To date, however, only the robot vacuum has made significant headway in the market. There are numerous reasons why no other home robots have cracked the mainstream, including price, reliability, and limited functionality. It’s certainly not for lack of trying, nor is it due to consumer disinterest. It’s just that no other robot has hit the mark on both cost and feature set.
It’s likely that seeing more robots in the home will require improved collaboration with the people who own them. The first wave of home robots are unlikely to single-handedly manage chores. Even a good robot vacuum needs help from time to time. Meta is positioning PARTNR as both a benchmark and dataset to determine how people and robots might work together to get things done around the home.