When Americans think about robots, they think of characters that have close to personality traits. That attitude to robots makes the general public anxious about letting robots become part of the smart home tapestry.
For decades, humans have dreamed of wasting away in their own decadence while armies of robots do everything for them. Yet it turns out that now idle daydreaming is slowly giving way to reality, people are a bit uncomfortable.
According to a new survey of 2,021 adult internet users from the Brookings Institution, the vast majority of people just aren’t all that excited about having a robot help out around the house. Just 20 percent of people said they were interested in obtaining a cleaning robot, while 68 percent said they were not. For more sensitive tasks like security or caring for a child or an aging relative, the numbers were even lower: 17 percent said they were interested in a guard bot (67 percent uninterested) and just nine percent expressed interest in having a robotic caretaker (84 percent uninterested).
This isn’t all that surprising, given that one of the only types of mobile household robot that has achieved widespread adoption—Roomba-style autonomous vacuum cleaners—tend to choke to death as soon as they encounter an obstacle. Better ones are in development, but it’s not clear how well they work outside of demonstration conditions.
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