If you also sold a robot that could put the toast in the toaster, I'd love a toaster with a wireless connection. I could start breakfast from my smartwatch while I'm still in bed upstairs and only go downstairs when it's ready.
This is almost always the wrong way to solve the problem. Trying to automate a human-friendly interface is far more trouble than it's worth, when you can easily use a machine-friendly interface to begin with.
For example, dishwashers aren't robots which stand in front of a sink, squeezing bottles of detergent on to a cloth and rubbing it over a stack of dishes. Instead, they're self-contained beige boxes with a well-defined input/output mechanism (racks to hold the dishes; standard plug for electricity; standard plumbing connections).
It's like screen-scraping your own application. Or writing a CLI's main loop with `expect`. Or when sci-fi films show robots typing on computer keyboards.
Let's take your example. Unless you're living in a backwards universe I'll assume that you want to put bread in the toaster. There are existing solutions to this, e.g. many hotels have toasters with a conveyor belt; rather than having to line anything up, there's a large catchment area to plonk the bread on to. A harder problem would be separating the slices of the loaf; this can be entirely avoided if the user "loads" a whole loaf at once, like a cartridge. E.g. by inserting paddles between the slices, they won't be exposed enough to go bad, but are easily separated as needed.
With everything roughly lined up there's not really anything to control other than turning it on. Plugs with timers are easy to get hold of (I use them for switching on lights in the evening). You could use something smarter like a clapper. Even if you use a "smart plug", there's no need for the toaster itself to be any different.
Yes, traditional future-gazing has always had a problem failing to de-antropomorphise, a failure of imagination IMO.
One of Asimov's stories has a robot piloting a spaceship as a literal humanoid robot in a seat. The ship won't go because the robot is pushing down on the control bar too hard or something, something the designers hadn't factored in. Not to overly diss one of the giants of the genre, but even as a kid I found this setup kind of silly.
As I recall -- and I don't have the book in front of me -- the Robot's presence was explained as being a reasonable proxy for having a person present. The in-story thinking was that if the robot survived with no positronic damage, a person would likely survive too as the positronic and biological brains were of equivalent complexity and sensitivity.
Well, yes. Like I said in a reply to a sibling comment, I really want breakfast. I don't care how it gets made as long as I can decide whether it'll be cereal or waffles or bagels or bacon from upstairs, and it's ready as soon as I get downstairs.
In my entrepreneurial dreams (apparently shared by one of the sibling commenters here), I'd actually imagined a fully-automated kitchen. Stick a grocery bag on a shelf (extra points if it integrates with Instacart etc, so that someone else can stick a grocery bag on a shelf), and a robot arm unloads it, reads all the UPC bar codes, and stocks it in a refrigerator. This refrigerator isn't a standard issue one, with a door and shelves, but something with individual bins for items. That way, a robot arm would know exactly what product was in which bin, it could retrieve it, open the package, and measure out whatever quantity is needed for the recipe. Then it goes to the appropriate heating chamber for cooking - it may not even have pots/pans/toasters, just heating elements and containers. Food comes out on clean plates, dirty dishes go in, and the cycle repeats. My interface to it is a smartphone or smartwatch app where I can select a favorite recipe and have it made.
I figured this is beyond my hardware capacity to build (unless I exited in some other startup first and had unlimited time to tinker), but if someone else wants to make a go at it...there's the product request. ;-)
The problem with this approach is that you would need a brand new kitchen along with everything in it. Plus, after spending vast amounts of money doing so, you might find that the new kitchen, appliances, utensils etc. are no longer suitable for use by humans for those times you want to do a bit of old fashioned manual cooking (or are forced into doing so during system upgrades etc.).
What I'd like to see is a general purpose domestic robot which could learn to use all your existing things. It could start by learning to vacuum using your existing vacuum cleaner (a lot cheaper, and a lot better at cleaning, than the dedicated vacuuming robots you get now), and over time upgrade itself to do additional things, like emptying the vacuum cleaner, dusting, washing dishes and so on.
Would love to develop something like that, but coming from the software side I'd probably have to work with some pre-existing hardware, e.g. something from Willow Garage.
I think there is a case for a domestic robot. It doesn't need to have a human form. But it would clean the dishes, clean the house, cook your meals, receive parcels when you are out, iron clothes, repaint the flat while you are on holidays, yell at kids when they trespass on your lawn, change bulbs, walk the dog, and chase with a broom anyone who is trying to dump junk mail in your mail box!
I wasn't being sarcastic...I actually would love a toaster that could make breakfast while I was still in bed upstairs.
Although one key point that I'm sure IoT entrepreneurs will forget: I want breakfast, not a toaster with an Internet connection. If it doesn't make me breakfast, I'm not interested.
I really don't want a connected kitchen because I know someone will hack the damn thing to disable the eject function of the toast and I will have to deal with something worse than not being able to turn off an alarm. I can even see the virus's name "Toaster of Flame".
I want a "black box" kitchen load the groceries in one side get food on clean plates on the other side. Then, put dishes in a pile that goes in for next time. and it probably needs to be less than $1 per meal since I'm cheap.
It'll need to be updated and patched at least once a day, which will result in reliable breakfast delays. I mean, that's how me TV and Playstation work; if I want to use them, I have to wait 30 minutes for an update to happen.
The Internet of Things's main barrier seems to be cost. Do I want a toaster with a wireless connection? Sure. Am I going to pay more than ~$30 for that toaster? No. Do I want that toaster phoning home to Google about my toast-making habits? No way in hell.
What most IoT business fail to understand is that the whole point of IoT is to let devices talk to each other, this scenario will never happen if everyone has their own walled garden with incompatible products. What most people want is something like going home and opening your IoT lock will power on your IoT lightbulbs when it's dark. I don't need a fancy GUI to control my lightbulbs. I can already do that with a regular light switch.
