicle. Tesla still only has cameras thanks to Musk badmouthing LIDAR..
Au contraire. Tesla looks to be an OK EV. Which is to say it's a rather expensive vehicle that takes rather a long time to fuel, works best for folks who have a place to charge it at home and live in mild climates. And it is overly computer dependent with an erratic sysop who has a rather loose attachment to reality and at times looks to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Other than that, I suppose it's OK as long as you don't use its notoriously flakey collision avoidance system and drive it as you would any other car.
"And it is overly computer dependent with an erratic sysop who has a rather loose attachment to reality and at times looks to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic."
Agree with you here.
" Which is to say it's a rather expensive vehicle that takes rather a long time to fuel"
Absolutely disagree here - all vehicles are expensive nowadays, and most Tesla models are targeted at competing with more traditionally high end marques than the fiat panda's of the road.
"Other than that, I suppose it's OK as long as you don't use its notoriously flakey collision avoidance system and drive it as you would any other car."
Notoriously flaky - only because you are letting confirmation bias take charge of your thinking.
Rent free
How's your application doing for Elon's free AI program, beast666?
Yes, Ilya, I agree Shepilov's mom is what Americans call a MILK. Oddly perverted that, but who knows what obsessions Americans are up to? Breastfeeding? Weird.
Still, dumber than a sack of bricks, our Shepilov. Can't write more than one sentence of the same repeat words, esp on his Beast666 handle. I know the standards at our agency for research for the internet are on speed and volume, but well this is making us look bad. I hope she's worth it, at some point your boss Vasiliev is bound to ask why you keep her loser son around.
This might be Henry Fords script kiddy impersonators Icarus moment. When he invested heviliy in tesla but did not found it or invent anything then sued to be called a founder, there was not only a technological base there to build on there was a vision and willingness to take mass market evs seriously before everyone else did. In the AI space not only are LLMs and other state of the art models not a general purpose AI like the one you would need to deliver what He is selling with Optimus, Optimus isnt even state of the art or market leading. So whilst with tesla making big promises that would never be delivered was annoying it also made analysts look and say they were first to market in the ev space when there were governmnet supports and there was no competition. Now over promising on AI and robots makes analysts look at the man who thinks he is tesla and sapce x appear on the same analysts radar when they have to account for him falling out with the president of the USA, when government supports in major tesla markets are going away and there is competition.
He ALWAYS has to make up lies about the future because the present supports a valuation about 1/20th of the current stock price. Every few years he changes his golden future story. At first it was about Tesla's growth, then it became about self driving (which it STILL can't do) then it became about solar and batteries, now it is about robots. He'll continue to lie about the robots for a couple more years until it is obvious he can't deliver and he'll come up with something new to shill.
It's frankly amazing that the share price is where it is! This is almost entirely down to the legions of fans who have bought into his vision that only he can deliver the future. They're the ones ignoring the considerable leveraging of the stock for his other buisnesses which could cause the whole empire to collapse in a matter of days.
This is why he had xAI buy Twitter to make him "whole" on the loans he took out to buy Twitter. He's denied it is the plan but it is obviously the plan to have Tesla buy xAI next. That will use something he has a relatively low ownership of (12% or whatever it is) and mostly borrowed against to buy something at a highly inflated valuation that he owns most of. Basically he'll end up owning a higher percentage of Twitter and cancel out a lot of the leverage against his Tesla shares. In other words, stealing from public investors who hold Tesla stock to enrich himself. Trump could take lessons from him.
The only thing that might give him pause in implementing that plan is that he's no longer Trump's best buddy so there's a chance Trump's SEC might look into that crooked deal. He has to rely on the SEC being toothless, he would never be allowed to do that under any other president republican or democrat because their SEC heads have never had to check with the president to see if they're allowed to go after a particular company or individual.
Who were founded on the idea that the whole built environment is built for human shaped, sized and roughly massed well humans.
But then I guess the "Richest man in the world" (who as Bill Gates pointed out help starve some of the poorest children on the planet) isn't much interested in history.
And I suspect there will come a time when history isn't much interest in Elon Musk either.
And remember a 30% drop in Tesla's share price means that there's a lot more price to short.
A x100 inflated share price due to profits selling carbon credits, not cars.
The existing makers were always going to overtake in sales and production.
Then outside the USA, the Chinese.
Also even without the Trump killing of EV subsidies etc, eventually the big car makers were never going to buy "Carbon credits" forever.
The Cybertruck is banned in many countries and its design exposes the fantasy nature of the company.
