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Anyone reading this who works/runs a robotics company, I really want to encourage you to build a robot to pick up trash on city sidewalks as an early product.

Picking up trash requires a lot of dexterity and will come with many challenges, but I think it’s a simpler problem than many household tasks and it’s probably on par for what these tests show is doable.

I think you’re going to have to PR challenges getting people to welcome robots into their homes. If you have robots out in cities providing a public good, not only do they serve as walking advertisements for your company, you’re going to earn some trust before you’re ready deploy them into private spaces.

Plus, governments (or perhaps HOAs for wealthy communities) can be good early customers since you can have a focused sales strategy. Politicians love these types of visible quality of life improvement projects. If you can show that your robots, working round the clock, can decrease litter at a low cost, many cities are going to want to buy them.

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