Traversing a rectangle of grass at 2mph in a backyard is absurdly simpler than self-driving cars on open roads, and the absolute worst-case is something like a foot or pet injury.

There are multiple companies that already sell automatic lawn mowers in the $1000+ range. Some you bury a boundary wire around the target area, others figure it out with cameras.

Robot vacuums are great! They have limitations but they work really well within that envelope in my experience.

How far is "far far away" to you? The recent robot demos (linked below) make me thing it's not that far off. I think within my lifetime, certainly. Within the decade, at most. I expect someone to announce something concrete within a couple of years.

https://www.figure.ai/

https://wholebody-b1.github.io/

https://ok-robot.github.io/

https://mobile-aloha.github.io/

Upvote for robot vaccums - even value ones are pretty good these days (imo)

If they were invented today, dishwashers would be the same product but be called dish-washing robots. It's essentially what they are. Being mobile isn't essential to robotness.

Thank you for being the voice of reason:)

Sure I'd like a personal robot butler to walk the dog and a dozen other annoying tasks, but apple isn't going to figure that out short of AGI or a quantum leap forward in more traditional approaches. What we're going to get is something like the Roomba, which was already useless in my tight house. I can't imagine too many things that would be relatively achievable that I would care about.

I guess I wasn't very clear above lol.