The autopilot always overhyped.
Musk fantasies and drugs. Paid to be called the founder.
A latter day DeLorean. That car was looks and fantasy not solid engineering. Too small engine, stainless steel skin that came loose, unsafe doors and a boss involved in drugs.
Intel shares are safer, and that's not going to end well.
He's not a genius and only rich originally due to luck and Peter Thiel selling Paypal to eBay.
A million robots. Ok Elon heres a bet.
Hit even half that target and I'll buy a Tesla.
Fail, do humanity a favour and throw yourself off a cliff.
Man on Mars. Failed
Hyperloop (and I don't mean the fairground ride in Las Vegas). Failed.
Full Autonomy Driving by 2017. Failed.
250,000 to 500,000 Cybertruck per year. Failed.
Even the fanboys know he's full of shit
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/fsd-timeline-promises-summary.235180/
The weird thing with Musk and Tesla is how he aligned himself politically with exactly the type of people that don't give a shit about his cars and pissed off a good deal of his prospective customers, both domestically and in Europe. Just bizarre.
I've already twice seen Teslas with stickers saying "I bought this a long time ago!".
For all that, he did restart EVs out from whatever doomloop of hairshirting and self-denial they were inhabiting before the Roadster. So even if Tesla folds at some point, they've had a massive impact.
Tesla was in a great position. If Elon had just observed the market and focused on the group of eco-conscience people looking for a car that owns the term "future", focused on delivering the best experience of owning an EV the success of Tesla would still thrive. One of the greatest assets Tesla has is its Supercharger network! Making it hassle-free to own and charge a tesla is one of the key assets. All the talk about FSD is a pure marketing gag and it is rather curious that it can be repeated this often. Optimus is the same thing as FSD and pretty on par with all that AI hype.
Interestingly the Cybertruck was actually better positioned to lure motorheads into the realm of EVs and acts as a counter weight to all the vegan hipsters halo EVs tend to attract. Elon could have easily supported Trump and still continue to perpetuate the eco-benefits of Tesla's cars. That would have been a two prong strategy to counter a customer polarization. It would have worked out like a script, but nothing of that.
Let's face it, Elon Musk is nothing more than an overconfident narcissist who was able to talk investors into an investment frenzy and gaslight the consumers with FSD. In between all of this very US American story is a group of people who have built a product which changed a mass market with one product.
Tesla's position was almost entirely dependent upon cheap capital and carbon credits. Remove those and the business model – including that charging network – looks pretty anaemic.
Focussing on either the virtuous value-signalers or gas-guzzling rednecks is not sufficient to survive in the mass market. Tesla did have a first-mover advantage and has spent the last few years pissing it up the wall, while the competition got itself organised and continued releasing updated models every year. The profits might be in the premium brands, but the volume necessary to support development are in the less fashionable family cars.
And generous subsidies for EVs are being phased out, never to return, as reality bites over the costs of building and provisioning charging networks for those who can't charge at home or in the office. Plugins are finally gaining realistic mileages out of their batteries and significantly greater overall range due to improved engine efficiency as they become tuned for generating power. If this becomes the basis for competition then we can look forward to continual reductions in fossil fuels, without having to worry about range and completely new additional power generation and transmission systems.
"while the competition got itself organised and continued releasing updated models every year. "
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Every other maker could have jumped in with both feet making all of the same mistakes rather than biding their time and seeing what works and what sells. I find it disheartening that the things I dislike on Tesla's are the things other makers are copying.
In the past I did some work with a company that breaks down competitor's cars for their clients. There's nearly always a number of ways to accomplish something and seeing how another company solved a problem can be very enlightening. I was looking at audio systems in particular and it doesn't matter what the badge reads, it's some factory in Asia that makes nearly all of them to their buyer's spec. My biggest hint for people is that the electronics are universally very very good and speakers are still going to be the weakest link, so buy really good speakers and whatever electronics have the features you need.
That's an important observation you make. But then you'll also know that car buyers are actually a fairly conservative and bunch and like consistency – as an occasional driver I'm continually having to learn where everything is and how it works. As a result, changes are usually incremental. The financial crisis of 2007/2008 and the subsequent massive subsidies for SUVs effectively stifled what had been fairly plodding but steady innovation towards leaner drive trains and replaced it with a desire to supersize everything. Nice fat profit margins but ultimately self-defeating. Then Tesla came along and introduced the idea of charging subscriptions for services and, instead of aiming to undercut this, many manufacturers aim to copy it. Except in China, and it's no coincidence that this is where most of the innovation is happening. I'm not going to predict Chinese manufacturers conquering the world, but I do think that manufacturers that don't follow their lead my find themselves struggling in a few years. Of course, the premium brands will continue to consider them immune from such pressures until it's too late.
