An automated service station could be quite compact; it wouldn't need plumbing, lighting, human-comfortable climate control. Parts can be modular, and when a station gets low on spare parts, a self-driving truck could come by to pick up damaged parts and drop off replacements.

We're not there yet, but I think we're a lot closer than most people realize.

This is kinda terrifying from an AI apocalypse angle, though.

It almost feels like "A robot shall not autonomously build or repair another robot" should have been another of Asimov's laws.

Just need a third one for when the second one breaks while servicing the broken first robot.

Robot vacuums are massively simpler and they fucking break all the time. Wheel motors or their position sensors, belts, plastic gears, contacts that corrode, a circuit board someone decided to not comformally coat and a cat puked on it...

Not an expert on this.

Passing on what I have heard from robotics researchers at lunch conversations.

My impression is that any moving part that is not an electric motor or an hinge breaks.

I think the parent's point - and what I more or less agree with - is that the problem is the hardware.

Human arms and hands are incredibly intricate. Reproducing their facility with hardware requires a large number of actuators and finicky fine parts. This isn't a software problem. Industry solves it with maintenance schedules.

There's probably nothing in your house that has as many moving parts as a robot needs. Your car maybe, and pretty much all it does is rotate wheels.

Yes we can do this, and if you look for it you'll find plenty of videos of this happening.

But you can't buy it because it'll break in about seven days.