| ▲ | Daneel_ 2 days ago |
| If you can have one robot do multiple tasks at 80% of the capability of a special-purpose robot, then that’s a win. Buy a fleet of them and just repurpose them as necessary. If they’re humanoid then they can already use tools, equipment, and access methods we already use for ourselves. What part of the vision doesn’t make sense? |
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| ▲ | chmod775 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Then they're just a worse human on every metric: from capability to real cost. When these things can make a burger without help I'll change mind, but right now they're not even close to that. Everything I've seen so far makes them look like clumsy pieces of junk. I haven't even seen one make a sandwich without a human having to prepare every step for them so they could then perform "cutting motion" or "stack ingredients" (painfully slowly and shaking like a geriatric). |
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| ▲ | Daneel_ a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Well sure, but you asked about the vision not the current state. I have very little doubt that they’ll be making burgers within 10 years. The hardware is already capable I think - it’s mostly just a software problem now. | | |
| ▲ | chmod775 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not remotely capable enough. There's a reason you never see one of these things cut something soft like a tomato into even slices (or at all). Their extremely clumsy fingers/hands can pretty much just open and close. I have doubts they could even fasten a screw using any kind of screwdriver, given the hardware's overall lack of precision and degrees of freedom in their digits. They have about enough degrees of freedom to grip most things, but not enough to manipulate (such as rotate) something like a screwdriver they are already holding. Some sources claim they can be precise to within around 1 newton with their grip force - this does not include the additional error introduced by the rest of the robot the hand is attached to. This is relevant if they're holding something that is also pressed against a cutting-board. Best case for them is simply holding an object without having to exert further control, since they have some sort of clutch mechanism that decouples the motors and essentially locks their fingers in place. That gets rid of the shaking you'd otherwise see when they have to exert continuous motor effort. You do not have that luxury when you are manipulating something soft, such as when cutting a tomato, or when you're trying to turn a screwdriver in your hands. We can deduce they are at least an order of magnitude off human precision, likely multiple. These things are not going to cut tomatoes into something you'd put onto a sandwich or burger, then sell to customers, any time soon. |
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| ▲ | xandrius 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Except: - No pain - No breaks - No protesting/strikes - No rises needed - No happiness to take care of All things business find annoying. | | |
| ▲ | iamleppert 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Instead of a large group of low power, easily manipulatable and controllable workforce, you will have traded for a small group of very powerful, wealthy and influential business and tech people who now fully control the production of your labor. I'd be very worried if I was that business, in terms of the control that company would now wield over me. They could release a software update and disable your entire workforce unless you agreed to pay more money. They could slow your workforce down to prop up a competitor, etc. | | |
| ▲ | whiplash451 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It will likely end like cloud computing. So, not amazing, but certainly not what you describe. Your current cloud provider can absolutely "release a software update and disable your entire workforce unless you agreed to pay more money". The reason why they don't is quite obvious (competition). |
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| ▲ | numpad0 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They're going to have lots of downtimes and constant raises. Human joint longevity is insanely long by standards of robotics, and supplier costs only go up. |
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| ▲ | zerotolerance 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nobody is buying them today. But these shaky clumsy versions didn't exist even a few years ago. The hype promises these things tomorrow, which is obvious BS. But the better they look today the more investment will be poured into their R&D which accelerates real improvement, which accelerates investment, etc. Generalist robotics are all about minimizing or at least front loading some portion of retooling cost, minimizing overhead associated with safety and compliance, and being able to capitalize what would have otherwise been human opex. Those pressures aren't going anywhere. | |
| ▲ | sandworm101 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Dont look at the robot making the sandwich at a restaurant. Look at the robots already being used at food processing facilities. The robots are already doing it, they just dont look like robots. My dishwasher also doesnt look anything like a hired dishwasher. https://youtu.be/U2sN5g6wOBU | | |
| ▲ | chmod775 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I explicitly said they're going to get outperformed by specialist robots, just like the humans they poorly imitate sometimes are. That was my entire point! |
