The sad part though: What even has Honda done with their humanoid robotics research? I remember being starry-eyed, excited as a kid to see ASIMO and all the amazing things it was doing. Past a couple hardware revisions they basically just let the thing rot out to die and it hurts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X23jNzL3wuE

This commercial still holds a lot of spirit and heart to it. I really wish we could tap progress on the shoulder and ask for more forwards again...

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numpad0 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

All those car companies use A LOT of robotics, automation, and simulation to build cars. They just don't seek for an autonomous sentient humanoids as means to it.

They all have their own predecessors to things like NVIDIA Isaac used for things like worker toolpath planning or for absorbing worker height variances. They just don't use artificial robots with those systems, but use human laborers.

Anyone with even workshop level knowledge or experience in robotics knows we are minimum one whole decade away from humanoids building cars, let alone economically, and there's not going to be much first mover dominance advantages carrying over from doing pre-viability humanoids.

And so they just, keep raking in money from robotics assisted and hand built hybrid cars. Some more some less.

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ACCount37 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They've done nothing. Because there was nothing to do, back then.

Humanoid robotics wasn't a hardware problem back then, and isn't a hardware problem today. It was, and is, an AI problem at its core. You can make a humanoid robot, but you can't make it do useful things.

This is what's changing today. AI tech is actually advancing enough that "useful humanoid robots" might be within reach.

	▲	cyber_kinetist 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Humanoid robotics wasn't a hardware problem back then, and isn't a hardware problem today. It definitely still is a hardware problem today - humanoids force you to miniaturize gears, motors, and other parts (especially with the hands) which make them incredibly fragile and inaccurate. You're basically fighting against the laws of physics, so improvement on this front has been pretty slow. And tactile sensors which are key for complex manipulation tasks are still a far way to go in terms of resolution and reliability - so most robotics startups tend to rely on cameras for everything. I think that in order to have humanoids that are actually capable of matching or exceeding the actual mechanical capability of humans, you need large advancements not just in AI but in material science as well - no machine can still match the efficiency of humans with its biological muscles, tendons, the skin / fat that surrounds them, and its vast array of sensory input.