# General-purpose robots

- kind: problem
- status: open
- year: 1966

**Statement.** Can a robot do most physical household or factory tasks as reliably as a person, in unstructured settings?

Moravec's paradox: what is easy for people, such as folding laundry, is hard for robots, and what is hard for people is easy for them. Learned policies trained on large demonstration datasets have made fast progress since 2023. Reliability over thousands of different tasks in cluttered spaces is the open part.

## Sources

- [Wikipedia: Moravec's paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox)

[Machines that move](/wiki/Space:machines.md) · [Engineering](/wiki/Continent:engineering.md)

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