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"One could imagine a very ascetic sort of life ... where the body is ignored. This is something I've played with in my books, where people hate to be reminded sometimes that they have bodies, they find it very slow and tedious."
- William Gibson

Flexible Frank  
  An all-purpose household robot.  

Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer, it offended me.

For the problem to be within the scope of one engineer, almost all of Flexible Frank had to be standard parts and must not involve any new principles...


('Door into Summer' by Robert Heinlein)

Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? Answer: any work a human being does around a house. He didn't have to play cards, make love, eat or sleep, but he did have to clean up after the card game, cook, make beds, and tend babies - at least he had to keep track of a baby's breathing and call someone if it changes.

Technovelgy from The Door Into Summer, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1956
Additional resources -

Compare to the household robot from Ely's Automatic Housemaid, by Elizabeth Bellamy published in 1899.

Thanks to @SMOF_ for the great cover graphic.

Thanks to Pete for suggesting this item.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Door Into Summer
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Heinlein
  Tech news articles related to The Door Into Summer
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

Flexible Frank-related news articles:
  - Twendy-One Robot Is Your Humanoid Helper
  - REEM-B Robot Autonomous Helper Video
  - Care-O-Bot Robot Does Chores One-Handed
  - Basil Reification Robot
  - ATLAS Robot Now Does Housework!
  - Elon Musk et. al. OpenAI Household Robot
  - Housekeeping Robots Easy To Imagine, Tough To Make
  - VirtualHome: Teaching Robots To Do Chores Around The House
  - Dyson's Secret Household Robots
  - Unitree H1 General-Purpose Humanoid Robot

Articles related to Robotics
Micro-Robots Are Smallest, Fully Functional
DIY Robotic Hand Made After Loss Of Fingers
Robot Snakes No Longer Stopped By Stairs
Challenges Of Two-Armed Robots

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