Online shopping still requires you to navigate through the virtual store while bombarding you with specials etc. It's the same thing.
The same thing as what? going to a grocery store? no, it's not and the most prominent reason for the success of Online grocery shopping is that it spares people of physically going to the store.
I have already stated how I seriously doubt that this is something which is of a concern to most people.
I have already stated how i seriously believe it will be a success in households with two working adults and kids, in countries which are more suitable to these kind of systems and with people who are just good old lazy (or highly value their off-work time)
Until it needs updating, but then it only works on the newer version of Android, so you update your phone to that. Then one of the apps you use breaks with it and you spend the next couple of hours fixing that.
So you update it once every few months and it breaks once a year so you re-download the App. seems like much more time saving than shopping through an interface that can break as well or physically going to a store.
These systems are built, programmed, maintained, and administered by humans. I doubt that throwing drones at this problem will make it go away.
The programming, maintaining and administering of the system is not relevant to the timing of the delivery, plus, the big advantage is you don't have to wait for the drone, it hands over the groceris to I-Battler 2.0 and it packs it so the timing of the groceries delivery will become a non issue.
We already have similar things. services that deliver daily random recieps to your doorstep, which are often being left there for an hour or so till you come back home and pack it in the fridge. the system will spare the grocery waiting time, packing time and in the added case of the cooking I-Battler, cooking time.
Oh good, now I have adverts on my phone I need to deal with and dismiss. This is really starting to sound like a bigger pain in the ass than just doing it myself.
I would seriously doubt the effectiveness of advertisements, at this point, most people have been conditioned to dismiss and ignore advertisements on their phones. The main income for apps tend to IAP's.
Again, a bigger pain in that ass than browsing through an Online shopping App or website that already does those things, or going to a physical store and getting the same promotions suggestions from sales persons/cashiers? i don't think so.
IAP's is the biggest income for which apps? mobile games? perhaps, but there is still a place for advertising, especially in promotion advertising, especially in consumption.
We have that, its called a microwave oven, takes only a few minutes.
Your microwave prepares you a salad? makes you a sandwich? heck, does it even heat your pizza on its own?
Agree, a system that "puts a hot meal on your table just as you walk in" could actually be really annoying. Say I was late or ate out, does the food just go bad or get dumped? We have takeaway places for the need of quick fix meals, we really don't need home robotics to solve the "problem" of "don't feel like cooking".
I-Battler wont be offended if you tell it take the time off and cook yourself, plus, it could track your movement and start/progress the meal by it or require a confirmation for starting it.
Choices don't exist in a vacuum. While this home-robotics thing is improving, so will commercial food robotics, and they are likely to be ahead of the curve on this. Economies of scale. e.g. those burger robots who make 400 burgers an hour. A home-robotics system is unlikely to be able to compete with that. There are already takeout choices that are far cheaper than DIY cooking, e.g. $5 large pizzas at dominos. I doubt I could work out the home ingredients for a $5 pizza like theirs.
The problem with that is the delivery time from the second the meal is ready to the second you start eating it will always be longer than cooking it inhouse and there are certain meals which simply can't maintain the same level of quality even in a 20 minutes commune. regardless, commercial places, even fully automatic ones, still have added overheads like management, marketing, rent, taxes etc.. the cost savings in terms of efficieny and bulk purchasing of the ingredients could very well be lower than these overheads, but that is something which is still remain to be seen though, maybe it will be cheaper.
The problem may be that we're applying an old paradigm and just high-teching it. We are making the same mistakes about The Future as The Jetsons did. Rather than have a super-fridge which tracks supplies, and has an army of robots to keep it stocked and make meals, with drone-deliveries of bulk raw materials, why wouldn't people dispense with the large fridge altogether, thus saving on energy and costs, and get individual meals drone-delivered?
The army of robots replaces current existing machines, only making them smarter (with the added robot for fridge packing-delivery to the kitchen) but Yes, that is a good idea and argument. in certain countries the shopping habbit is very similar to that where people shop daily only for tonight's meal rather than in bulk and on a week long planning (Which surprisngly turned out cheaper for people since they barely throw out rotten food). they usually have smaller fridges, but they still have them to store "snacks" or basically, everything that is relevant to an impulse/instant consumption. Wine, Beverages, Fruits, Milk etc..
In China, noodle restaurants are starting to use "noodle making robots", which have a human facade.
http://www.techinsider.io/creepy-noodle-making-robot-is-a-masterpiece-2015-8
But the bits that make them look "human" are entirely cosmetic: they are fashioned after people because Chinese expect a person to be the noodle slicer. Once it's been automated for long enough, perhaps people won't care whether the noodle-bot looks like a person or not.
I have seen a documentary of Japan, in which it said that due to their specific religious background, they believe inanimate objects have souls too, so their robots also have souls which is why they are more likely to get attached to them. they shown a burial of a pet robot that broke. creepy, yet somehow very... "progressive".
Tried looking for it, couldn't, but found this instead:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/12/mourn-robotic-dog-human-sony
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Topic: Tech News. Automation, Engineering, Environment Etc (Read 271373 times)