[egamirorrim]

I have visions of buying/building one to feed my cats and bring packages from my porch, is this crazy ambitious?

Edit: Just seen that 'low cost' means $6k, LMAO

[bluGill]

That depends. If you put the catfood in a robot friendly container that is a lot easier than getting the robot to scope if out of the bag. Can you train the delivery company (driver or robots) to place packages in a specific location on the porch - hunting a package down is hard, unless the package is a standard package that is somehow designed to be easy to locate (there are a lot of options here, but you and the packager must agree on using it).

In large part what makes this crazy ambitious is not that it can't be done it is that you need to program all the details and minor variations in environment mean the robot can't do anything. It is easy to program a robot to move 5cm, it is hard to program it to identify random items that are placed in random locations. Things are getting better, but this is a hard problem.

[danielbln]

Automated cat feeders already exist, we have a water fountain, a kibble feeder than needs monthly refill and a wet food feeder that is stocked once per day.

[askl]

And package dropboxes also exist.

Not every problem needs to be solved by humanoid robots. (Almost no problem needs to be solved by humanoid robots actually)

[numpad0]

6k is on a bit expensive side for a toddler sized servo bots but cheaper than most Chinese robot dogs. Robots are crazy expensive.

[alnwlsn]

I thought so too, but those aren't normal hobby servos, they are these things [0] at $100-300 a pop. and there are like 20 of them

[0] - https://www.robotis.us/xc/

[bluGill]

That depends on what this can do. 6k would be a price I pay if it can do enough. I already have a $500 robot vacuum - which cannot do stairs and I have to carry it if I want it to do a different floor, so already $1000 is reasonable if all it is is a robot vacuum that can do stairs. If it can do things like fold and put away laundry, or load/unload the dishwasher (or wash dishes?). Can it put away the toys my kids leave all over (and also save me the bother of putting my toys away when I'm done)?

[lucaspauker]

I would love a 1k version of this (not sure if this is possible)