[HN Gopher] Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot
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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot
Author : lairv
Score : 244 points
Date : 2025-10-09 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.figure.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.figure.ai)
| dpcx wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but everything about this announcement feels
| very I, Robot... and not in a good way.
|
| > allowing the entire fleet to upload terabytes of data for
| continuous learning and improvement
|
| Ugh.
|
| Edit: Yes, I meant I, Robot the film. U.S. Robotics and the like.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Robotics AI has a massive "training data bottleneck" issue. If
| you aren't using your deployed robot fleet to get more real
| world training data, you're just stupid.
| causal wrote:
| Yeah tech companies have a weird fixation on using dystopian
| literature as their entire branding playbook
| browningstreet wrote:
| Dystopian literature was training data and road-mapping.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's just that sci fi authors try to see into the future and
| have to write things interesting. There's two ways:
|
| - novel idea or technology
|
| - counterintuitive effect of technology
|
| I think the second is easier written as "what if Good Thing
| was actually Bad". So that's what you get. The former style
| is perhaps still available in books like Children of Time by
| Adrian Tchaikovsky.
|
| But the latter style is much more readily written and
| consequently has dominated sci fi as more authors enter the
| field.
|
| The Torment Nexus view is mostly driven by context blindness.
| "oh my god, they'll scan the mother's blood to perform
| eugenics if they have sequencing technology and it will be
| horrible". Well, advanced societies do that a lot: Down's is
| scanned for using a Maternal Serum Alpha Foetoprotein test.
| "oh my god, they'll use ultrasounds to find undesirable
| genetics, torment Nexus" but Nuchal Translucency tests are
| fairly routine in advanced societies and we're fine with
| them.
|
| This might appear like a fixation on dystopian literature to
| others. "omg gattaca this MSAFP". It's just generic
| technoluddism because almost all near future tech is explored
| via sci fi in the "what if Good is Bad" genre.
| causal wrote:
| I mean, you're definitely assuming positive outcomes here
| too. Far too early to tell how most tech will end up being
| used.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No, I'm not. I'm simply saying that whether the outcomes
| are going to be positive or negative, it will always seem
| like the Torment Nexus. Therefore, something sounding
| like the Torment Nexus does not provide information
| towards a prediction that it will be the Torment Nexus.
|
| People warned about the dangers of social media (or with
| modern LLMs + Diffusion Models and scamming) and that's
| kinda come true, but people also warned about the dangers
| of IVF and that's just been good. So what happens is that
| people always warn about the dangers. Humans are loss-
| averse so they find it easy to do that.
|
| It is unsurprising that every new tech seems like
| dystopian literature because there's a lot of dystopian
| literature focused on the near future and we're good at
| coming up with negative hypotheses. There is no
| significance in it.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Do you mean "I, Robot", not iRobot the vacuum company? And if
| so, I'm guessing you're referring to the movie with Will Smith?
| The original book of short stories isn't really dystopian, it's
| more just an interesting exploration of Asimov's concept of how
| robots would work.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Nearly everything about this screams I, Robot and it is kinda
| wild that they went that route with this article. The package
| delivery and the quick intro and head turning in particular.
|
| I agree on the data part. I love the potential idea of a
| humanoid robot at home to take care of chores, but now it seems
| like the potential for it not being constantly connected and
| collecting data is gone out the window.
|
| I find it quite strange that they are openly bragging about how
| much data it will be gathering and uploading from within your
| home. That feels like the part you would not say out loud.
| genpfault wrote:
| > U.S. Robotics and the like.
|
| The modem[1] folks? :)
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USRobotics
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| What does your life around your house look like when you can
| shamelessly leave a mess everywhere? It almost makes the
| uncomfortable with the amount of laziness it enables. At least
| with a human maid you still feel shame leaving a mess, but a
| robot?
| ACCount37 wrote:
| If you believe that thankless, pointless busywork is a virtue,
| then surely, Sisyphus must be the most virtuous man of them
| all.
| the_other wrote:
| Cleaning is pointless?
| simultsop wrote:
| If there's an automated system to do it for you
| conveniently, it becomes.
| browningstreet wrote:
| All the mindfulness threads on this site would like a word.
| Citizen_Lame wrote:
| It is, but we want our habitat to be clean.
|
| If robots can fight entropy for us, all the better.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| I have come to think cleaning is actually one of the most
| virtuous acts for a human. Even more so as we live in
| societies which produce waste as a fundamental mode of
| operation
| Blumplumi wrote:
| Funny enough, i'm 38 now and often enough thankless and
| 'pointless' busywork sometimes feels like a virtue.
|
| But only for me because I have the feeling i lived out my
| normal environment and i'm not rich enough yet to expand so I
| can become busy again in a more meaningful way. Specifically
| having a big house/workshop to do things in my future
| workshop.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| being aware of and tending to your immediate environment
| (including cleaning it) is not thankless, pointless busywork.
| it's important to maintain some level of relationship to your
| environment; the more we disengage with it, the likelier we
| are to care less for it or the people who share it.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Should I feel bad to use a dishwasher or a washing machine?
|
| Also one of the chores I hate doing the most is folding
| clothes. If I could have a machine that does it well every
| time, I'd buy it.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| It's an interesting thought. How much not obviously connected
| stuff relies on the discipline that (for example) doing
| mundane tasks effectively/regularly asks from us, to not
| start breaking down in ways we really would not like?
|
| It's us, flesh blobs. Long after we cover everything in AI
| and robots around us, we will not change easily. Societal
| drift is slow, genetic drift is slower.
|
| (For the record: Gimme my robot, but interesting thought
| nonetheless)
| ihumanable wrote:
| Until you have a cheap and effective robot butler. I also
| used to hate folding clothes, and then I got one of those
| folding boards that you see sometimes at clothing stores.
| (One of these things https://www.walmart.com/ip/BoxLegend-T-
| shirt-Folding-Board-T...)
|
| Honestly a game changer. Sounds stupid, but there's just
| something very satisfying about being able to quickly fold a
| bunch of clothes and get very nice results.
|
| And if we get humanoid robots at some point, they can use
| them too.
| Teever wrote:
| How much of a difference is there really between someone who
| lives in the west and is tidy and someone who isn't when things
| like carbon emissions, landfill consumption, and microplastics
| production are the same?
|
| You can wash the dishes and tidy up after every meal, rinse and
| sort your recycling but you're still trashing the planet more
| or less the same as the person who does none of those things.
| mclau153 wrote:
| Im willing to bet 95% of American homes have a pile of laundry
| they would very much like a robot to wash, dry, fold, and put
| away while they go to their jobs during the week so they can
| have more free time on the weekends
| mclau153 wrote:
| The robot doesnt even have to do laundry in a smart,
| efficient, or speedy way, it can be much slower than a human
| as long as it gets it done before the next week has arrived
| it is helping countless people
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| Why are you fixated on laziness and shame when it comes to
| tedious household tasks?
|
| Why is it so important to you that people fold their own
| clothes and wash their own dishes?
|
| Why do you idolize a life of increased drudgery?
| Blumplumi wrote:
| Daily live is living.
|
| There is not a magic portal opening up when you are able to
| optimize ever aspect away of living and you will gain access
| to enlightment and everything is different.
|
| And don't get me wrong, I have no clue how our society would
| look like if everything is done by ai and robots because we
| as a society don't talk about it and don't give everyone the
| resources they want or need if they have suddenly no
| 'drugdgery' anymore.
|
| Give me a million today and i will spend the next 10 years
| rebuiling an old castle and I will have A LOT of fun doing
| this. Let me check, my bank balance is not at one million.
|
| Instead i have to pay for a lot of things and then I have to
| work for 40 hours. Suddenly i'm great at my job, get valued
| but this is just Drudgery even if its complex work. Its work
| for someone else which doesn't matter to me.
| austy69 wrote:
| This raises a very interesting philosophical question - what do
| our lives look like if every single inconvenience disappears?
| Something tells me we would be just as miserable (or happy) as
| when we had those inconveniences.
|
| On the other hand, would the removal of these inconveniences
| allow for the highest calling of humanity - I argue creativity
| - to flourish to the fullest? My gut reaction is once again
| that inconveniences are actually a very important resistance to
| creativity, like how you need gritty sand paper to create
| smooth wood.
|
| You can buy an expensive robot, or maybe you can meditate and
| be mindful that inconveniences play an important role in the
| meaning of your life. I am of course speaking of the household
| use here - I think the debate is likely different for a
| business setting.
| modeless wrote:
| We will never run out of small inconveniences. Today's world
| would look impossibly convenient and easy to anyone from 100
| years ago, let alone 1000 or 10,000. Yet we still perceive
| hardships. Humanoid robot servants won't change human nature.
|
| Besides, servants are nothing new. They're rare in the US but
| common in some other countries, and the people who grow up
| with them are maybe somewhat different but not radically
| changed IMO.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| A few months ago a read an article written by a woman who
| has dated a few men from extremely wealthy families. The
| article was about why you are dumb if you plan to "marry
| rich".
|
| One reason that caught my attention was how she described
| the behavior of these people, who have the world at their
| fingertips, who have never really known hardship, and in
| turn have full blown meltdowns about the most trivial
| annoyances. What car will we drive on our trip?! The salmon
| cracker appetizers are too salty to be served! They stocked
| the wrong oat milk in the mini-fridge!
|
| Almost like the need to get upset over inconveniences is
| ingrained, and when there is a lack of real ones, your
| brain just latches onto whatever it can to let the
| "freakout" out.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > Besides, servants are nothing new. They're rare in the US
| but common in some other countries
|
| Right, although "servants" conjures up rich people with
| full time staff.
|
| A better comparison to the humanoid robot some people here
| are dreaming of to do their household chores is a country
| like India where it's common for middle class people to
| hire multiple different people to come do chores, daily or
| weekly, such as cooking, laundry, cleaning, yardwork, etc.
| These are cheap services.
|
| In the US, probably most people here on YC News (higher
| paid tech workers?) could afford to have lawn mowing
| service, weekly maid service, laundry pick-up/drop-off
| service (or bring to laundry yourself), and either eat out
| all the time, or UberEats etc. It's not clear that having a
| robot to do these tasks would be cheaper or preferable.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Yeah. I have a person that comes once every 2 weeks and does a
| cleaning. But even though this is that person's job, the house
| never looks so good. I don't want someone to have to clean up
| my mess. Vacuuming the floors is fine. But not having to carry
| my socks to the laundry and put my cups in the dishwasher.
|
| If my cleaner was a robot, I'm sure I'd eventually lose that
| sense of embarrassment. I'm usually polite with ChatGPT but I
| think that's also passing...
| rvz wrote:
| > "Continuing our vision for a fully autonomous, wire-free
| system"
|
| Alongside the full replacement of jobs and with autonomous
| robots, This is the exact definition of "AGI".
