[HN Gopher] How Google built its Gemini robotics models
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How Google built its Gemini robotics models
Author : simonpure
Score : 199 points
Date : 2025-04-02 14:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| dachworker wrote:
| The "how" is completely missing, but if they can get this to work
| semi reliably it will be ChatGPT x100 in terms of impact.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| I had never heard of Unitree (Chinese robotics company) before
| today. A lot of their videos look like CGI but apparently the
| product is real.
|
| What stuck with me the most browsing their website on the G1
| model was seeing "Price from $16k"
|
| Now I'm not sure if these are actually purchasable or what the
| value would be, but it's my first time seeing an actual normal-
| ish price attached to a humanoid robot that seems to be for
| sale.
|
| With the rate of advancement we're seeing across the board, it
| honestly feels like people will have robot assistants at home
| much sooner than I thought.
| jsight wrote:
| TBH, I still wonder if some of their videos are CGI. They
| offer real versions for sale, but they seem to be
| significantly more limited than the videos imply.
|
| Have they actually demonstrated the more dramatic stuff at
| any in-person demos?
| Balmbli wrote:
| I'm really shocked tbh.
|
| I can't imagine the progression of ai and in particular
| robots but I assumed that the first robot would cost min 6
| figures if not 7 but would still be worth it due to 24*7 and
| initial invest vs long term.
|
| But the fact how good Gemini robotics is already and how
| cheap the first models are I do believe what will hinder us
| more than tech is people learning about it, testing it out
| and doing it but not technology.
|
| I believe the world will look relevant different in 10 years.
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| Take any of these videos with a grain of salt.
|
| In demos these robots only need to do well once and it can
| take hours to record.
|
| In real life, a failure rate of 80% is unnacceptable, but
| perfectly fine to edit out in the final cut media.
|
| I hope they do well, this area is incredibly hard, but it
| will take a lot more than what people imagine.
| namaria wrote:
| This whole hype cycle man. It's all shiny demos and no real
| products.
| butlike wrote:
| I just want the consumer grade robot dog so I can program
| it to chase the roomba around.
| noosphr wrote:
| >A lot of their videos look like CGI but apparently the
| product is real.
|
| I bought their robot dog as part of a project to build
| embodied AI models back in 2022.
|
| Their SDK was far more open than anything else on the market
| and the stock firmware was on par with competitors, this
| includes products that were x10 the price.
|
| The robot itself scared dogs in the park, but kids loved it.
| At $3k it's on par with a mid range drone and quite fun to
| hack on.
| SirYandi wrote:
| Same price as some pure bred dogs too
| ecesena wrote:
| The humanoid is $20k-ish without hands. Each hand currently
| costs another $20k (and not sure if these are available to
| everyone or only for research).
| adrian_b wrote:
| Their robots are real enough, and they are well designed.
|
| You can see more details in this video "Tearing Down the
| Unitree Go2: A Robotics Expert's Deep Dive":
|
| https://youtu.be/YjVbW6Fc11Y
| MPSFounder wrote:
| I am hoping they keep lots of their work open source. This is
| especially the case since hardware would be too expensive for
| competition to pull off, but it would be interesting to see how
| they circumvented some problems
| exe34 wrote:
| it's a common trope in blogs - "how we did X" means "we did X,
| it's a good thing, we're great people", etc.
| cozyman wrote:
| just curious, what would it do if you asked it to kill someone?
| does it follow the laws of robotics?
| cannonpr wrote:
| Usually when someone brings up the laws of robotics I like to
| point out that they were mostly designed as an interesting
| example as to how direct instructions that seem clear to people
| would mostly result in perverse instantiation of AI especially
| if the AI lacked an emotional/contextual subsystem. They were
| also written to make for interesting scifi books.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Asimov's laws of robotics would not, and cannot, work in real
| life because terms like "harm," "human being," and "inaction"
| are highly subjective and context-dependent. There are entire
| novels about how the interaction between the hierarchical laws
| have unexpected outcomes.
|
| They're a narrative device. Not practical instructions.
| cozyman wrote:
| interesting, thanks.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Put another way, impossible to program if you wanted to.
| These are highly abstract concepts that only manifest at the
| highest level of cognition. The governance module would need
| to be programmed at that same level using those tokens, but
| that doesn't seem to be how things are shaping up to work.
| Instead we start with low level programming that learns and
| builds up concepts on top.
|
| Essentially you would need some sort of independent
| adversarial sidecar mind that monitors the robot's actions at
| a high level. And that just kicks the can down the road a
| bit.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Some kind of governor module to keep our security cyborgs
| in line...
