It is Time for Personal Robots (and Apple Needs to Do It)
Hi Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, are you listening? Here’s what I want as your next revolutionary product…
The iPal.
It is a robot, built to the standards of Apple products, controllable by iPads, iPhones, and iPods, and comes in under $500. Say $499 shall we?
Most importantly, and the reason why you should do this before someone like Google, is that you will put ease-of-use above an overwhelming feature list, and therefore make it easy enough for a 5 year old to use. Dead simple usability is crucial to product revolutions, right? Then others just copy and try to make a buck by loading it down with features for the geeks (like myself).
But I want the Apple version first.
Here’s your requirements list so you can get started:
- Again, controllable by other Apple products.
- Camera, that streams live video to my iProduct, and take snapshots or records at the press of a button.
- Speaker, so that I can speak into my iProduct and somebody or some animal on the other end can hear me.
- Siri. Let me also control it by voice, using conversational terms like “go up the stairs”.
- So yeah, it must climb stairs.
- A telescoping arm with maybe 3 fingers. Three should be able to get most of the tasks I would need to do remotely done.
- And most importantly, locate its docking station, which will be sitting on the floor in some corner of my house, and plug itself in automatically upon sensing its battery is getting below say 10%.
Why would people buy one?
Here’s what could be done with it:
- Feeding the dog or cat if I’m not home in time.
- Issue commands to my dog, like “leave it!” when he’s digging in the garbage.
- Turning off the lights if I forgot.
- Or turning on the lights if I’m gone overnight and want the burglars to stay away.
- Turn on the heater or air conditioner 20 minutes before I get home.
- Operate my TV remote control to record a show if I’m out longer than expected.
- If I’m sick and in bed, go downstairs, open the fridge, and grab me some Gatorade.
- When I’m working on a project in my garage, it could grab me that tool so I don’t need to stop what I’m working on.
- Bring me my shoes from upstairs.
- Clean up a spill.
- Etc., etc.
I think this could be done now, for under $2000, with room for profit, using mass production and Apple’s built-in, already enormous, economies of scale for their products. Plus, it would drive even more people over to iProducts so that they could have one.
I also think that people are ready for this. The Roomba has been around for over a decade now, and social media will drive ownership as people find out what iPal owners are doing with it.