Home helper project

    Hello.

    We are a team of young Computer Science students from Slovenia. We recently enrolled in a subject called Economics and Entrepreneurship, where our assignment is to come up with a bussiness plan for a (fictional) startup project.

    For the startup, our idea is a smart device called Homefit / EarlyBird / whatever … A robot of sorts, Homefit will motivate the users to exercise, drink water, eat proper meals at proper times and most importantly help them fix and maintain a good sleep schedule.

    Some of the features the device will have are:

    - Smart Alarm (an alarm you have to chase to turn off)

    - Dog Walker mode (the device will start playing a barking sound and will not stop until the user takes it out for a walk)

    - Sound notifications (reminders to eat, drink water, go to sleep...)

    We need your help with estimating the cost of hardware for this type of a robot – a robot that is able to move around the house and can be interacted with through the app that will connect to the device. We realize that estimating a realistic cost for this type of project is a very complex matter, so we are simply asking for you opinion / rough estimate of the cost and the things we should consider going into this. Asking for experts opinion is a part of this weeks assignment. Any answer will be much appreciated!

    Have no idea for the costs of a useless thing like that. But as it is a fictional startup, you also can assume a fictional price of let's say 800, or may be 1800 bucks, whatever currency you want to have.

    For realizing your idea, you also can use a simple smartphone, OK, it can't move around, but many people have it always with them, so it walks around passively. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

    And if you search in the app store of your phone, I bet you will find an app, that does at least a part of your quests.

    Just my 2¢

    Quote from hermann

    Have no idea for the costs of a useless thing like that. But as it is a fictional startup, you also can assume a fictional price of let's say 800, or may be 1800 bucks, whatever currency you want to have.

    For realizing your idea, you also can use a simple smartphone, OK, it can't move around, but many people have it always with them, so it walks around passively. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

    And if you search in the app store of your phone, I bet you will find an app, that does at least a part of your quests.

    Just my 2¢

    Well we have to get a "reallistic" sum of production costs, thats why i posed the question. Also the point of it is to have a physical "companion", that motivates/helps you with tasks. Anyone can set an alarm/reminder for stuff, but how many do actaully follow throught with it. The point is this forces you to be active and builds healthy lifestlye habbits.

    Thanks for the reply thought, would also appriciate if you had any ideas of features we could add to the design.

    Quote from neki127

    Well we have to get a "reallistic" sum of production..

    Then at first you have to think about the real hardware you will need. At the moment you only said:

    Quote from neki127

    a robot that is able to move around the house and can be interacted with through the app that will connect to the device.

    Should it have wheels or legs, kind of mechanical, animal or human appearance will say something like r2d2 or more like c3-po? And also the size matters, in this case.

    The cost will vary a lot.

    For example search for "robot dog" in your favorite search engine, and you will get an idea of the price for one of the options.

    Hmm, how do you deactivate that alarm, if the dog runs away from you? This dog has to check whether you are inside a room and then how will it motivate you? What if you just put up your headphones and ignore it? Also what if you close doors and stuff? You guys should think this more through and refine the idea, so it makes a bit more sense.

    Also moving around the house is not enough, it should be able to walk outside.

    Given all that, the production cost depends on design and components and quantitiy. Check for prizes of that dog robot from Boston Dynamics. This would fit the idea. You also have to think about Software Development, because without intelligence this bot couldn't handle the task.

Advertising from our partners