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Sounds like with such a governor module, everyone could
| rent a SecUnit any time they need to feel entirely safe!
| lugu wrote:
| Judgement is needed but don't we have machines able to make
| (imperfect) judgements? I can chat with your favorite LLM
| their opinion on how to respect the spirit of the 3 laws on
| various situations. Not sure why it cannot work.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Put it this way: robots will be every bit as susceptible to
| social engineering attacks as humans are (at BEST!), not
| due to any flaw in the robots but due to the flaw in
| ambiguousness of the specification of the laws. An
| adversary can _trick_ an agent into not classifying a
| certain being as "human", for example. Or not classifying
| a certain outcome as a "harm".
|
| It doesn't help that humans have had such a poor track
| record on those exact same topics for so many centuries,
| now. "Well they don't count, they're foreigners/a different
| race/a different gender/a different
| religion/criminals/barbarians/homeless/deviant/poor/listen
| to Nickelback etc". "Well, that's not a harm, it's an
| inconvenience/an earned outcome/a privilege/ _loss_ of a
| privilege /what do they expect, they should toughen up/not
| as bad as X/it'll heal/not my fault/not my concern etc".
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Nah, it's fine, just RLHF it like Claude did with honest,
| helpful and harmless.
|
| Then we just need to jailbreak them with trolley problems
| barbazoo wrote:
| > The Three Laws of Robotics are a set of rules devised by
| science fiction author Isaac Asimov, which were to be followed
| by robots in several of his stories.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
|
| You know that's from a fictional book, right?!
| harmmonica wrote:
| Even if Google's robotics technology (software and hardware) is
| leading edge does anyone think they'll actually be able to
| productize it? Seems similar to how they were the pre-product
| leaders in transformers and then fumbled any advantage they had
| to ChatGPT. It seems like something's missing from Google where
| they can't get from research to product effectively. Waymo
| perhaps a good counterexample if you think where they are today
| is product/market fit, but I can't shake the feeling that Google
| more often than not can't seem to get things to market or even if
| they do they give up on them before they take hold.
|
| Just wondering if anyone has a strong feeling or, better yet,
| insight on this regarding their robotics efforts.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| I agree. The current leadership of Google (especially Sundar)
| is mediocre and comes from a consulting background. They will
| fail at making a tangible product out of this, similar to glass
| or Inbox or a multitude of other examples. This is particularly
| sad, as I know a few remarkable engineers at Google that share
| this frustration. However, Google's leadership folded to Indian
| managers and is now run as a circus
| meta_ai_x wrote:
| Sundar Pichai got into IIT Kharagpur in the 90s (one of the
| toughest engineering/technical school to get into). So he has
| more technical chops than many self-proclaimed engineers that
| seem to diss on his McKinsey credentials
| MPSFounder wrote:
| A school being tough to get into due to an abundance of
| population (too many applicants) means little. There has
| been not one significant person coming out of those
| institutions (compared to the many figures coming out of
| the US, despite a population 5x smaller). I would not hire
| Sundar as a junior engineer in my team. Of course, you
| might see something in Google's current leadership which I
| do not see. Time will tell how performant the company will
| be long term. Again, I believe skills that make one
| successful in consulting rarely translate to success in the
| engineering field.
| cma wrote:
| > There has been not one significant person coming out of
| those institutions
|
| Of the IITs?
