In the age of technological advances, the digital revolution, and the incredible future of artificial intelligence and robotics, it seems normal to think about robots doing household chores. A fairly common question we ask ourselves is whether a robot can do the cleaning of our home or not. If you are one of those who think that it is enough to be able to free yourself from the cleaning tasks of your house using a robot, we are sorry to disappoint you.
Today this is not possible. Although technology has advanced dramatically, some problems have not been solved so that a robot can replace a human in these tasks. It is actually not entirely accurate to say that no technology can partly replace humans for some household tasks. You only have to think about the evolution that brought the incorporation of automatic washing machines into our lives.
Why in 2022 can’t a robot replace you to clean your house?
However, this science fiction concept of a robot capable of doing all our household chores is still far off. It is clear that it would be a breakthrough in terms of gaining free time and would give us humans greater autonomy. Although there are many reasons why this has not been possible, we will highlight two as the main ones. Let’s look at both.
The real world of cleaning is not the virtual world of cleaning.
We must understand that for a cleaning robot to be able to perform all kinds of tasks; it would have to base its potential on artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. These algorithms already exist. In fact, they have been able to show their effectiveness in virtual environments. However, when we jump from the virtual environment to the real world, problems arise.
It must consider that the robot must come into contact with manipulating objects to perform cleaning tasks in a house. That is, it must be able to use certain things and products physically. The range of difference between these objects is very large. They can be delicate objects such as ceramics and very heavy objects, larger or smaller, with different surfaces. In short, physical contact is really difficult to model in artificial intelligence algorithms. At least in the current ones.
Unforeseen events when cleaning your house are very human
This is another relevant issue. Although we may think household chores are uniform, this is not the case. There are numerous variables and small events that we hardly pay attention to because, for humans, they do not generate any conflict in their resolution.
For artificial intelligence, however, this is a truly spectacular challenge. We must take into account that the volume of unpredictable events that can occur in household tasks is enormous. The number of variables is such that, at present, artificial intelligence is not yet capable of programming to meet this need.
Will we one day see a world where robots take care of all the cleaning tasks in the home? Probably yes, but this technological challenge is not yet very close to being solved.