Which is an extremely small market!
Americans for the most part don't want EVs. Tesla's entire outlook was based on EV subsidies and mandates! THAT's what Musk got all but hurt about, not the deficit! He got in a shouting match wuth Sec Treasury on this exact subject!
If your business cannot survive without subsidies, then it's not viable business!
Tesla is NOT the Model-T, the "everyman" car.
The major auto makers are scaling back their EV programs because they are money losers!
"If Elon had just observed the market and focused on the group of eco-conscience people looking for a car that owns the term "future", focused on delivering the best experience of owning an EV the success of Tesla would still thrive. "
They could only get so far targeting rich EcoJusticeWarriors who will buy the greenest non-green thing they can find so they can feel like even though they own and drive a car, it's been ethically sourced. That way they don't have to take public transporation.
"One of the greatest assets Tesla has is its Supercharger network! "
Lots of charging companies in the wild. In the US, the non-Tesla chargers had an industry standard plug which Tesla had to adopt to sell in Europe and Scandinavia. To sell in China, they had to have the Chinese standard plug. My biggest beef with the Superchargers is not having a payment terminal. That goes with my rant about not being able to pay for charging with cash. I don't want to sign up with a company and be required to provide them with all of my information about where and how much I charge my car. There's an enormous amount of information that can be subpoenaed from that data set. Got a jealous spouse? Would you want them to be able to access where you've been from the car's on-board satnav, charging information, etc?
The Cybertruck was a loser, full stop. It was positioned for nothing. Overpromised and underbuilt with no pre-production testing to speak of.
"After all, the DeLorean once held that mantle, and now it is only remembered in a fantasy film, sadly long in the past."
This is simply not true.
I park my '81 DeLorean at any car show and it is the sudden star of the show. Park beside some Lamborghinis, Ferraris and a '68 Mustang and suddenly those drivers are angry because everyone ignores their cars. The crowd around my "forgotten" DeLorean outstrips any other at the show.
Drive it in traffic and the amount of thumbs up, waves, pictures taken, "A OK" signs and attention is unreal.
Park it in a lot and suddenly there are 5 people wanting to ask questions and take pictures.
And only 50% of the references are to Back To The Future. Normally I reply with "I haven't heard that joke since tomorrow".
I think the bots would be best suited for hazardous work, Fukushima, Chernobyl, chemical/radiation poisoned locations, not all publicly disclosed. Places that are made for humans but unsafe for them.
His car industry may be better off selling drivetrain/motors to other MFG so they can get them out the door faster, and he can keep making parts and maybe better cars (that don't burn like all hell)
Really, he needs to get off of the drugs (ketamine) and become human again.
There are lots of use cases (often in food/drink preparation/dispensing or general "housekeeping") which could be automated out without a humanoid robot being needed. The UK has had automated (self cleaning) public toilets for decades, why not such a thing applied to a hotel room for example?
There are IMHO view 2 reasons they are not.
1) Because each one requires a serious development budget and will need the operator to front some serious cash (and commitment because if you want to go this way it's likely to need a ground-up build approach) for the hardware (and it's inevitable support contract) but will capture only a relatively niche market having done so. And then the competition will start to move in.
A company could be built around doing this in one sector, then using the lessons learnt to expand into other sectors (possibly with some reuse of subsystems. Standardised pneumatics? Hydraulics using edible oil? Well tuned algorithms to recognize tables, chairs and wall/skirting board/floor transitions so they can tell when someone is occupying them or furniture has been moved?)
2) The people who usually get into these businesses recognise part of why people go out is the experience of going out, and the closer that comes to a)Place an order on the "Just Eat"* app b)Await arrival c)Open boxes and nosh down the more people will say "F**k it let's just stay in." Or even just stick the burger box in the microwave and DIY entirely. Which let's be honest is some peoples idea of "cooking" already.
OTOH a machine that can fit into these environments and can be customised to them, looking like (for exampled) Big Hero 6 in a McDonalds-style fast food restaurant or something more somber in a Michelin starred restaurant (but basically the same internals). BTW there are some interesting lessons from the nuclear industry, where you get semi robot/manipulators. Some times under direct human control, some times running recorded sequences (with an option to run sped up/slowed down, which can be very useful). Interacting with humans I tend to think of them as avatars of their operators,
Mind you one thing will never change. Whatever Musk's timeframe is double it.