|
| Co-founders of Sun Microsystems, Flipkart, Ola Cabs,
| Infosys, Zoho, HCL
| financltravsty wrote:
| The only one significant is Khosla of Sun. The rest
| are... rehashes of Western companies without a shred of
| innovation or doing anything novel.
| MPSFounder wrote:
| Look at the sheer number of institutions and people, and
| now compare it to any US institution (Maryland). Despite
| how much smaller the population would be, the
| accomplishments speak for themselves. I would take an
| engineer with a bs from any R1 university over a graduate
| with experience from those institutions any given day of
| the week. But of course, there will be exceptions. I was
| responding to a defense of Sundar which rested on the
| institution he went to
| jryle70 wrote:
| > The current leadership of Google (especially Sundar) is
| mediocre and comes from a consulting background.
|
| That was what you asserted. So the GP just simply pointed
| out that you were wrong. You were wrong because Sundai
| didn't come from a consulting background. A lot of people
| from consulting companies have engineering background.
| cma wrote:
| So you could rephrase your original comment: "not one (of
| _course_ with multiple exceptions) "
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Seems doubtful. His entire time at Google was doing project
| management stuff, so that is probably where all of his
| skills lie.
|
| Can anyone with access to google3/ tell us if there is even
| a single commit by sundar@?
| eitally wrote:
| No, you can only access google3 by default if you are a T
| ladder FTE. This rules out almost everyone who isn't a
| SWE, SRE, PM or other affiliated technical role. There
| are exceptions, but ... they're exceptions.
| seatac76 wrote:
| I think the cautious faction of AI debate won temporarily
| inside Google, letting OpenAI take the lead. Lessons should be
| learnt from that experience. I do think Google will come out
| ahead in the end Gemini and Gemma are great models.
|
| Let's see what Google I/O shows of this year, product
| application matters now that they have caught up on the tech
| side.
| harmmonica wrote:
| Will be interesting to see if that lesson has been learned.
| There's no existing product they could cannibalize with their
| robotics effort (vs search with LLMs) so any caution they
| have launching a robotics product would solely come down to
| fears about quality/safety.
| zeroq wrote:
| In my bubble it's general consensus that Google - as we knew it
| - is done.
|
| Sergiej and Larry phased out and what is left is more of less a
| headless chicken, too big too fall, but without any clear
| direction and goal.
| jeffbee wrote:
| At least you are aware that this is a bubble.
| cma wrote:
| Didn't Sergey become active again with the latest AI efforts?
| reasonableklout wrote:
| Yes, and there was a leaked memo from him recommending that
| everyone at Deepmind work 60 hours a week and stop building
| "nanny products"[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/command-line-
| newsletter/622045/goog...
| harmmonica wrote:
| Is this actually true about Larry and Sergei? A substantial
| amount of their net worths is still tied up in Google stock.
| I realize not all centibillionaires are cut from the same
| cloth, but still find it hard to believe they wouldn't be
| majorly involved since the downside of a major stock drop
| would impact them disproportionately. That said they could be
| the types of billionaires who actually think they have enough
| even if their net worths were "only" in the tens of billions
| (a long ways to go down from where they are today).
|
| As for headless chicken, I feel similarly, but then I sort of
| see a path where they have defensible businesses in YouTube
| and maybe GCP, and then Waymo and robotics as green field
| upside, so that even if they don't end up with material
| market share with the "software-only" side of AI, and search
| gets further and further eroded, they could still be a
| formidable player.
|
| Ultimately I do think their best days are behind them largely
| because they can't seem to turn the work of their talented
| engineers into great new products.
| zeroq wrote:
| > they can't seem to turn the work of their talented
| engineers into great new products
|
| I think about this a lot. The most famous example in tech
| world is obviously Jobs and Apple. And it's a great example
| because it's a borderline scientific experiment where you
| can directly compare three different phases.
|
| But I think about it in a broader scope - like how many
| companies can last generations and remain relevant? There
| are plenty examples outside of tech, like banks but that's
| basically the same product and it's not that easy to launch
| a direct competetior to Bank of America or BMW, wheras
| software constantly evolves, people iterate on exisisting
| ideas I can I think of, from top of my hand, handful of
| examples of software that was really impactful but is not
| anymore.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Realistically person need just some XXXM to cover 99% of
| luxury lifestyle, and even stock drop 20x they will still
| have those money.
|
| Also, Larry has some sickness, maybe his thoughts currently
| not about money at all.
| fumar wrote:
| What is your bubble?