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| ▲ | TheDudeMan 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You know they're getting better, right? | | |
| ▲ | chmod775 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Once they're good enough, I'm sure they will be used somewhere. These aren't. They're not even ten percent there. I don't get why you'd try to mass-produce and market them. Tesla is going to have proper autonomous driving in their consumer vehicles before they make one useful humanoid robot. | | |
| ▲ | sjsdaiuasgdia 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That's the part I find frustrating as well. The Optimus demos I've seen show a product that is far, far, far from ready for prime time while Musk and others act like it's amazingly capable. The recent clip posted by Marc Benioff was...painful. It took a few seconds to reply to a simple greeting. Its next bit of speech in response to a query of where to get a Coke has a weird moment where it seems like it interrupts itself. Optimus offers to take Benioff to the kitchen to get a Coke. Optimus acknowledges Benioff's affirmative response, but just stands there. Then you hear Musk in the background muttering that Optimus is "paranoid" about the space. Benioff backs up a few feet. Optimus slowly turns then begins shuffling forward. Is it headed to the kitchen? Who knows! The reaction to that should not be "OMG I cannot wait to pay you $200-$500k for one of these!" It should be "You want HOW MUCH for THIS? Are you nuts?" |
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| ▲ | elzbardico 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Like fusion power reactor are, and have been for a long time? |
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| ▲ | schwartzworld 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > If you can have one robot do multiple tasks at 80% of the capability of a special-purpose robot What does them being humanoid have to do with this? There are other form factors that could get to 80% but might be simpler to implement. |
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| ▲ | BurningFrog 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The whole point of humaniod robots is that they can work in environments designed for humans. And the world is already full of those! If that ends up being a dominant or niche part of the robot market is way too early to predict. | |
| ▲ | Nzen 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Ah, Agility Robotics' Jonathan Hurst has a talk that I can't find (quickly) about the various benefits of a humanoid form. I could find a 90 second snippet [0] about why their robot has legs. In that case, they use legs to traverse terrain that is difficult for wheels, like stairs or with large debris on the ground. Of the other video, I remember them suggesting that arms help with staving off a fall or reaching above the center of mass. I think they said that they put a head with 'eyes' to give the sensors a better view and so on. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHmmySGdaoM | |
| ▲ | ACCount37 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | And what would that "other form factor" be? Can that "other form factor" climb stairs? Or operate existing power tools? Or get into a generic car to get transported to a new workplace? Or get teleoperated by a human with mocap gloves? Non-humanoid robots don't get simplicity for free. They have to trade off capabilities to get there. | | |
| ▲ | schwartzworld a day ago | parent [-] | | OP mentioned a standard of being able to do 80% of human activities. You might need human legs to climb stairs, but then again, if you work in a building with elevators, that might be a pretty simple tradeoff to make. > Or operate existing power tools? Or get teleoperated by a human with mocap gloves? Requires grippers that can hold in a similar way to human hands. > Or get into a generic car to get transported to a new workplace? My dog can do this and traverse a flight of stairs, and she is decidedly not humanoid. | | |
| ▲ | ACCount37 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | So, a dog body, but with a pair of humanlike hands attached? I fail to see how that would be any less complex than making a humanoid frame in the first place. | | |
| ▲ | schwartzworld 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Or whatever man. The post I responded to said they wanted a robot that could do 80% of human tasks. It's easy to start naming things that a human can't do, but actually think about the tasks humans perform on a day to day basis and the environments they perform them in. Could it ride in a car? Anything that can fit on a car seat can. Dogs, grocery bags and even human babies all fit very comfortably in any car. Could it take the stairs? Maybe, but at my work we don't have to take the stairs. The conversation is a little reminiscent of "before the car was invented, if you asked what people wanted they would have said a faster horse". If robots became popular in day-to-day, it's not hard to imagine that we would make space for them in our lives anyway. Cars can't traverse the kinds of terrain a horse can, and they require fuel so we have roads and gas stations. If you made a robot that was actually helpful and couldn't take the stairs, you'd start installing dumbwaiters in buildings. | | |
| ▲ | ACCount37 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, "whatever man" does NOT get you out of your design constraints. Robots that can't solve a diverse range of tasks in arbitrary human-made environments aren't going to "become popular". And if robots don't "become popular", no one is going to redesign every single environment to suit them better. |
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