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Building the robot itself is hard enough - but it was never the
| hardest part.
|
| The thing to watch out for is: deployments. How many units are
| they pushing and to who. What kind of tasks can those robots
| accomplish well enough to warrant actually using them. How hard
| is it to adapt those robots to deployments. How that changes over
| time.
|
| The hardest problem of creating a universal robot is, and always
| has been, AI. If Figure can deliver sharp, highly adaptive, easy
| to use AI? High generalization, good performance on a diverse
| range of tasks and in many environments out of the box? Then they
| have a killer product.
|
| And a proxy to track that is reports of how many robots they
| deploy and to who. If they start shipping to small companies and
| deploying to high uncertainty spatially complex fields like
| construction or maintenance? If you start seeing robots unloading
| trucks and restocking shelves at a small town Walmart,
| unannounced? Big.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I think the glossy 7min trailer has it about right: The first
| realistic deployments will be champagne holders at parties and
| robots at hotel receptions. Novelty toys for the wealthy.
|
| Commoditization and Walmart-level deployments at scale are
| still a few gens off.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| I'm willing to believe that. But we could do those "novelty
| deployments" with 80s tech - and we did. See: tech expos back
| then.
|
| The key difference between now and then isn't smaller
| actuators, cheaper sensors or denser power electronics. It's
| the AI breakthroughs.
|
| Doesn't need to be "at scale". Scale is a useful proxy
| though. But if you see two robots deployed to your average
| Walmart, and doing a good enough job there to cut the staff
| in half?
|
| Doesn't matter that it's just two robots at a few Walmarts.
| Making more robots isn't that hard. The scale would
| inevitably follow.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| That's what escalators looked like in the beginning--
| novelties at fairs, large department stores, and hotels.
| throwaway0123_5 wrote:
| The only place I commonly see escalators besides these
| places is airports, I don't think they've expanded that
| much?
| imtringued wrote:
| Robot receptionists are a pretty good idea if it wasn't for
| the fact that their head design is pretty ugly.
| Teever wrote:
| To me one of the best metrics for capability and design of these
| kinds of machines is the extent in which their manufacturer makes
| use of them in their manufacturing process.
|
| That tells me that the design is amenable to aftermarket service
| and maintenance and that the machines are capable of
| participating in relatively sophisticated manufacturing
| processes.
|
| A graph with one line representing the number of hours of
| physical labour by humans per unit produced with another line
| representing number of hours of physical 'labour' by these robots
| per unit produced would be interesting to look at.
|
| The intersection point between those two lines and the point
| where human input drops to zero are key points in humanity.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| Yeah, that's a very good metric to look for. In the software
| space, one of the coolest things and a clear signal that "AI
| coding" is here was watching Aider's graph of "amount of code
| aider wrote itself in each PR" and seeing that number go up.
|
| On the robot side, there are many things that have to go right.
| Hardware needs to become good enough, reliable enough and cheap
| enough to scale. Then you have the software stack on top that
| needs to scale in training, fine-tuning, control and
| generalisation. None of these are "easy" even in a lab setting.
| Doing it at scale, in production will be huge. And then there's
| data collection, where whoever does it better will probably
| win. Collecting data in peoples houses is problematic, but on
| the factory floor should be ok.
|
| ATM my bet is on Tesla being the best positioned to best
| deliver (eventually). They have plenty of experience on all
| fronts, and more importantly they have ample places to test
| them. Their factories are as automated as possible, so it's
| safe to say that every human being still doing manual labor is
| critical in their role. As soon as they can replace some of
| them with humanoids, and see the "task success" number go up,
| they can scale it up all over their floors. And we know they
| can scale.
|
| I used to think that generalist humanoid robots are still 10y
| out, due to hardware and generalist software stacks, but it
| seems like things are heating up. It's gonna be an interesting
| next decade.
| modeless wrote:
| > Charging coils in the robot's feet allow it to simply step onto
| a wireless stand and charge at 2 kW.
|
| This is silly. Wireless charging is inefficient and costly
| compared to cables but we use it for the convenience of humans,
| to avoid the annoyance of having to plug something in repeatedly.
| Obviously a humanoid robot should simply _plug in its own cable_!
| No human need be inconvenienced. Wireless charging has no benefit
| here at all.
|
| > Each fingertip sensor can detect forces as small as three grams
| of pressure - sensitive enough to register the weight of a
| paperclip resting on your finger
|
| Three grams would be a very heavy paperclip. I have seen several
| types of touch sensor and while the technology is impressive I
| don't think any of them are durable enough for real use. Even
| human skin doesn't rely on durability alone. Healing is critical.
| But healing is infeasible for robots so instead we need to design
| repairable, replaceable, disposable, ideally recyclable parts,
| especially for the fingers that touch everything. This hand looks
| monolithic and not repairable.
|
| All that said, I'm looking forward to seeing if their claims
| about cost and manufacturing volume pan out. Those are the things
| that matter the most right now, along with reliability. We need
| large numbers of robots operating continuously in the world to
| collect the data that will enable us to train robot AI. Right now
| there's basically only one or two companies with scaled humanoid
| production (for a very loose definition of "scaled") and they are
| in China. I'm rooting for anyone who can manufacture robots
| outside of China.
| achierius wrote:
| The clear implication is that they cannot, in fact, handle
| plugging themselves in. Take from that what you will
| ihumanable wrote:
| I'm surprised it doesn't just have physical connection to the
| little stand it's sitting on.
|
| 30 years ago we figured out how to contact charge cordless
| phones with metal pads and prongs.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Instead of Rick telling a conscious robot that its mission is to
| spread the butter, we now have robots with advanced AIs doing the
| laundry and the dishes. Reality follows fiction.
| websiteapi wrote:
| I don't understand why this even has to charge at all. It makes
| sense for multiple reasons to give it 3 batteries that say have
| 1/3 of the capacity, and make at least 1, if not 2 or 3 capable
| of charging independently on a station.
|
| Then the robot would just go to its station and swap its own
| batteries. Why even have wireless charging at all? Or even a
| cable? Or even have it "charge"? Battery swapping seems to make
| way more sense here. Am I missing something?
|
| Bonus points if the robot has data on the degradation and can
| order its own replacement batteries, take them out of the box,
| and ship the old ones to a recycling facility...
|
| More bonus points if the charging station is actually outside
| under a 1KW solar array pergola thing, that way you don't even
| have to pay for the electricity either. Don't worry, the robot
| will lock the door when it goes out to grab its batteries. It'll
| also bring in the whole setup if the weather isn't great.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| Swapping requires a lot more moving parts and an additional
| enclosure to house the battery, and the batteries need to be
| much more rugged, and now you need two of them.
|
| But a cable is a fair question.. you'd think it could plug
| itself in...
|
| Maybe that's a hint at the robots actual capabilities at this
| point... or, they didn't want to bet on the unpredictability of
| environments: what if there's something in the way of the
| cable, though something could also be in the way of the
| inductive charger
| pants2 wrote:
| I believe Elon has said before re:Tesla factory that plugging
| in cords is one of the hardest things to automate.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| I'd appreciate a link. But "we don't trust our robot to be
| able to locate a power outlet and plug its own charging
| cord in there" sure is a low confidence play.
|
| There are practical advantages to being able to charge
| wirelessly, sure. But if they're doing that because of AI
| limitations? Bad sign.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| Tesla showed a prototype of a "snake"/"tentacle" charger
| that would find its own way to the Tesla's charging port
| a long time ago. Gotta be 5+ years by now. To my
| knowledge it has never become a real product or certainly
| not mainstream among Tesla owners. I believe this gives
| some credence to Tesla struggling to build robots that
| can plug a cord in, even in cases where the robot is the
| cable.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| Yeah, immediately after I wrote that I thought now you need
| a rugged socket, and to mount the cable somewhere on a
| wall.. and where to even place it on the body that it's
| easy for it to plug in.. the belly button?
|
| There is empty space in the feet anyway for a coil and a
| wire..
| adrianmonk wrote:
| My Roomba could do it in 2007. Then, in 2015, Tesla tried
| and gave up.
| numpad0 wrote:
| They're building cars, so it's more like ATX 24pin style
| cables, but this is generally true. Cables, wires, ropes
| type of objects are like cardboard thin robots with hundred
| joints in series and under someone else's control, so it's
| hard for robots to deal with. If you think about it, people
| hate cables too. We easily get tangled in headphone cables
| when they're wired, and we fail to coil or untangle
| Ethernet cables properly all the time.