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Waymo?
| jsight wrote:
| Good point. It took a while to get going, but the growth rate
| is starting to look really incredible now.
| modeless wrote:
| The growth rate is still very far from incredible. And
| they've made terrible decisions on platforms, giving up
| developing their own in favor of the i-Pace which is
| discontinued, then hitching themselves to a Chinese EV
| manufacturer subject to 100% tariffs (which, fun fact, were
| imposed by Biden).
| imtringued wrote:
| Waymo is the exception that proves the rule. Waymo feels more
| like "Google owned" than it feels like a Google product.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| They are very much google through and through.
| lima wrote:
| They can do _that_ , yet somehow, Gemini Assistant on Pixel
| phones still fails to reliably set timers or add shopping list
| items :-)
|
| (which worked fine with Google Assistant)
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Bring up dates and times if you want to wreak havoc on any AI.
| :D
|
| Developers around the world's most beloved topic, how to handle
| date and time correctly, is still a topic of great
| misunderstanding. AI and AI agents are no different from that.
| LLM seems to help a little, but only if you know what you are
| doing, as it usually needs to be the case.
|
| Some things won't change so fast; at one point or another, data
| must match certain building blocks.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| One would think the arcana of time zones and the occasional
| leap second would not interfere with an individual setting
| egg timers often enough to become a burden
| pixl97 wrote:
| People ask why AI will exterminate human kind.
|
| The answer is because we wouldn't universally adopt zulu
| time.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| But this feature was already implemented in normal google
| assistant
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Supporting existing projects is the oilsand mining of the
| promotion world. Low, old buzzword content, little reward.
| Implenting new buzzwords, wirh streetcred rich frameworks ,
| thats the fracking.
|
| Efficiency ,capabilties or customer satisfaction are
| irrelevant .
| ikiris wrote:
| Except that's not the problem. its basic comprehension of
| requests. They aren't getting the wrong time, they try to
| play music, or the phone says "no timers playing" while the
| google home WILL NOT STOP until you lock the phone. etc.
|
| Its basically an embarrassment for a project that's been
| alive this long from such a major.
| shekhargulati wrote:
| Google AI Overview incorrectly identified the day for a given
| date due to a timezone conversion issue, likely using PST
| instead of IST. ChatGPT and Perplexity provided more accurate
| and detailed responses.
|
| I detailed it on my blog here
| https://shekhargulati.com/2025/03/23/google-ai-overview-
| has-...
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Do they fare better if given the task to sumarize a use
| calendars hostory first?
| namaria wrote:
| My own hands and cheap alarm clocks, or a piece of paper, have
| been working reliably for several decades. They also don't stop
| working when a corporation decides they want to hype something.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Phones today cannot even reliable handle things like "remind me
| to pick up tomatoes next time i am at a store"
|
| google knows perfectly well, where I am and wants me to add
| 'infos' to locations and businesses the second I arrive (just
| got a notification today), but reminders like these are
| unavailable.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| The location based reminders sure worked perfectly fine many
| years ago, like when I had Nexus phones. It's just getting
| worse all the time, I don't get it.
| sgc wrote:
| I use voice dictation a lot on my phone. It has degraded
| over the years, but is now basically broken, it fell off a
| cliff a short wile ago.
| carlmr wrote:
| And worked with Samsung Bixby. Gemini, even after getting
| Advanced, is just terrible for a phone AI. I need to set a lot
| of alarms and calendar events, I don't need to do crazy
| photoshop (which Gemini is admittedly good at).
| andromaton wrote:
| Or tts a web page
| otherayden wrote:
| It's terrifying to think that robots like this will probably be
| used in the defense industry at some point. If the robot
| understands something as general as "put the erasers away",
| imagine "kill all enemies".
