Here Come the Chorebots!
Anyone paying attention to the rapid advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) knows that we are all doomed. If AI-driven robot overlords don’t outright destroy mankind, robot underlings are certainly going to take all of our jobs. In fact, at this point, if you’re not worried about being made robotically redundant, you’re either retired or already unemployed.
On the other hand, there are jobs most of us would willingly let robots do, such as searching for melted uranium fuel inside the now-defunct Fukushima nuclear power plant. Likewise, no human would have hiked solo on Mars for the last 15 years, snapping scientific selfies and collecting dusty rocks, all the while knowing retirement was not an option.
There are lots of less-glamorous jobs that robots should be doing, too. People with a particular disdain for housekeeping (we know who we are) will be heartened to learn that many of those never-ending household chores like cleaning, vacuuming, and mowing the lawn can be done by a slew of housecleaning machines already on the market. In addition to these basic chorebots, there are a variety of robot household assistants that can help take care of pets, replace live pets, function as virtual companions, provide home security, or serve as caregivers for seniors.
I, Chorebot
The first commercially available autonomous vacuum cleaner, the Electrolux Trilobite, was released in 2001 to limited sales – and cleaning – success. iRobot followed with the first of its iconic Roomba-series robot vacuums in 2001 and has since gone on to sell well over 20-million home robots (a figure that includes robot vacs, mops, gutter sweepers, and pool cleaners). Yet, iRobot is far