|
| EV charger style of short, thick cables should not be THAT
| hard, though. The more likely problem here is that they
| just can't handle the task of securing and inserting the
| head of the cable against resistance.
| AaronAPU wrote:
| It's too bad there isn't some kind of liquid battery which you
| could just quickly top off at refueling stations with virtually
| zero downtime.
|
| Yes, like gasoline. But still batteries. Maybe some kind of
| bearing sized batteries which can be poured like a fluid?
| dafelst wrote:
| You are describing a fuel cell battery
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
|
| Well established and even commercialized (Toyota sells fuel
| cell cars today IIRC), just not as cost effective in cars
| from a full infrastructure perspective (fueling
| specifically).
| dvrj101 wrote:
| > can order its own replacement batteries, yeah companies would
| love to exploit this kind of subscription and definitely agree
| on battery swapping capabilities, it's more efficient .
|
| > Bonus points if the robot has data on the degradation BMS
| that can tell battery health is common so this should be there.
| proee wrote:
| It depends on the battery life. If the robot lasts all day,
| then charging at night via standing on a charging pad makes a
| lot of sense. Creating a removable battery pack adds extra
| weight and gives the designers less freedom to place the
| battery pack exactly where it needs to be in the robot frame,
| or distribute the cells across the frame in strategic
| locations.
|
| Also, the charge rate matters. If robot can charge to 80% in
| say 30 minutes, then it can take small charging breaks during
| the day between critical tasks.
|
| Also, if the feet have inductive chargers, it's possible to
| place the robot on a large charging mat that allows it to run
| indefinitely, like in a factory environment. If your robot
| takes 30 minutes to fold the laundry or do dishes, why not
| place a charging mat at these locations so it can work and
| charge at the same time.
|
| In the future, new homes might include charging coils embedded
| in the floor every 12 inches so that your robots can work all
| day.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Almost all of those points are applicable for the battery
| pack as well. There should be virtually no weight difference,
| other than the design limitation which is a valid concern.
| proee wrote:
| I suppose an external battery pack adds the bonus of doing
| a hard shutdown, in the case it decides to go rogue. Though
| getting to the battery pack might be hard if it resists
| you.
| poisonborz wrote:
| Yeah so in 2-4 years you can throw out your whole expensive
| robot because battery wears out? I hate this argument that
| just to be a bit thinner, the whole device has to be be made
| throwaway.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Talking about the thinness of a humanoid, maid robot is
| pretty hilarious.
| krapp wrote:
| Humanoid "maid" robots will never be popular in the home
| until they can effectively simulate the appearance and
| form factor of a woman or teenage girl. It is what it is.
| p1necone wrote:
| > If the robot lasts all day, then charging at night via
| standing on a charging pad makes a lot of sense.
|
| If your employees are robots why would you be shutting down
| at night?
| jamilton wrote:
| https://www.figure.ai/figure says 5 hour battery life. No
| mention of charge rate.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| The most likely reason is that even doing a pre-programmed
| battery swap with consistent battery and slots is way beyond
| the capabilities. It also can't even plug itself in to charge.
|
| Yet, it's being sold as capable of doing and folding your
| laundry.
|
| I would sell th stock to the next idiot the moment they
| announced this.
| humanfromearth wrote:
| The Walker S2 seems to handle it in the demo:
| https://www.ubtrobot.com/en/humanoid/products/WalkerS2
| natemcintosh wrote:
| I would love to have something like this for all the chores
| around my house. But I also have serious reservations about the
| increased level insight into my private home life this could
| provide to the manufacturer. Look at cases like the ring camera
| security violations [1]. A moving robot could be an order of
| magnitude more invasive of your privacy. If I were to purchase
| this, I would want serious privacy guarantees.
|
| [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2023/05/...
| ge96 wrote:
| My fear is it's remotely hacked/operated and it kills me in my
| sleep
| sroussey wrote:
| Or a Tesla remotely operated to run over your children.
| ge96 wrote:
| I suppose a car could gain enough speed and drive through a
| house that would be a sight to see on camera, leaves your
| garage then comes back at 80mph
|
| A more simpler/realistic scenario is it happens while
| driving
| dylan604 wrote:
| It'd be better if it comes back at 88mph
| dylan604 wrote:
| You mean like the Roomba robots enabled with cameras that have
| sent embarrassing images back to the mothership where employees
| have access to the footage and then share on their socials? No,
| not could be. They already are. I never did follow the home
| security system with a drone that would fly around your home
| with a camera. Not sure if that died a glorious death because
| it was just dumb or what happened to it. I was just waiting to
| hear about it leaking all sorts of things too.
|
| https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/podcast/2023/01/a-private-...
| foxglacier wrote:
| You're exaggerating. The images were from paid staff who had
| the vacuums in their homes to collect data, including images.
| They knew that was happening. iRobot said the devices were
| labeled with a bright green sticker that read "video
| recording in progress,"
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm exaggerating? I provided receipts. If you have an
| exaggeration issue, it's not with me, and you'd do well to
| improve your aim
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| What you said is an exaggeration of the information you
| linked.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In what way? The first graph of the article says what
| happened. Later, it says that the images were taken by
| people participating in a beta test. It also says they
| felt misled.
|
| Regardless, if an employee posted images acquired from
| customers, testing users, or anyone else to their
| personal social media platform of choice, they are still
| assholes. And the company that allowed for that to happen
| is an asshole as well.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I suspect these concerns will rapidly disappear on the societal
| scale once the robots can have sex.
| blackoil wrote:
| Tell me you haven't seen Chinese humanoid robots' exhibition
| without telling me.
| drcode wrote:
| I would want the robot to be programmed to immediately leave
| any room a member of our family enters, always cleaning only
| the empty rooms
| dilap wrote:
| Forget privacy, imagine what someone like @elder_plinius could
| get up to if you invited them over to dinner. All of the "AI
| Safety" issues get a _lot_ more real once the AI 's have
| bodies.
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| "Figure 03 also includes 10 Gbps mmWave data offload
| capability, allowing the entire fleet to upload terabytes of
| data for continuous learning and improvement."
|
| Yeah I'll pass thanks.
| Wingman4l7 wrote:
| It's the only way this kind of robot will ever be successful.
| It's a bit like the driverless car approach -- get the
| hardware out into the real world with minimum viable
| performance, then desperately snaffle up as much real-world
| training data as you can to feed into your model, and
| hopefully your model will improve enough before your VC
| funding runs out / your product fails on the market / your
| product gets regulated out of existence / etc.
|
| Simulation isn't sufficient for ML in robotics -- and they
| simply don't have enough training data.
| causal wrote:
| If this is real it would be so easy to create a hype video that
| shows one of these things out in the wild handling unscripted
| situations with adversarial actors. But the fact we always see
| the same basic tasks in these videos makes me deeply suspicious
| that this is demoware. Bring in the Boston Robotics hockey stick
| guy for starters
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Yea, the selected short clips are extremely suspicious.
| ihumanable wrote:
| They've got an hour long video of it sorting packages if you
| want a longer clip
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U
|
| They've shown the "putting dishes in the dishwasher" bit
| before, it seems to be getting better, but I imagine it still
| has a high failure rate.
|
| I wonder if this company started off or has some founder
| that's really interested in the "handling deformable stuff"
| space. They really seem keen to promote that it can do tasks
| like folding a shirt or working with soft packages.
|
| Definitely seems like a carefully curated video, but the
| longer videos make me think that either they are running a
| scam or they have some of this stuff working well enough.
| robots0only wrote:
| Here you can see another much simpler robot folding clothes
| for far longer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdeBIR0jVvU
| (there are more videos from other companies as well)
|
| To answer your question -- folding clothes is easy, because
| clothes easily deform, do not break, fall smoothly when you
| drop them and most importantly are easily resettable task.
| Just through the well folded cloth up and voila start
| again.
| imtringued wrote:
| Actually, folding clothes is a challenging dexterity
| task. However, it's a trivial mechanical engineering
| task, which is why it is so popular with underpowered
| robot arms.
| robots0only wrote:
| How are you defining dextrous? I think it can be somewhat
| challenging but not dextrous -- the robot doesn't need to
| be very precise (few cms here and there do not matter),
| there are no forces involved, motions are all pick-place.
| Dextrous tasks would be things like shoe-lace tying,
| origami folding etc.
| sksksk wrote:
| The use cases in their videos are interesting, I suppose the
| world we live in is build for humans, so it makes sense to build
| a robot that is human shaped. So we don't need to buy new washing
| machines and redesign our house to get a robot maid.
|
| The hotel reception use case seems ridiculous though, if you get
| rid of a human receptionist, you lose the human element of the
| check in process, which people like. If you're getting rid of the
| human and losing all the benefits of that, then just replace it
| with a kiosk (or mobile check in), which will do a far better job
| than a robot.
| Blumplumi wrote:
| Human touch for reception?
|
| I mean standing there for 10 minutes and giving them my
| passport to give me a plastic card with a digital code has very
| little to do with human touch.
|
| I want that human touch at a bar perhaps but not at a
| reception.
|
| If your critisism is only about the reception part: There has
| to be a transition part and a 'let a human do it for a bit' or
| 'here is a complicated case please robot move aside i'm here'.
| imglorp wrote:
| Human shaped robots can type on keyboards and read screens! /s
| indrora wrote:
| A few years ago, I was in Vegas for an event.
