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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2615 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 2, 2025

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I get the appeal of teleoperation since it solves 99% of the bullshit edge case tripups that any type of robot runs into, but then the economic proposition dies entirely. Teleoperation performs the low frequency near-regex tasks like dusting tchotckes or fetching packages but it still can't do priority care like flipping grandpa to prevent bedsores or popping dementia grannies pills into her mouth. Once I'm paying for a subscription with another human being accountable I want everything I'm paying for. Users accept the limitations of their roomba, but if its high level its gotta actually be a high level assistant. And given how it took 5 minutes to get a glass of fucking water the assistance quality leaves much to be desired.

To my mind the economic proposition comes from:

  1. the fact that one well-trained worker can cover far more ground when they don't have to worry about transport costs.
  2. they never actually enter your home so you don't have to worry about theft and so on.
  3. related but there's a lot of people who have never had a maid but would use a remote-controlled robot because it feels less invasive.

Much of the market for labour is somewhat patchy - even my relative with severe mobility issues spent most of a decade only needing 90 min in the morning to get dressed, 30 min (most of which is unused) to warm a microwave meal for lunch, the same for dinner, then some care for bed. In practice this ends up looking a lot like full-time care, but it doesn't have to. Likewise dusting once a week or tidying the desk once a day. Possibly you pay for use time not daily (with a minimum spend to make it viable).

And the robot would have to be designed from the ground up for teleoperation. I would give it some sort of wheel / track arrangement for speed and stability (or maybe something more like HUBO) with a torso that can raise and lower to provide a stable basis for manipulation. Then try and optimise the arms for speed and responsiveness, although I appreciate there's only so much you can get here (speed/forward-accuracy/dexterity pick two).

Clearly this isn't what they're going for (and the design looks like a horror-movie where the big twist is there's a person stuffed inside) but that's how I'd try it.

Problem of teleoperation is the same problem of ride hailing services: lumpy demand. Your operator isn't going station to station, he's having to spin up multiple assistants only for them to lay idle later on. It ends up being a permanent remote butler, but without the flexibility of on-demand functionality.

I am also ignoring the basic executive deficiencies of all robots for variable tasks. Rugs and cables are navigation deathtraps, let alone stairs. Grabbing stuff without haptic feedback for edge delineation or roughness is a recipe for overpressure. Even teleoperated robots will struggle, and I would argue struggle even more because humans are too used to our own feedback mechanisms and translating imperfect feedbacks makes things worse - look at how crap we are if we need to do fine work with thick gloves on.

Neo strikes me as using the claim of training data development as an excuse for rolling out a halfbaked teleoperated product in advance of other home assist robots. It stinks of narrative control being favoured over capability readiness, and the only weirdos that will accept a manifestly incapable robot like that are perverts that get off on violating the theoretical operators privacy.

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