alt Hacker NewsIt would seem like such an obvious win-win if these cleaning robotics companies just won a couple of contracts with some tech forward hotel chains.
- Faster R&D since hotel rooms are regular/familiar
- Cost center for hotels so revenue would be higher/straightforward
- No privacy issues since robots would not be present in rooms with guests
- Easier servicing/maintenance since multiple robots at same locationReplies
Does not make any sense for them since it’s not a unique environment. You could rent one hotel room or build a cheap replica and get all of your training done in one shot. They’re obviously trying to hit unique environments with many different unforeseen obstacles to overcome.
Basically every AI startup promises the world instead of descoping to something that is achievable and profitable. Easier to scam investors than make a working product.
These guys may actually just be angling to sell off the training data. diverse training data is more valuable
I’m not sure it can ever be cheaper than a human cleaner so maybe the hotel industry does not want to subsidize the training.
My guess is that they're currently nowhere near robust or effective enough to make that realistic. They need to bootstrap somehow, if only get good enough to convince hotel management that their approach will be realistic in the future.