The Loki Cleaning Robot, Here to End Janitors
To the list of jobs that will not exist in the future, we must add Janitor. Loki Robotics, a San-Francisco-based startup, is developing an autonomous cleaning robot (also called Loki). At first blush, it doesn't look like much: A single robot arm and two storage bins.
Then you see what it can do in the bathroom:
And in the kitchen:
It's not clear how much of what the 'bot is doing in the videos is purely autonomous versus being teleoperated, as it has the capacity for both. But the company's goal is full-autonomous. At present they're using teleoperation to train the 'bot when it encounters tasks it can't yet handle autonomously.
As with Somatic, the other cleaning robot we looked at, Loki Robotics plans to roll the robots out with a monthly lease model. And while their target market will be offices, with the 'bot to replace cleaning staff, the company's marketing copy is written as if addressing a different audience:
'We spend over a year of our lives doing chores – time that could be spent raising kids, calling grandparents, making music, building things. We believe tasks like scrubbing toilets don't belong on a human to-do list.'
In other words, don't worry about the unemployed janitorial staff: Call your Nana and sign up for piano lessons!
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