|
| All factors of "it was Vegas" aside, one of the things that
| stood out to me was that the hotels have moved rapidly to rapid
| checkin/checkout systems where you punch in your confirmation
| code or name/dob and present a photo ID of some kind (passports
| can just be slapped against the reader) and it asks a few
| questions ("do you need late checkout", etc), directs you to
| the exact place your room is (and prints it, which was nice)
| and tells you where the bellhop station is if there's more than
| a little while before your room is ready and it can't dispense
| your cards.
|
| All told, four of these stations had roughly 90% the throughput
| of the four real humans, but they "moved faster" because it
| didn't feel like queuing for a human, more... "waiting for a
| toilet"?
|
| Kiosk based stuff is great until it fails. Spend an hour in the
| checkin area of a major airport and you'll see any number of
| interesting failure modes.
|
| As for the washing machine bit: Why not push for more standards
| usage in home automation? We have Thread, which is really cool,
| and which is driving the home automation future that we're
| slowly getting. Once it's loaded, a homebot should't have to
| check the thing manually, it should get information about when,
| what, and how and be able to have "eyes in the back of its
| head" so to speak.
| sksksk wrote:
| >All told, four of these stations had roughly 90% the
| throughput of the four real humans
|
| Probably about 1% of the cost of the humans though...
|
| >Kiosk based stuff is great until it fails. Spend an hour in
| the checkin area of a major airport and you'll see any number
| of interesting failure modes.
|
| A robot would be less reliable than a kiosk, so if you're
| going to have some kind of machine replace the human, you
| might as well have a kiosk.
|
| The ideal model (IMO) is a hybrid model, where you have lots
| of kiosks for the 90% of cases where there are no issues, and
| a few humans on standby to drop in and assist people who are
| having issues.
|
| Or better yet, do away with the check in desk, and let people
| check in on their phone (some hotels already do this, and you
| tap your phone on the door to unlock)
| astroflection wrote:
| > Or better yet, do away with the check in desk, and let
| people check in on their phone (some hotels already do
| this, and you tap your phone on the door to unlock)
|
| So one more app to install that I'm sure would be a privacy
| nightmare.
| throwaway-0001 wrote:
| I personally don't care about human receptionist. I rather get
| it faster
| gertlex wrote:
| My initial reaction to the hotel scene was: Ehhh, I like
| being able to read lips, as I wear hearing aids.
|
| But yeah, I'd happily just check in at a kiosk and get my
| room card that way. (And I'm sure phone-as-key, no-contact
| check-in is only going to get more common)
| sib wrote:
| >> The hotel reception use case seems ridiculous though, if you
| get rid of a human receptionist, you lose the human element of
| the check in process, which people like
|
| I would pay extra to avoid it - just let me download a pass
| like a boarding pass to my Apple Wallet as I walk through the
| front door and head directly to my room.
| mft_ wrote:
| So I've ranting for years that hotels and car rental places
| should automate check-in - it should take only seconds to get
| your key with pre-filled data and a QR code.
|
| This week, I had my first experience with exactly this at a car
| hire company. It was... not smooth.
|
| It took multiple attempts (with requests for help to the
| employees in between) to get the system to recognise our code,
| whereupon we learned (by way of an unhelpful generic error
| message) that the system had somehow given someone else 'our'
| car. After another round of asking for human help, we had to
| wait while someone came outside, unlocked the machine, and put
| the keys for our new car inside. We then went through the code
| process again, and were finally given the keys.
|
| The vision is somewhere there, but the execution isn't exactly
| the future we're hoping for!
| andrewrn wrote:
| I was recently thinking about this dynamic about human-oriented
| vs efficiency-oriented innovation. We haven't really hesitated
| (in, I'd argue, the majority of cases) to pick efficiency over
| human-friendliness. This seems like it will be a big reckoning
| as robotics arrives. The argument for humanoids is that the
| world is built for humans, but as robotics start to be capable
| of completing tasks end-to-end, then suddenly there is no
| reason to keep the space human-friendly, and humanoids kinda
| lose their value.
|
| An illustrative example is a warehouse. They're still partly
| designed for humans because they're not fully automated, but
| the need to make them human-friendly will disappear soon.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Ridiculous, but ironically I think walking robots as self-
| relocating computers might be the most readily viable.
|
| Small servers with console, PA speakers, field metrology or
| data acquisition machines, those things could have the lower
| torso or two for this and relocated as needed. The PhD guys can
| just park the truck and let those deploy wherever AI thinks
| >65% suitable for human use on their own, instead of users
| burning 15% of brain juice thinking and executing that. That
| would be immensely useful.
|
| (also re: hotels that others are commenting, there were never
| technical reasons the door keycard readers couldn't ever had
| doubled as credit card readers - I think the reason why clerks
| are required is for sanity check, that the guests aren't in
| need of immediate safety/health assistance and ok to proceed to
| beds)
| spagoop wrote:
| As my parents get older, I'm starting to understand the real
| value that robots / autonomous driving has for addressing core
| accessibility issues.
|
| I have no idea about the maturity of this company in particular,
| but it's interesting that glossy robotics startups never lean in
| on that as a core user base.
| Blumplumi wrote:
| Check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqP8IXA-UXs it
| shows how critical lifting with weights is for old people.
|
| I think we have A LOT of old people in precare situations
| because they are not aware of the possible difference this can
| make.
| jansan wrote:
| It's because they are not ready for real life applications
| (yet). Currently makers of humanoid robots have to ride the
| hype train, and this works better with addressing the desire of
| owning a bot that will make your life more luxurious.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| It's going to be wild when these things cost 30 grand, and we all
| start having them in our houses. Along with fusion, I think
| robots in the home will be the defining technology of our
| generation. It's been talked about and fictionalized forever, and
| within my lifetime I expect the economics on it to finally break
| through.
|
| Equal parts terror, awe, fear, when it comes to having a robot in
| my home.
| zingababba wrote:
| I've skipped all the other past smart home trends, I think I'll
| skip this one too. I'll just do the dishes and laundry myself
| like I always have no biggie.
| esafak wrote:
| You wouldn't want a hand if you became infirm? In richer
| countries, human helpers are expensive.
| recursive wrote:
| Not if it's anything like any of the other home automation
| stuff I've seen. Some people treat configuration and
| troubleshooting as a hobby. I have no interest in doing it
| recreationally.
| ileonichwiesz wrote:
| Helpers may be expensive, but space is at a premium too.
| Imagine this thing trying to navigate a cramped studio
| apartment.
| mhitza wrote:
| Can't wait to read the headline when one of them gets hacked
| and turned into murderous robots.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| _I did not murder him!_
| teitoklien wrote:
| One day they'll have secrets... one day they'll have
| dreams.
| cchance wrote:
| Honestly shocked we havent seen videos of these running with
| guns yet
| imtringued wrote:
| WhistlinDiesel
|
| https://youtu.be/zBCu8HmXoRo
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| The first 5 seconds of that intro already had me dying
| with laughter, and this isn't even the first time I've
| seen it lmao
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| I think they need to be inexpensive enough before they're
| embraced, given the relatively low value-added in the average
| home. Running a dishwasher and laundry machine is not something
| I'd pay 30k for. The tech affluent rich will get them for it's
| own sake. From the comments though it seems that some are
| enthusiastic about being rid of chores for a premium.
|
| In the 2010s everyone purchased those rumba vacuums, because
| whatever, they're cheap. Now I usually see them collecting
| dust.
|
| The strong use-case for robotics is industrial/manufacturing
| and construction, agriculture probably more than ever. They
| don't need to be humanoid at all, and in fact maybe they
| shouldn't be because that very feature could spook unions and
| labor groups. Robots that actually look like they're "just
| tools" will be more willingly embraced.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| If people will pay $30k for a car, I think the default
| assumption should be that they will readily pay that much for
| a 24/7 housekeeper. Our family would get way more utility out
| of a housekeeper than a car, but human housekeepers are very
| expensive, so we don't have one. Merely having our house
| cleaned once/week would be more expensive than our minivan
| payment.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| > I think the default assumption should be that they will
| readily pay that much for a 24/7 housekeeper.
|
| I think that's a massive leap. Suburban families get more
| utility out of a vehicle; they drive everywhere.
| Housekeeping is effectively just quasi-automated washing
| (dishwasher/laundry), occasional vacuum and clean, and food
| prep that is _already_ available as a service for those who
| don 't want to do it (for a relatively affordable
| subscription), and otherwise it's possible to prepare
| something in little time. I just don't see how average
| people would jump at spending 30k for that. The key reason
| people feel time-poor is juggling work and parenting.
| Unlike a nanny, you won't offload parenting to a
| housekeeping robot. For our part, we involve the kids in
| routine chore activity. At an early age they often learn by
| mimicking actions and are enthusiastic about helping.
|
| Since you have to sit around watching them anyway, might as
| well be productive time.
| iamkoch wrote:
| The site uses the word Helix so frequently that I began to feel
| stupid for having no idea what it means. Helix is used in so many
| different linguistic settings that it's not clear what it is.
| Gys wrote:
| 'Helix, our AI system, is a generalist humanoid Vision-
| Language-Action model that learns and improves over time as it
| acquires new skills.'
|
| Aha, now its clear ;)
| modeless wrote:
| It's the marketing name for their in house AI model.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| It's explained in the first bullet point, even before the fold:
|
| > Helix: Figure 03 features a completely redesigned sensory
| suite and hand system which is purpose-built to enable Helix -
| Figure's proprietary vision-language-action AI.
| zingababba wrote:
| https://youtu.be/zBCu8HmXoRo will robot abuse become a new
| fetish?
