With the current state of robotics, a robot would either be incapable of cleaning my apartment, or would be capable of doing serious damage to it, or, realistically, both.
Maybe in a few decades, but right now, the last thing I want is an ai-controlled, or remote-controlled robot that is capable of scrubbing tile and cleaning caulking, moving my crap around, and wiping down hard-to-reach surfaces inside my apartment.
Unlike humans, if it is using too much force for the task at hand, it will have no awareness that it's likely to cause damage.
The hard part of cleaning isn't pushing a vacuum cleaner around.
A roomba[1] can't, but something that can put in the elbow grease to scrub tiles in my bathroom can trivially destroy the caulking, or damage the drywall.
Something that can reach up to dust the moulding on my ceiling can trivially knock over a standing lamp/potted plant/etc.
Even something as simple as the pin that switches my bathroom from shower to bathtub mode needs to be handled carefully (Otherwise, you'll snap the bathtub faucet off.)
Futzing with my dishes? Thanks, I'll figure out how to do it myself.
[1] And as I said, vaccuming is not the time-intensive part of cleaning. I have disposable income to blow on toys, I hate cleaning, but I'm not remotely interested in a roomba.
I've mulled getting one from time to time. But they'd do a fraction of my house. I'm sure they'd have issues with cords and stuff lying around waiting to be packed or to be put away. Etc. And that's just vacuuming. Properly doing my kitchen floor requires a mop (or a wet Roomba version) as well as a vacuum or broom. And we've still just talking about floors.
The wet version of the Roomba is the Scooba. The Roomba is a broom (anagram), and the Scooba is the mop.
We have received both as gifts, and while they are slower and less powerful than the manual tools and electric vacuum cleaners, they can be tasked to clean the same area for much longer than my attention span for cleaning. It is also true that it is much easier to clean a mostly-clean floor than a more-filthy one. If you let the mop robot clean up for two hours, you can service the robot and then manually mop up the parts of the floor it couldn't do properly, in less time than manual mopping alone. With the sweeper, you never have to repeatedly vacuum over the same bit of popcorn, trying in vain to get the cleaner to pick it up, because all the larger floor debris are already in the robot's tray. And you don't need to worry about coins or Lego blocks in the vacuum bag.
But yes, cords are the Roomba's kryptonite. At best, it temporarily halts the cleaning process. At worst, it destroys your cords and also renders the floor sweeper inoperable. This alone destroys most of the utility. The sweeper cannot be left to operate unattended, because given enough time, it will always find a cord and try to commit suicide with it.
My "solution" about a month ago was to get a slightly older cordless Dyson on sale. I realized that my issue with vacuuming wasn't so much that I minded pulling out a vacuum for a few minutes now and then. Rather it was hauling my big canister vac downstairs, screwing around with the cord and hose, etc. Now I can pull out the Dyson in about 30 seconds and vacuum things for a minute or two.
(I also don't have kids or dogs and don't stress out if I can't eat off the floor so having a very imperfect robovac that will run itself every day isn't a particular win.)
Maybe in a few decades, but right now, the last thing I want is an ai-controlled, or remote-controlled robot that is capable of scrubbing tile and cleaning caulking, moving my crap around, and wiping down hard-to-reach surfaces inside my apartment.
Unlike humans, if it is using too much force for the task at hand, it will have no awareness that it's likely to cause damage.
The hard part of cleaning isn't pushing a vacuum cleaner around.