ROBOT LETDOWN
Other than the Roomba, robotic products have failed to deliver,
SAN FRANCISCO— It has been 16 years since the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner was introduced by iRobot.
Partly inspired by a novel robotics approach known as “fast, cheap and out-of-control,” the humble Roomba was not much of a robot. It simply wandered around a room sucking up dust and debris. A second generation was able to autonomously make its way back to a recharging station.
But unlike robots like Sony’s dog, Aibo, it did something useful at a nonastronomical price. It was a hit for iRobot, a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Since then, there have been waves of failed attempts to create more sophisticated home robotic products from companies in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Europe. There have been efforts to build humanoid robots, social companion robots, robots that cook, robots that do your dry cleaning, robots that fold your clothes and robots that change the kitty litter.
But there still is not a second successful home robot category beyond the lowly vacuum cleaner.
Despite persistent optimism, roboticists and AI researchers have painfully learned that while computers can run mathematical circles around humans, things that humans do without thinking are the most difficult for machines. John McCarthy, an AI pioneer, would reach into his pocket and deftly extract a quarter as an example of the most challenging tasks for a robot.
Many researchers have come to believe that the recent breakthroughs in machine learning will not be enough to build ro- bots adept at moving and performing tasks in a home. That is likely to require several more technological breakthroughs.
The continuing challenges in building a successful home robot have been underscored recently by the disappointments of several high-profile startups.
Mayfield Robotics, which was developing Kuri, a home companion robot with backing from Robert Bosch GmbH., a German electronics company, announced in July that it was “pausing” operations and returning preorder deposits. Kuri’s demise followed a similar fate earlier this year that befell Jibo, a heavily funded effort by Cynthia Breazeal, an MIT professor, to build a social robot that had started a $3.5 million Indiegogo campaign in 2014.
Pepper, introduced as a home robot by the French robot design firm Aldebaran Robotics and then acquired by SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, was initially priced at $2,000 with an additional monthly subscription. The robot is now being advertised on the firm’s website as a commercial “host” or greeter for a flat fee of $25,000.
The snail’s pace of development in home robots stands in striking contrast to the rapid advance of artificial intelligence in successful products like Am- azon’s Echo or even the Siri technology of iPhones.
“Not a single human has been replaced by a humanoid robot,” said Sebastian Thrun, the roboticist who started Google’s self-driving car program.
Japan and South Korea have been ahead of the United States in their enthusiasm for home robots, but companies there have had similarly disappointing results.