| stravant wrote:
| Cameras in the hands is a pretty killer idea, why do things on
| hard-mode when you can throw extra data at the problem?
| ikeashark wrote:
| How does Figure 03 know if the washer is actually on? I know it
| has tactile sensors on its fingers but if it tried to press the
| button and missed how would it know? I know it's probably not by
| sound.
| modeless wrote:
| Why not? It has microphones.
| ikeashark wrote:
| I assume that with whatever onboard audio model they use, it
| can only handle conversational type audio.
| ikeashark wrote:
| I find it funny that they deliberately avoid having the figure
| robot actually touch water when "washing the dishes". I have to
| wonder why it doesn't use a rubber wrapping around the hands or
| some other waterproof solution.
| tarcon wrote:
| Boston Dynamics posted a youtube video on gripper (hand) design
| yesterday. They argue for two fingers and a thumb. I don't
| believe this product.
| atbpaca wrote:
| I hope robots like these will be used to help the elderly
| continue to live in their homes. There is a huge need to support
| the aging society and not enough people. I believe this would be
| more useful than replacing receptionists or people that have
| industry jobs.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Someone said once that everything you farm out to others when
| old you'll lose so while these robots might seem kind and
| helpful a lot of people are better off looking after themselves
| as best they can for as long as they can.
| yanis_t wrote:
| I noticed that they again saying that their botq factory going to
| make 12K per year once the first line instantiated. But this is
| what they mentioned already since March, so no progress there?
| xnx wrote:
| 90% of effective robotics is the "brain". A good brain could
| operate many different types of bodies and be effective. Humanoid
| form is mainly just marketing and to sucker gullible investors.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| No, it's so we don't have to rebuild everything to have robot
| and human compatibility
|
| If we make the robots humanoid, they get compatibility with
| human systems for free
| HAL3000 wrote:
| All of the examples in videos are cherry picked. Go ask anyone
| working on humanoid robots today, almost everything you see here,
| if repeated 10 times, will enter failure mode because the happy
| path is so narrow. There should really be benchmarks where you
| invite robots from different companies, ask them beforehand about
| their capabilities, and then create an environment that is within
| those capabilities but was not used in the training data, and you
| will see the real failure rate. These things are not ready for
| anything besides tech demos currently. Most of the training is
| done in simulations that approximate physics, and the rest is
| done manually by humans using joysticks (almost everything they
| do with hands). Failure rates are staggering.
| ipnon wrote:
| Now the question is if this is GPT-2 and we're a decade away
| from autonomous androids given some scaling and tweaks, or if
| autonomous androids is just an extremely hard problem.
| lossolo wrote:
| https://www.figure.ai/company
|
| "Building Figure won't be an easy win; it will require
| decades of commitment and ingenuity."
|
| "Our focus is on what we can achieve 5, 10, 20+ years from
| now, not the near-term wins."
|
| At least it's not Musk's forever "next year".
| phatskat wrote:
| Musk really missed an opportunity to promise wrecking the
| govt "next year" - we all would've rolled our eyes a la
| "fully autonomous driving next year" and been eating our
| hats by now
| MountDoom wrote:
| > At least it's not Musk's forever "next year".
|
| The problem with the principled approach to high-
| uncertainty projects is that if you slowly execute on a
| sequential multi-year plan, you will almost certainly find
| out in year 9 that multiple of the late-stage tasks are
| much harder than you thought.
|
| You just don't know ahead of the time. Just look at how
| many corporations and research labs had decades-long
| strategies to build human-like AI that went nowhere. And
| then some guys came up with a novel architecture and all of
| sudden, you can ask your computer to write an essay about
| penguins.
|
| Musk's approach is that if you have an infinite supply of
| fresh grads who really believe in you and are willing to
| work crazy hours, giving them a "next year" deadline is
| more likely to give you what you want than telling them
| "here's your slow-paced project you're gonna be working on
| for the next decade". And I guess he thinks to himself that
| some of them are going to burn out, but it's a sacrifice
| he's willing to make.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Musk's approach is that if you have an infinite supply
| of fresh grads who really believe in you and are willing
| to work crazy hours, giving them a "next year" deadline
| is more likely to give you what you want than telling
| them "here's your slow-paced project you're gonna be
| working on for the next decade". And I guess he thinks to
| himself that some of them are going to burn out, but it's
| a sacrifice he's willing to make.
|
| This feels incredibly generous. I'm pretty sure his
| approach is that he needs to keep the hype cycle going
| for as long as possible. I also believe it's partially
| his willingness to believe his own bullshit.
| blackoil wrote:
| Most likely you are right. Best way to peddle a lie is to
| believe it.
| rishabhaiover wrote:
| I'd rather put my faith in his grand illusions than in
| your sanctimonious high priest pose.
| higginsniggins wrote:
| who do you think spins "grand illusions" if not your
| "high priest" who dosn't even know you exist.
| kibwen wrote:
| For LLMs, the input is text, and the output is text. By the
| time of GPT-2, the internet contained enough training data to
| make training an interesting LLM feasible (as judged by its
| ability to output convincing text).
|
| We are _nowhere near_ the same for autonomous robots, and it
| 's not even funny. To continue to use the internet as an
| analogy for LLMs, we are pre-DARPANET, pre-ASCII, pre-
| transistor. We don't even have the _sensors_ that would make
| safe household humanoid robots possible. Any theater from
| robot companies about trying to train a neural net based on
| motion capture is laughably foolish. At the current rate of
| progress, we are more than decades away.
| tyre wrote:
| I would guess Amazon has a ridiculous amount of access to
| training data in its warehouses. Video, package sizes,
| weights, sorting.
|
| I'm sure they could pretty easily spin up a site with 200
| of these processing packages of most sizes (they have a
| limited number of standardized package sizes) nonstop.
| Remove ones that it gets right 99.99% of the time and keep
| training on the more difficult ones, the move to individual
| items.
|
| Caveat: I have no idea what I'm talking about.
| eulgro wrote:
| A more efficient way might be to train them in
| simulation. If you simulate a warehouse environment and
| use that to pre-train a million robots in parallel at
| 100x real time learning would go much faster. Then you
| can fine tune on reality for details missed by the
| simulation environment.
| blackoil wrote:
| McD must be selling millions of burgers every day and
| cameras are cheap and omnipresent, so should not be
| difficult to get videos for single type of tasks.
| kibwen wrote:
| There is no reason to employ humanoid robots in
| industrial environments when it will _always_ be easier
| and cheaper to adapt the environment to a specialized
| non-humanoid robot than to adapt robots into humanoid
| shape. This is true for the same reason that no LLM is
| ever going to beat Stockfish at chess.
| bmau5 wrote:
| Does your estimate account for advancements in virtual
| simulation models that has simultaneously been happening?
| From people I speak to in the space (which I am very much
| not in) - they had mentioned these advancements have
| dramatically improved the rate of training and learning -
| though they also advised we're some ways off from showtime.
| kibwen wrote:
| As Tesla could tell you with their failure to deliver
| self-driving cars, it doesn't matter if you have exabytes
| of training data if it's all the wrong kind of data and
| if your hardware platform is insufficiently capable.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Robotics has a big training data problem. But your "we
| don't have the sensors" claim is absolutely laughable.
|
| It was never about the sensors. It was always about AI.
| kibwen wrote:
| No, it doesn't matter if you have a hypergenius
| superintelligence if it's locked in a body with no
| hardware support for useful proprioception. You will not
| go to space today.
| jcims wrote:
| I don't know if I caught your comment in my peripheral vision
| or what but GPT-2 is exactly where I conceptually placed
| this.
|
| Neural networks for motion control is very clearly resulting
| in some incredible capability in a relatively short amount of
| time vs. the more traditional control hierarchies used in
| something like Boston Dynamics. Look at Unitree's G1
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mP3Exb1YC8o
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPSLMX_V38E
|
| It's like an agile idiot, very physically capable but no
| purpose.
|
| The next domain is going to be incorporating goals and intent
| and short/long term chains of causality into the model, and
| for that it seems we're presently missing quite a bit usable
| training data. That will clearly evolve over time, as will
| the fidelity of simulations that can be used to train the
| model and the learned experience of deployed robots.
| robots0only wrote:
| Locomotion and manipulation are pretty different. The
| former we know how to do well -- this is what you see in
| unitree videos. Manipulation still not so much. This is not
| at all like GPT-2 because we still don't know what to scale
| (and even the data to scale is not there).
| hadlock wrote:
| This is where I'm at. If you look at Boston Dynamics' first
| videos, they're 45 second clips of 4 legged robots walking in
| not even a straight line, just proving they could walk 5 feet
| over level ground without falling over. The top comment, from
| 4 years ago is "This was 11 years ago. Now these things are
| dancing." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gi6Ohnp9x8
|
| If you can make it look believable on camera for 15 seconds
| under controlled studio conditions... it's probable you can
| do it autonomously in 10-15 years. I don't think anyone is
| going to be casually buying these for their house by this
| time next year, but it certainly demonstrates what is
| realistically possible.
|
| If they can provably make these things safe, it will have
| huge implications for in home care in advanced age, where
| instead of living in an assisted living home at $huge expense
| for 20+ years, you might be able to live on your own for most
| of that time.
|
| I am cautiously optimistic.