*Other food ordering platforms are available
2) The people who usually get into these businesses recognise part of why people go out is the experience of going out, and the closer that comes to a)Place an order on the "Just Eat"* app b)Await arrival c)Open boxes and nosh down the more people will say "F**k it let's just stay in." Or even just stick the burger box in the microwave and DIY entirely. Which let's be honest is some peoples idea of "cooking" already.
That's happening already, so commodity fast-food like pizzas has machines that can turn pre-packaged & portioned dough balls into pizza bases. Results won't be as nice as a pizzeria who makes their own dough and as you say, people miss out on the theatre of someone tossing and spinning the bases.
I think robot-maids for hotels would get a whole lot more complicated given all the tasks needed, like making beds, cleaning everything, restocking mini-bars. Probably something that budget or pod hotels could do first and design everything around automation. Dear guest, you were due to check out 15mins ago, cleansing cycle is beginning in 3..2..1
Things like robo-vacs are getting better and fewer problems with those getting stuck. Still need some prep and de-cluttering to reduce the chances. Also can be FUN! for cats and dogs who want to play with their new toy. They're something I've also been pondering, ie have robo-vac talking to home security system so if they detect movement, play a big dog barking because dogs are still one of the best burglar deterrents. It would probably be a lot easier to have the security system play those files though.
"I think robot-maids for hotels would get a whole lot more complicated given all the tasks needed, like making beds, cleaning everything, restocking mini-bars. "
I just had a vision of a hotel with quads of rooms. There's a spare clean bed and bath that rotates into the room the guest occupies and housekeeping does their thing in a special space for prepping the not-used segment. The question is if rapid turnaround and housekeeping workspaces are more cost efficient than somebody pushing a cart from room to room and doing the work there. The Japanese capsule hotels are betting on packing people in tighter to make up for expensive real estate. I'm not particularly claustrophobic, but I can't stay in those.
It never seems like hotel rooms are ever cleaned properly on a day to day basis. The bed linens are fine and the bathroom is ok, but I will always wear shoes.
I haven't seen a mini-bar in ages. I like the vending machines better since hotels will often have one that sells toiletries. I find that the bigger hotels have packets of shaving cream, toothbrushes and toothpaste if you ask for them at the front desk. They can even have a whole kit in some places. The downside of the vending machines is they are even more expensive than the corner shop. Still, less than $15 for 8 smoked almonds from the mini-bar.
"2) The people who usually get into these businesses recognise part of why people go out is the experience of going out, and the closer that comes to a)Place an order on the "Just Eat"* app b)Await arrival c)Open boxes and nosh down the more people will say "F**k it let's just stay in." Or even just stick the burger box in the microwave and DIY entirely. Which let's be honest is some peoples idea of "cooking" already."
I "ate out" today in this way. It's been a busy day so it made sense to get a hand-meal (finger food) that I could wolf down on the drive home from a job. It's 21:30 now and I just put today's job to bed so the customer will have it in the morning when I send it off. The meal was a cheap limited-time deal that was under $10. More than that and I want the experience. Several days ago I was out of town and needed calories for the drive home and decided I'd like to eat at a local independent restaurant for lunch and it was $23 for a Philly Cheesesteak replica with onion rings, ice tea and tip. Gack! it was ok, but that's crazy money for a mid-day nosh. I know if I let my blood sugar drop too much, I pay the price which is not a good idea with a 2 hour drive ahead on a hot day. This week I'll be bringing a packed lunch as I have a new happy customer that's booking more work with me. That will cost me very little.
One day there will inevitably be a McSwineys automated fast food kiosk. The minimum wage is climbing fast in the US and that's making fast food too expensive and something will have to give. For a quarter of that $23 lunch, I can have a very nice steak dinner at home. To keep prices down to what people can justify for a grab n go meal, automation is going to be key. That and industrial 10kW microwave ovens.
At the moment, I'm all out of pies in the freezer that I make in quantity from time to time so when I don't feel like cooking I can heat one up. Those are super cheap to make.
Optimus is likely to be like FSD, endlessly promised by musk to the credulous but never quite there in fact. Eventually, getting paid for promises that are then broken will catch up with Tesla (and musk).
I utterly fail to understand why musk's fanbois think he is a visionary or technical genius. He is an astonishing master of hype, marketing, and self-promotion but seems to have no other skills of any value.
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