Robots Entering Homes: Don't Order Yet—Look at How PCs "Tricked" You 30 Years Ago

Last week, I was chatting with a client who works in smart home tech. He asked me excitedly, "Engineer Jiang, you know how Boss Wang from Unitree says robots are like PCs 30 years ago? Does that mean in a few years, my robot vacuum will be able to go downstairs and pick up packages on its own?" Looking at him, I remembered our family's first computer back in 1995. My dad spent 12,000 yuan on a "multimedia PC," but besides playing Chinese Paladin and watching VCDs, we barely ever opened Word properly on that machine. Thirty years later, when it comes to getting robots into homes, the logic remains the same—technology can shout loudly, but what actually gets users to open their wallets is "essential use cases," not "hardware specs."