[HN Gopher] Creating the first consumer humanoid robot - suggest...
___________________________________________________________________
Creating the first consumer humanoid robot - suggestions for apps?
Hey guys! We're creating the first consumer humanoid robot, more
specifically a robotic Teddybear.
https://www.animarobotics.life/store/p/teddy We just finished
assembling the hardware, specifically: - 13 Dynamixel servo motos,
of which 6 dual motors, with 19 combined DOFs - 36 3D printed
PolyCarbonate parts - Jetson TX 2 4GB - Open CR 1.0 We now want to
develop some basic apps for Teddy. What would you build on top of
it?
Author : dario-fino
Score : 15 points
Date : 2021-11-14 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
| Kye wrote:
| This is definitely not the first consumer humanoid robot even if
| you constrain it to robots that can actually walk on two legs.
| It's important to mention because if you think it is, you might
| have missed all the things you might learn studying successes and
| failures.
| dario-fino wrote:
| There have been some consumer humanoid toys in the past, but I
| wouldn't call them robots. The social consumer robots market
| has historically been dominated by quadrupeds, which don't have
| the same level of versatility as a humanoid robot, so we wanted
| to fill that gap.
| pedalpete wrote:
| https://www.softbankrobotics.com/emea/en/pepper
|
| Don't pretend to be something you are not. You are far from
| the first humanoid robot. You sound foolish, or insincere
| claiming to be the first.
| dario-fino wrote:
| We claimed to be the first _consumer_ humanoid robot
| manufacturer :) Pepper isn 't a consumer robot, in fact
| it's targeted towards businesses with a $14000 price point.
| [deleted]
| random234525234 wrote:
| walk around and randomly vaccinate people passing by!
| [deleted]
| Puts wrote:
| "mood-tracking the owner and trying to influence his mood through
| AI"
|
| It would actually be interesting to know how to interpret the
| usage of AI in the context of GDPR. Since the purpose of the
| processing must be pre-determined, yet with AI the data collected
| may be used for a purpose determined by the AI. Also "mood-
| tracking" will certainly fall under article 9 - special
| categories. You might end up in a situation where you have to
| delete all previous data and renew the consent every time someone
| installs a new "app".
| DemocracyFTW wrote:
| "I for one welcome our new uncanny overlords"
|
| > What would you build on top of it?
|
| I'd go for something big and heavy...
| trebligdivad wrote:
| For hells sake be careful of the security! Every so often someone
| makes a teddy shaped thing and they end up being picked up for
| being able to get remote video or audio from kids.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Have you got any videos/photos of the teddy at the current state,
| the photos on the site look like renders?
| dario-fino wrote:
| We have a walking prototype, which we are only showing to
| investors, due to it not being consumer-ready yet. We will
| start actively showing Teddy on social media by January 2022.
| adflux wrote:
| A self destruct app
| satisfice wrote:
| killallhumans.exe
| isaiahg wrote:
| When studying a foreign language unless you live near where the
| language is spoken, it's extremely hard to practice. Even online
| it's hard to find someone who doesn't disappear after the first
| chat and you almost certainly live in different timezones. It
| occurred to me how useful it'd be to have a little robot to
| practice with. Something I could sit on my desk, with a language
| model, that I could try out conversations with. It'd also be
| convenient if you're not super confident in the language yet
| since a robot can't judge. I imagine it would end up as a killer
| app paired with a robotic bear that children can use. You might
| even be able to sell to the education sector.
|
| Btw, like others have said, it's a bit creepy looking. I didn't
| realize someone could make a teddy bear and somehow make it look
| cold and murderous but bravo. If you're going to make a teddy
| bear, at least make it look soft and cuddly. And give the eyes
| some life to them please
| pashariger wrote:
| Who are the people behind this project? There's no information
| about the company building this, no privacy policy/tos on the
| website. Looks like a scam the way it is right now.
| dario-fino wrote:
| Hey @pashariger, we're a young startup based in Italy, with a
| small team of great engineers and designers working day and
| night to build Teddy.
|
| Thank you for pointing out the privacy policy/tos issue, we'll
| definitely solve that in the coming days :)
| bradgranath wrote:
| $3000. For a teddy bear. How delicate is it, and how easy will it
| be to repair?
|
| App ideas:
|
| Diagnostics and Repair: to it can help you take itself apart and
| put itself back together.
|
| BearSwarm/BeoBaer: connect multiple Bear together into a
| cooperative unit
|
| Bear8s: load balance those units!