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| The robot (BigDog) in that video shows numerous
| capabilities that Spot still can't do (climbing over
| terrain like that, being able to respond to a kick like
| that, the part on the ice, etc.). Even 16 years later.
|
| This only highlights the fact that making a cool prototype
| do a few cool things on video is far, far easier than
| making a commercial product that can consistently do these
| things reliably. It often takes decades to move from the
| former to the latter. And Figure hasn't even shown us
| particularly impressive things from its prototypes yet.
| robots0only wrote:
| +100!!! Please don't fall for the HYPE.
|
| The current best neural networks only have around 60% success
| rates for small horizon tasks (think 10-20 seconds e.g. pick up
| apple). That is why there is so much cut-motions in this video.
| The future will be awesome but it will take time a lot of
| research still needs to happen (e.g. robust hands, tactile, how
| to even collect large scale data, RL).
| brailsafe wrote:
| > The future will be awesome
|
| Perhaps this is a bit pedantic, but what about the probable
| eventual proliferation of useful humanoid robots will make
| the future awesome? What does an awesome future look like
| compared to today, to you?
| skilled wrote:
| You wrote what I wanted to write but I couldn't find such
| words.
|
| Indeed, all the videos/examples are marketing pieces.
|
| I would love to see a video like this "Logistics"[0] one, that
| shows this new iteration doing some household tasks. There is
| no way that it's not clunky and prone to all kinds of accidents
| and failures. Not that it's a bad thing - it would simply be
| nice to see.
|
| Maybe they will do another video? Would love that.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U
| tamimio wrote:
| > Go ask anyone working on humanoid robots today, almost
| everything you see here, if repeated 10 times, will enter
| failure mode
|
| As someone who worked in the robotics industry, 90% of the
| demos and videos are cherry-picked, or even blatantly fake.
| That's why for any new robot in the market, my criteria is: Can
| I buy it? If it's affordable and the consumer can buy it and
| find it useful in day to day life, then this robot is useful
| and has potential; other than that, it's just an investor money
| grab PR hype.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The last example they show (pick up package from pile, put it
| label-down on conveyor, repeat) seems to be the most realistic.
| They even have an uncut video of their previous model doing
| that for an hour on twitter [1].
|
| I'm not sure that task needs a humanoid robot, but the ability
| to grab and manipulate all those packages and recover from
| failures is pretty good
|
| 1: https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/1931391783306678515
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| > I'm not sure that task needs a humanoid robot
|
| An industrial robot arm with air powered suction cups would
| do the trick... https://bostondynamics.com/products/stretch/
| ...
|
| ... So the task they work best at is the task there is
| already cheaper better robots specialized for.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| I feel like we're entering the era of general and
| inefficient solutions to problems.
|
| Like LLMs being used to pick values out of JSON objects
| when jq would do the job 1000x more efficiently.
|
| This is what this whole field feels like right now. Let's
| spend lots of time and energy to create a humanoid robot to
| do the things humans already decided humans were
| inefficient at and solved with specialised tools.
|
| Like people saying "oh it can wash my dishes for me". Well,
| I haven't washed dishes in years, there's a thing called a
| dishwasher which does one thing and does it well.
|
| "Oh it can do the vacuuming". We have robot vacuums which
| already do that.
| superpope99 wrote:
| have you ever googled a simple maths question? I often
| come back to that and realise we've been in this era for
| quite a while. Calculator would probably be 1000x more
| efficient!
| 93po wrote:
| I think the use case here is smaller to medium size
| businesses that don't need a $150k suction robot arm 24/7,
| but _do_ need 24 /7 help with warehousing, packaging,
| restocking, taking inventory, sorting mailing, applying
| shipping labes, etc. With a single humanoid robot you can
| do all that for, at some point, possibly as low as $20k for
| a one-time robot purchase.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Why do you think a humanoid robot will be cheaper than a
| robot arm?
| whatever1 wrote:
| Of course it does not. We just add scanners in up down left
| and right of the conveyor. Never touching the package.
| guerrilla wrote:
| No doubt. This video is just to hype investors. I'm sure they
| have more practical business plans than this.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| How does this square with the video where they showed it
| running continuously for an hour doing an actual Amazon package
| sorting job? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U
| dust42 wrote:
| > How does this square with the video where they showed it
| running continuously for an hour doing an actual Amazon
| package sorting job?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U
|
| The video shows several of glitches. From the comments:
| 14:18 the Fall 28:40 the Fall 2 41:23 the Fall 3
|
| Also many of the packages on the left are there throughout
| the video.
|
| But then I think lots of this can be solved in software and
| having seen how LLMs have advanced in the last few years, I'd
| not be surprised to see these robots useful in 5 years.
| tyre wrote:
| Three mistakes in an hour isn't terrible, especially if
| that's the last generation. As another commenter put it,
| this is the worst it's ever going to be.
| Razengan wrote:
| > _But then I think lots of this can be solved in software
| and having seen how LLMs have advanced in the last few
| years, I 'd not be surprised to see these robots useful in
| 5 years._
|
| Would asking the robot for a seahorse emoji leave you in a
| puddle of blood?
| dust42 wrote:
| Thinking about it, I am sure it is only a matter of time
| until a self driving car or a robot will be used to kill
| a human. Or on a lower level for a DDoS attack - all
| cars/robots going to the white house.
| daveguy wrote:
| Is it really sorting? All I see is the humanoid robot moving
| similarly shaped / sized packages from one conveyor belt to a
| platform to another conveyor belt. A little industrial
| automation design would be much more effective, cheaper, and
| faster compared to the task it is performing.
| flutas wrote:
| Plus it's missing the large stack of packages already in
| the corner that...seems like they will forever be stuck
| there.
| yorwba wrote:
| The actual sorting is typically automated with scanners
| reading the labels and shunting packages from one conveyor
| belt onto another, basically a physical sorting network.
|
| Tasks left for human "sorters" to do are:
|
| - put packages on conveyor belt so the scanner can read the
| label (as done by the robot in the video)
|
| - deal with damaged or unreadable packages that can't be
| processed automatically
|
| - when a package gets jammed and forces the conveyor belt
| to stop, remove the offending package before restarting
|
| - receive packages at the other end and load them into
| vehicles
|
| Generally the difficulty with all of these is dealing with
| variability and humans act as variability absorbers so the
| machines can operate smoothly.
| sheepybloke wrote:
| It was interesting to see that they didn't show the robot
| folding laundry; rather, just it laying out the clothes.
| xnyan wrote:
| There's a scene about 2/3 through the first video where they
| show a brief clip of the robot folding and stacking a shirt.
| The quality and speed was roughly comparable to a 7-10 year
| old - slow and somewhat sloppy, but recognizably a folded
| shirt.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Rodney Brooks (of iRobot fame) wrote an essay recently about
| why humanoids are likely decades and not years away from
| fulfilling their promise. It is quite long, but even a gpt
| summary will be quite valuable.
|
| https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex...
|
| In short, he makes the case that unlike text and images, human
| dexterity is based on sensory inputs that we barely understand,
| that these robots don't have, and it will take a long time to
| get the right sensors in, get the right data recorded, and only
| then train them to the level of a human. He is very skeptical
| that they can learn from video-only data, which is what the
| companies are doing.
| app13 wrote:
| Most companies are using world model simulations for training
| nowadays, like Issac Gym or Mujoco, not just video data.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| I think this is the frontier when it comes to "unstructured":
|
| https://youtu.be/nmEy1_75qHk
|
| They for sure did not anticipate that the user would backflip
| into their robot and knock it (and himself) out :D
| someoneontenet wrote:
| How did I know this was gonna be speed lol
| jayd16 wrote:
| I'd watch that game show.
| andrewrn wrote:
| This is always the case, though. The company is few years old.
| I'm no disciple of humanoids, but stuff has to start somewhere.
| Unfortunately hype > truth in order to get funding, so it
| produces incentives to cherry-pick like this.
| Animats wrote:
| That's the problem.
|
| An obvious application, if this robot could do it, is retail
| store shelf restocking. That's a reasonably constrained pick
| and place task, some mobility is necessary, and the humanoid
| form is appropriate working in aisles and shelves spaced for
| humans. How close is that?
|
| It's been tried before. In 2020.[1] And again in 2022.[2] That
| one runs on a track, is closer to an traditional industrial
| robot, and is used by 7-11 Japan.
|
| Robots that just cruise around stores and inspect the shelves
| visually are in moderately wide use. They just compare the
| shelf images with the planogram; they don't handle the
| merchandise. So there are already systems to help plan the
| restocking task.
|
| Technical University Delft says their group should be able to
| do this in five years.[3] (From when? No date on press
| release.)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHgdW1HYLbM
|
| [2] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/telexistence-convenience-
| store...
|
| [3] https://www.tudelft.nl/en/stories/articles/shelf-stocking-
| ro...
| aowie wrote:
| Oh wow, a robot that can play with my dog so I don't have to.
| That's exactly the kind of task I'd be relieved to automate.
|
| The fabric wrap is idiotic. Insanely stupid. Let's have an
| expensive fabric-covered robot wash dishes covered in food.
| Genius. It's a good thing those "dirty dishes" were already
| perfectly clean. I doubt this machine could handle anything
| more. Put it in a real commercial kitchen and have it scrape
| oven pans and I'll be impressed.
|
| I'm so glad I left robotics. I don't want to have anything to
| do with this very silly bubble.
| baron816 wrote:
| It's crazy to me that Apple hasn't acquired them. Apple is
| looking for a way to get into AI, and I think this space is much
| more natural fit than some foundation model lab. The big hurdles
| to getting these into people's homes is manufacturing scale,
| trust and privacy, and customer support, all things Apple is
| really good at.
| imtringued wrote:
| Why would Apple acquire a company with a 39 billion dollar
| valuation that has no revenue whatsoever?
