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The road to the home robot is one fraught with peril. The number of success stories it\u2019s delivered can be counted on a single hand. The reasons for this massive disconnect are nuanced and complex \u2014 much like the insides of our homes. Twenty-years after the first Roomba arrived, the robot vacuum has begun to feel like a fluke \u2014 more of the exception than the rule.<\/p>\n
Aaron Edsinger, the former Google Robotics director who now serves at Hello Robot\u2019s CEO, isn\u2019t attempting to build the universal home robot \u2014 at least not now. The Stretch Robot (not to be confused with the Boston Dynamics truck-unpacking robot<\/a> of the same name) line is a platform the company hopes the next generation of home robots will be built around. Watching it cruise around a home in the demo videos brings to mind Nvidia\u2019s line of reference robots.<\/p>\n The newly announced Stretch 3 is a robot with a wheeled base and an adjustable-height gripper. In the promotion video, you\u2019ll see a couple of Stretches cruising around a home, making beds and unloading the dishwasher \u2014 exactly the manner of things people have long dreamed of in a home robot.<\/p>\n There are, however, two very important caveats. First is the $24,950 price tag. As someone who has been known to complain about high-end Roombas topping out above $1,000, it\u2019s hard imagine anyone paying the cost of a low-end new car \u2014 especially given the system\u2019s shortcomings for consumers.<\/p>\n That brings us to point number two: The system is controlled by teleop. There\u2019s nothing wrong with teleop in and of itself, of course. I\u2019ve made that point plenty of times. But a one-to-one human to robot control scenario is not a sustainable one \u2014 particularly in the home, which you probably don\u2019t want to open up to whoever ends up on the other side of the camera.<\/p>\n