alt Hacker NewsI disagree that it would be more valuable.
It may be true that it might be more efficient, but it feels similar to the farming paradigm. You can actually get more calories per acre if you have ecosystems with varying heights. However, we don’t do this because it is much more scalable to drive massive machines over flat, unimpeded land.
It might be the case that my home would be more robot-friendly if I lived in a flat warehouse that was designed so that robots could easily handle tasks. But I don’t want to live in a warehouse, and I don’t want my house to be optimized for robots. And this isn’t even to mention the long tail of existing houses that do not adhere to a robot-optimized standard. The cost of replacing or retrofitting all of them would be astronomical.
"However, we don’t do this because it is much more scalable to drive massive machines over flat, unimpeded land."
It's just that it's cheaper since we're talking about land and other physical constraints. With humanoid robots we're talking about labor. Many processes done by humans are designed to be possible by humans. As soon as you remove the ability constraints of humans, you can design more efficient processes. This is evident is all jobs pre- vs post-mechanization.
For example, do you need lights in a warehouse without people? Do you need maximum shelf height or forklift speeds for safety standards? Do you even need forklifts if the bots are stronger enough; if not, aisles can be narrowed and density increased. Etc.
Even for in-home assistance, you might be better off with multiple smaller bots tailored to different tasks. A bipedal robot designed for cleaning gutters or shoveling snow sounds like a poor design decision.