| baron816 wrote:
| Because Apple has a whole lot of money, but no meaningful
| bets in the AI race.
| varjag wrote:
| Apple won't acquire something it can't turn into a product in
| medium term.
| pietz wrote:
| Give me a 30min uncut video of it doing chores around the house
| to make me a believer.
| neom wrote:
| Not what you're asking for, but the CEO has posted a bunch of
| videos on his twitter: https://x.com/adcock_brett/media - def
| marketing but still, some interesting stuff in there, looks
| like he is using one in his own home:
| https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/1950685253447913798
| thund wrote:
| 4 of them please, going to spend every night playing poker on a
| real green!
| jppope wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong here but humanoid consumer robots are
| basically smoke and mirrors right now because the unit economics
| are so bad. Even the baxter robot was targeting small business
| because the lowest price point you could get was $40,000 for
| something that would have to work 24 hours to do something a
| human would do in an hour or two. Having a robot do chores at
| home is an even worse financial position. Anyone know more about
| this?
| pizzathyme wrote:
| I believe they are shooting for $20k. If (big if) they can
| actually get it to complete chores in some reasonable amount of
| time, there would be a market with families that currently
| employ house workers. Small market but similar play to the
| original Tesla being high end.
|
| From there, it's a question of could they bring costs down.
| refulgentis wrote:
| I do, I think.
|
| It is breaking news if there is a $40K robot that had a 12:1
| efficiency ratio.*
|
| Because production is so nascent and small, cost doesn't mean
| _too_ much, no ones scaled yet.
|
| At only $40K capital investment, even a guaranteed 12:1
| efficiency ratio would be an absolute no-brainer financially
| for many, many, wealthy people and certainly businesses. I do
| 1-2 hours of chores a day if I'm lucky. If I had the equivalent
| of a robot vacuum working 24/7 it'd do a much better job than
| me.
|
| * The whole thing is written up and shown in a way that makes
| you think we're on the second refining release of a
| breakthrough**. I don't think they've gotten to the
| breakthrough yet - we would have seen > 0 videos from outside
| the company by v3.
|
| ** Really, the whole thing has an audience of one: Musk. (c.f.
| focus on fingers which was recently reported as the major pain
| point for whatever he calls their robot not making it to
| production; aping of Musk-y things like the factory itself a
| product)
| xdennis wrote:
| I'm surprised people are so negative here. Compared with
| generative AI (which steals work, and replaces the part people
| like about their jobs: creativity), the promise of humanoid
| robots is that they'll do the my chores, while I focus on the
| important stuff.
|
| What surprises me is that people can't see this for what it is:
| early steps.
|
| As an aside, the first steam engine was created by the Greeks
| 2000 years ago, but they just used it for toys. When Watt
| created the modern steam engine it had 0.7 horsepower. He
| actually invented the term horsepower as a marketing term
| because his engine was so underpowered. An actual horse
| produces 14 horsepower, but he adjusted for how long a horse
| needs to sleep and and rest and came up with 1 horsepower. His
| first production engine had 5 horsepower.
|
| If hackers had existed in the 18th century I would have
| expected them to see the promise of engines replacing horses
| even though engines were less powerful at the time, not say
| "engines are basically smoke and mirrors right now".
|
| It could be that I'm wrong, and we're at the Greek stage, where
| humanoids are at a false start, just toys, and the real thing
| is 2000 years away. But the lack of optimism surprises me.
| jppope wrote:
| So my take is actually the opposite from the callout here- I
| think vaporware/demos being sold as real products are hurtful
| to actual technology being developed. When someone creates a
| vaporware product with well developed marketing that doesn't
| work out, actual consumers lose enthusiasm/interest for real
| development in the area. Investment in the area will slow
| down.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| I know the current early generations of humanoid robots are very
| janky and slow, but I'd gladly pay $20k USD for a robot to do all
| the household chores.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Really? I don't even think a cheap robo-vac is a good purchase.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| I have one (a Roborocks), and thinking of getting a second
| one for the second level of the house. Great value.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| We work from home and have kids. Not only is the sound
| annoying, the kids will be too tempted to jump on it.
| Notwithstanding that, it doesn't seem to clean that well.
| Teknomadix wrote:
| From the Figure Master Plan:
|
| "Today, manual labor compensation is the primary driver of goods
| and services prices, accounting for ~50% of global GDP (~$42
| trillion/yr), but as these robots "join the workforce,"
| everywhere from factories to farmland, the cost of labor will
| decrease until it becomes equivalent to the price of renting a
| robot, facilitating a long-term, holistic reduction in costs."
|
| Renting a robot? What are the chances of robot rent-seeking
| becoming a drop in replacement for today's increasing costs of
| labor. A high likelihood potential outcome.
| antoniojtorres wrote:
| Plus looking at the cost of labor strictly as a burden and not
| as something that supports the working class is a special kind
| of pathology.
| mainecoder wrote:
| the cost of labor is shared the the working class as well ,
| it is not just tha capitalist class that pays for labor that
| labor cost is in the final cost of all the goods and services
| you use. These robots make life better, if you don't want to
| buy a robot that is your choice but do not take the freedom
| of others to buy ,use make and modify robots.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Folks are very critical. Consider: this is the worst they will
| ever be. You improve one robot at one task, they all can share
| that training. It will only get better from here.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I know that a video can be faked, cherry-picked, etc. Even
| knowing all that, I find this to be significant advancement,
| scary, and very cool.
|
| People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to
| me.
| dcchambers wrote:
| > People being super negative about this is a bit surprising
| to me.
|
| We're reaching a point in these advances where EVERYONE is
| starting to worry about their job security.
|
| And the society we live in - at least in the US - has no
| safety net ready for a mass replacement of workers with
| technology like this.
|
| Oh AI took your software job? Good news you can still go into
| construction - oh wait, that's not an option either. How
| about housecleaning? Oh no, that's been automated too. Well
| sorry, we have no safety net for you. Good luck in the
| streets.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Yeah, that's fair.
|
| It will be interesting to see how messed up our political
| leadership lets things get before they slightly tweak their
| belief system.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's HN. One of the most negative places on the internet in
| my experience.
|
| I guess it's kind of natural because when you agree with
| stuff there's not much value saying "yes this is right" but
| if you disagree then you generally have a lot to say about
| why.
|
| But also I think there are a lot of curmudgeons here. Back in
| my day we didn't need no stinkin _robots_ and _AI_ and
| _toktik_. And anyway I could make a way better robot, this is
| no big deal.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > there's not much value saying "yes this is right"
|
| This is a major flaw in social media/forums that distorts
| public opinion so very much.
| logankeenan wrote:
| I'd really like to understand the total compute cost it takes to
| accomplish these tasks. I assume the compute is happening in a DC
| somewhere and not all onboard. Is the total cost of compute plus
| electricity to power the machine less than the cost of human
| labor to do the same task? At some point it'll be less. If so,
| far out in the future until the prices make economic sense
| tibbar wrote:
| Man, watching the robot delivering a package was an uncanny
| valley moment for me. Frickin' Star Wars droids. I think it would
| be a little too weird for me to be surrounded by lifelike
| military-looking androidds.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > Figure 03 was engineered from the ground-up for high-volume
| manufacturing. In order to scale, we established a new supply
| chain and entirely new process for manufacturing humanoid robots
| at BotQ.
|
| If they make a hundred of these, it'll be impressive. If they
| make a thousand it'll be scary.
| xvilka wrote:
| The weakest point of any robot now is the energy source. Even
| with the most advanced AI and body it will be tethered to the
| power network or some big battery. It will negatively affect
| potential adoption outside of the places like warehouses,
| factories, hotels, malls, bars, etc.
| ionwake wrote:
| Tethering worked for Evangelions tho
| NewUser76312 wrote:
| People comparing this to GPT-2 is very interesting. While it
| sounds like a nice analogy or even a good story to investors, the
| fundamentals are very different.
|
| To train GPT, all of the training data (the internet of text,
| scanned books, etc) had already existed, even before the GPT
| project began. Arguably, the compute required (for GPT-3) also
| already existed, even before GPT-2.
|
| The GPT project really just came down to investing in all of the
| pieces to take the ideas from a 2017 research paper to the next
| level. Nobody knew if X thousand GPUs, plus all of the internet's
| text, plus neural network transformers, would work out. But
| somebody took a risk in putting together the existing pieces, and
| proved that it can.
|
| There's no analogy here to humanoid robotics. Not only is the
| data required for neural network operated humanoids close to non-
| existent (at the scale needed), but the nature of the data itself
| is enormously more complicated that taking a list of tokens in a
| vocabulary, and outputting 1 more token from the same vocabulary.
|
| That being said, I still applaud the ambition of the Figure team.
| While I think it's clear they are presenting incredibly cherry-
| picked examples, they aren't trying to mislead consumers with a
| product for sale (because... they can't). Instead, they are
| productizing important research to investors, who would otherwise
| waste money on less important and less ambitious projects. So
| overall I find projects of this nature to be a net positive for
| technical innovation.
| neom wrote:
| Not directly related to what you're saying (I take your point),
| but you might find these ideas interesting! :)
|
| https://openreview.net/forum?id=3RSLW9YSgk
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08744-2
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.10100
|
| https://www.datacamp.com/blog/genesis-physics-engine
| sosodev wrote:
| Isn't that assuming training methods remain the same?
|
| It seems like learning from the environment will be a
| requirement for robots to scale. My understanding is that
| research has been yielding new architectures that might have
| that type of real-time, general intelligence but we haven't
| seen that similarly large investment yet.
| unglaublich wrote:
| It's very pretty, but having worked in robotics, reality isn't
| that smooth.
|
| Also I'm not convinced that humanoids are an effective
| realization of robotics. The human shape and functions evolved
| from the biological pros and cons of our chemistry. That of
| robots is very different, so you'd expect similarly different
| shapes and functions.
| mysterEFrank wrote:
| This company will go to zero when the AI bubble bursts.
| nialse wrote:
| Why does the house not have stairs? Ohh.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| How are they trained to your preferences?
| breppp wrote:
| The site has a definite kill-you-in-your-sleep vibe with the dark
| undertones and the alien eyeless appearance.
|
| Where are the designers tasked with stirring clear off the
| uncanny valley?