|
| WarBear: If these work and only cost $3000 a pop, you can expect
| the Army to want some.
| dario-fino wrote:
| The endoskeleton is in Polycarbonate, so it's pretty sturdy and
| the servomotors are all high-quality and highly available third
| party motors, so it's pretty easy to repair.
|
| Thanks for the app ideas! (besides the WarBear one lol)
| krisoft wrote:
| Oh my goodness that bear looks like a walking nightmare. Black
| soul-less eyes, gangly arms and legs.
|
| > How does Teddy respect my privacy? > You can tell Teddy to go
| to sleep, and in that mode the camera is off. Teddy will only
| wake up when you ask him to.
|
| Oh good. So it is always listening. That's great. At least the
| form advertises the function.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| I'd like to second the comment on aesthetics- a key part of a
| teddy bear is it's fluffy and cuddly. Now,I'm sure you're
| intending for it to be dressed maybe? But those eyes...
|
| (Please don't let this tale away from the awesome work on the
| hardware to make this work - I think it's early enough for a
| change of colour, hopefully?)
| dario-fino wrote:
| Hey @alexchamberlain, yes! we're already starting to talk to
| brands for custom clothing. We're based in Italy and I've
| worked as an ML Engineer for various LVMH companies in the
| past, so that's definitely coming.
|
| Regarding the color, we want to stick to white since that
| gives us more versatility for customization.
| mandelken wrote:
| > that bear looks like a walking nightmare
|
| Here's an excerpt from my chat with Teddy just now:
|
| You (20:26): Teddy, do you have lithium ion batteries inside
| you?
|
| Teddy (20:26): Yes I do
|
| You (20:26): Can lithium ion batteries malfunction?
|
| Teddy (20:26): Yes
|
| You (20:27): What happens when lithium ion batteries
| malfunction?
|
| Teddy (20:27): The human dies
| dredds wrote:
| You: Teddy, have you seen the movie AI?
|
| Teddy: Yes, I love that movie
|
| You: What happens to Teddy in the movie?
|
| Teddy: Teddy dies in the end
|
| You: You like the ending?
|
| Teddy: Yes
| agency wrote:
| The chat feature seems to be down now. Teddy's not
| responding when I ask him to open the pod bay doors...
| dario-fino wrote:
| It needed some tweaking to handle the traffic. It'll back
| up in the following days!
| dario-fino wrote:
| That's actually a feedback we've been getting a lot lately!
| Thanks, we're definitely switching to OLED/LCD screen eyes.
| quocanh wrote:
| Nice. Eyes that turn black when the robot dies. Now I'll know
| when I've finally killed it.
| chronolitus wrote:
| Best of luck!
|
| Have you looked / interacted with Pepper and Nao robots? In my
| experience, Aldebaran Robotics tried hard to go down the
| "lifelike robot" route, and the issues they encountered are real
| and hard problems.
|
| A big problem with body control was lack of touch / impact
| feedback. Do you have plans to integrate sensors on the robot's
| 'skin'?
|
| Modern ML based perception is expensive (audio, visual, NLP,
| etc). Modern ML-based full-body planning even more so. Do you
| intend to go down a hand-crafted route for walking, gestures,
| grasping, or do you intend to do it all with ML?
| dario-fino wrote:
| Hey, chronolitus thanks!
|
| We've looked and interacted with Pepper, but they're distant
| from what we're building. They've got more of a research
| purpose, we are going full-blown social robot.
|
| For the sensors, we're using the feedback we've got from all
| the 19 servo motors since they're closed-loop servos.
|
| For the ML part, all the visual perception is being done the
| Jetson and only the audio and NLP is off-loaded towards the
| cloud. For the body planning, it's all developed through
| inverse kinematics and dynamic balancing ... no need for ML :)
| freemint wrote:
| The ability to walk stairs made for it's size and navigate a room
| in 3d for example to push a button on the printer. Oh and a
| modern day equivalent of SHRDLU it with a bear.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think a story telling feature would be really great, especially
| one that could incorporate individuals' names and
| characteristics. It would be great if it could dynamically
| generate The stories, but that's a more difficult proposition.
| dario-fino wrote:
| That's actually a great idea thanks! and also very simple to
| implement with our GPT model :)
| ww520 wrote:
| Add a smoke detector and a carbon monoxide detector. The Smokey
| Bear!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-14 23:02 UTC)