[bhelkey]

> Predicting well absent lawyering is really hard!

The author engages in rules lawyering of the evaluation of the predictions. The original predictions are clear.

Another example of this is the author's prediction that no robot will be able to navigate around the clutter in a US home, "What is easy for humans is still very, very hard for robots."

The author evaluated this prediction as not being met, "...I don't count as home robots small four legged robots that flail their legs quickly to beat gravity, and are therefore unsafe to be around children, and that can't do anything at all with their form factor besides scramble".

The author added constraints not in the original prediction (safe around children, must include a form factor able to preform an action, ...) then evaluated the prediction as accurate because no home robot met the original constraint + the new constraints.

[LeifCarrotson]

Those robots are not "navigating AROUND the clutter", there are no consumer-deployed object recognition physics models that let a robot say "that's a ball that will roll, that's a shirt that will tangle, that's a sheet of paper that may slip", they're just charging chaotically through it. If you allow skittering robots, do you exclude a 90s RC car with the trigger taped down?

[bhelkey]

I would agree with you if the author wrote, "I don't count as home robots small four legged robots as they don't navigate around clutter, they just go over it" but the author didn't write that.

The author quoted two constraints (safe around children, must include a form factor able to preform an action) not specified.

The author projected that a lab demo of capabilities would not occur. I don't see safety for children as necessary for a lab demo.

[Ntrails]

I read the prediction and I see it meaning "I don't think we'll have tech for useful house robots in the average American Family Home"

The natural interpretation (for me!) was predicated on navigation - implying consideration and appropriate response to the clutter. Not merely ignoring it by being robust to the problems it engenders to movement/balance/etc.