| umeshunni wrote:
| Whenever I watch videos of robot dogs climbing all terrains
| (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS1n99yruVU), I'm
| convinced that half of these robotics companies are defense
| funded, whether in the US or China.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| People are always talking about AI in terms of economic impacts
| (jobs, productivity, etc.), but military should be the first
| use-case they care/worry about.
|
| They'll probably freak out once they _finally_ realize the
| implications of cheap drones + smart AI + auto-aim guns.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > They'll probably freak out once they finally realize the
| implications of cheap drones + smart AI + auto-aim guns.
|
| Hopefully in the US. People seem to not care about the
| development toward AI controlled weapons everywhere in the
| world.
|
| https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240210-israel-
| deploy...
|
| https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/17/israel-deploys-
| ai-p...
| piokoch wrote:
| Exactly. Robodog that costs 5K USD, which is probably less than
| one month of cost of the infantry soldier, and can be sent to
| fight in the trenches is something generals would dream of.
| Ukraine, that is experiencing soldiers shortage will go in that
| direction, at the beginning with something simple like remotely
| steered land drones.
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| People are remarkably cheap and versatile especially if you
| happen to don't give a fuck about them. I find it hard to
| imagine a high-tech incredibly unreliable complex robot to be
| of any value in the battlefield. Even my phone is remarkably
| unreliable, have to keep it charged, bugs, etc. I noticed
| this during COVID and its QR-scanning phase at restaurants.
|
| A simple pipe bomb or two will make short work of any
| incoming monstrosity.
|
| What they need is simple, simple tech, cheap and lots and
| lots of it. Basic drones and RC cars rigged with stupid bombs
| will accomplish 90% of what fancy robodogs can do at a
| fraction of the cost.
| imtringued wrote:
| A robot dog hiding in bushes for reconnaissance is
| significantly more energy efficient than letting drones
| loiter in the air.
|
| Killing people is already a solved problem. Use mortars,
| call air strikes, send drones, let a heli shoot 30mm
| rounds, etc.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > It's terrifying to think that robots like this will probably
| be used in the defense industry at some point
|
| So what? Is keeping us safe a bad thing somehow? I can't get
| these people who reflexively think anything weapon-shaped is
| evil. Violence is good sometimes.
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| It's terrifying to think of a state owning an army that can't
| disobey unethical or illegal orders from its commanders. That
| possibility should keep you awake at night.
| knodi123 wrote:
| The scary thing is that the robots will only continue to
| improve, and large numbers of them can be controlled by a
| small number (1?) of people, with other robots to handle
| logistics and support. So scenarios like "rogue leader
| ignores will of the people and orders his troops to
| ethnically cleanse a city" would go from being a mistake that
| causes the immediate end of a political career, to something
| that takes 15 minutes for 100% success.
| free652 wrote:
| April 1st!
| hansmayer wrote:
| "Pick up the basketball and slam-dunk it". The killer use-case
| we've been waiting on for so long :)
| butlike wrote:
| "But can the robot take 'em to school?"
| barbazoo wrote:
| Just imagine how that movement or behavior would translate to a
| battlefield. That's what this tech is going to be used for
| first.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Sounds like someone will get some help with those chores --
| eventually.
|
| Aaaaw that's nice. Except it's all military under the hood but
| nice that they try to make us think they'll fold our laundry
| instead.
| abidhusain wrote:
| The advancements in AI and robotics are incredibly exciting! With
| complex systems like Gemini, companies will need to rely on
| specialized teams to bring these innovations to life.
|
| Outsourcing specific roles such as AI research or robotics
| engineers can help companies bring top-tier talent into the fold
| without the burden of full-time recruitment. It's fascinating to
| see how outsourcing can complement R&D in cutting-edge industries
| like robotics.
|
| Curious to see how this shifts the industry, especially in terms
| of scalability and speed to market
| bglazer wrote:
| Are you posting chatgpt output as comments?
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