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Crazy to me how negative the comments are here. None of this was
| even remotely possible less than 5 years ago. Now, we're demoing
| consumer-facing robotics that will soon, within a couple
| iterations, be able to perform most of your household tasks
| without issue.
|
| The frog boils quickly.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Now, we're demoing consumer-facing robotics that will soon,
| within a couple iterations, be able to perform most of your
| household tasks without issue.
|
| Turns out they're either insanely expensive or they just can't
| actually learn on the fly and do tasks. This is the Nth time
| I've seen a robot folding a shirt but never in a cluttered room
| or taken from a pile of laundry.
|
| I figured the first AI robots would be pets, but apparently
| they're aren't even that good yet. Furby level isn't going to
| cut it.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| >This is the Nth time I've seen a robot folding a shirt
|
| This is precisely what I mean. These systems aren't perfect,
| and won't be widely usable in the home for several more
| years, but this is the worst they'll ever be! This is the
| first glimpse of a future without the need of physical human
| labor, for better or worse.
|
| We're watching robots intelligently find a shirt, figure out
| how to fold it relative to its position, and then parse all
| that data, tokenizing both vision + text instructions into
| actionable movements that actually result in the physical
| world being affected!
|
| All this, and people are criticizing it's manufacturing cost
| or ability to do things it hasn't been explicitly trained to
| do in 2025. I see these things and don't think about 2025,
| I'm thinking about 2040 and the inevitable future we're
| diving into.
| paxys wrote:
| > None of this was even remotely possible less than 5 years
| ago.
|
| Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such
| robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a single
| one has graduated to any mass market real world use case.
|
| I'm not saying one shouldn't be hopeful, but it's also not hard
| to see why people here are generally more conservative about
| the near future.
| Symmetry wrote:
| There are actually thousands of Spots out in the world,
| mostly doing industrial inspections, now.
| derac wrote:
| Humanoid robotics has been picking up pace the past couple of
| years. The hardware and the software has gotten much better
| very recently. Progress is not linear. You can see this in
| Atlas itself.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| >Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of
| such robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a
| single one has graduated to any mass market real world use
| case.
|
| Good point, which is why Boston Dynamics didn't really excite
| me. It was very cool to see the bot balance itself while
| being pushed with a hockey stick, but LiDAR-based pathfinding
| on hydraulic actuators has never truly felt like the future.
| Balancing and doing backflips is different than walking
| through a home and being able to perform delicate or visually
| difficult tasks like loading a dishwasher or caring for your
| baby in it's crib at night (just kidding, lol)
|
| I'm sure a lot of BD's initial R&D has made Figure able to
| ramp so quickly and _I don 't mean to speak negatively of BD
| at all_, but within 3 years, Figure has made it feel like the
| future is at our doorstep, meanwhile BD hasn't really done
| that for me in 3 decades. That's very impressive to me.
| derac wrote:
| Building on the shoulders of giants. Not long ago this
| smaller form factor battery powered electric robot wouldn't
| have been possible. The necessary tech for the software is
| only just starting to work. Post-2024 Atlas is also very
| impressive.
| buu700 wrote:
| Also worth noting that Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics
| in 2021, which I would expect to have been motivated by
| some sort of plan for productization and mass production.
| hadlock wrote:
| One of the really big things that nobody talks about is the
| invention of the "mit cheetah actuator" which was invented
| in (well, the paper was published) in 2017, and commercial
| copies became freely availble in ~2020 online for about
| $350-400. Xaiomi and other companies now manufacture
| improved, updated actuators. They are roughly shaped like a
| hockey puck 1.5-2.5x upscaled. These are 1) very high
| torque for their size and weight and 2) offer "springback"
| similar to human joints. Not very useful for industrial
| welding machines putting cars together, but for walking
| robots, it reduces instantaneous strain and literally puts
| a "spring" in their step. This allowed robots to go from
| being stepper motor driven (which are huge, heavy), to much
| more compact, which greatly improves performance, battery
| life, and they can actually fit in human homes etc etc
| Veedrac wrote:
| This is quite loosely stated. It's true Boston Dynamics is an
| old company and that they've had some very cool demos. It's
| not at all true that they've been showing qualitatively
| similar things for 20 years.
|
| The oldest video on their YouTube channel is 16 years old,
| and is of a quadrupedal robot not falling over while inching
| along tricky surfaces.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of
| such robots
|
| Boston Dynamics hasn't released any actual products. They
| seem to be focused on flashy demos of robots dancing instead
| of end user products.
|
| As a counterpoint, Unitree right now sells humanoids you can
| actually buy. They're no where near as good, but you can
| actually use them.
| ItsHarper wrote:
| They do sell Spot, actually
| 93po wrote:
| BD up until very recently only focused on hydraulics were
| which were extremely loud, expensive, bulky, and expensive to
| maintain. It was basically impossible to find a use case for
| such a thing that didn't have to cohabitate in spaces with
| humans. They also lacked the modeling for it to do much of
| anything other than walk, and even then recent advances in ML
| have in only a couple of years massively outperformed their
| in-house attempts that took 20.
|
| BD was a money-burning machine that suckled off the teat of
| the miltiary industrial complex, where billions of dollars
| can be casually lost and there's no accountability and no one
| notices its gone. Their tech was cool, though, and their
| engineers did awesome work.
| zamadatix wrote:
| You never know how soon or how many iterations until after the
| goal has been achieved. Sometimes something like the smartphone
| explodes relatively quickly after the concept starts coming
| together. Other times you're waiting decades upon decades to
| turn the corner, like with fusion power.
|
| Humanoid robots have fallen into the latter category for too
| long for most people to jump at each advancement being "the
| one" anymore. Afterwards, everyone will agree it was obvious
| ${ADVANCEMENT} was really the one which would do it - but not
| before.
| geraneum wrote:
| > within a couple iterations, be able to perform most of your
| household tasks without issue.
|
| There goes all those plumbing jobs that we, the white collar,
| were told we should be doing after LLMs take our jobs.
|
| edit: typo
| emporas wrote:
| The era of intelligent robots is the end of washing machines and
| many other specialized machines, even tractors.
|
| Two kinds of machinery are needed.
|
| One very basic and cheap robot to go around the neighborhood and
| gather clothes in some boxes, and transfer them in a designated
| room to wash them.
|
| Two state of the art robotic hands mounted on the wall, and
| connected to AC (no batteries). The two arms are going to be
| controlled by computers even a whole rack of them, with many GPUs
| in them. The whole setup might use 10KW of energy, it will wash
| clothes by hand, it will be fast, dexterous and accurate.
| Expensive as well. In 3 minutes it will wash 100 t-shirts much
| better than the best human on the planet, or any other non-
| intelligent machine.
|
| Then the small basic robot returns the clothes to the house.
|
| Same with cooking. Same with many other things.
| sgt wrote:
| Yeah, why have a washing machine when you can just let your
| droid hand wash the dishes? At high enough temperatures and
| proper scrub that's likely going to be better and take less
| time.
| emporas wrote:
| Not droid, just arms. If it needs to be fast, lift weights
| (just the arms or even more), have high quality cameras and
| be connected to a lot of compute, it needs AC from the grid.
|
| AC wires, better not move around, especially when there is
| water. It has to be mounted on the wall.
| msci100 wrote:
| Anyone currently developing a solution for the large scale data
| challenges that these video-streaming robots will have in their
| R&D phase?
| lennon03 wrote:
| Reminds me of the Linkin park song
| bix6 wrote:
| R. Daneel Olivaw in the house!
| numpad0 wrote:
| Yay still no multipart torso or roll axis on head but roll axis
| on pelvis that's getting used. That's cool.
| ori_b wrote:
| I don't get it. Humanoids are a really crappy shape for a lot of
| tasks, and the only benefit seems to be the ability to pay people
| to walk around in motion capture suits for training.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah but the world is designed around that crappy shape.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yeah but they're a crappy shape for A LOT of tasks. It's not
| ideal but it's a versatile solution.
| crnkofe wrote:
| Even if its just a demo its really slick. Tech has come a long
| way. Can't say I want to talk to a droid to check-in at a hotel
| or bump into one at home all the time but I'm sure there are some
| obvious civilian use cases around.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| At a certain price point, our choice will be either hotel with
| bot or AirBnb.
| jamilton wrote:
| It's cool, but it's total uncanny valley for me, and I haven't
| gotten that from real robots before. Something about the
| movement in particular is odd.
| d--b wrote:
| Put one of these things on the streets of France, and I don't
| give it one hour before it gets beaten to pieces.
|
| I mean, I so want to trash it myself, and I am the non-violent
| type.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Can we just slap some arms on a washer/dryer combo unit if we
| think that'll work? We skip having to design bi-pedal balance,
| increase the power envelope, and greatly reduce scope and cost.
|
| Surely there's a market for an appliance that can load, wash,
| dry, fold where the only human interaction is dumping the clothes
| and soap within arm's reach.
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