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>Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a long game point. There's a massive opportunity for a startup to move towards the
by drzaiusapelord 11y ago
>Robotics, particularly without the gov't pig trough, needs a visionary and a long game point.
There's a massive opportunity for a startup to move towards the personal/home robot market and make a killing, without any government help nor without some fabled visionary type person.
Google sought what were essentially military robots from BD. Those machines, if ever turned into a product, would have been tens of millions of dollar each. They make no sense and google cannot solve the problem of loud servos/actuators and the relatively low power density of battery technology. Heck, some BD demos I've seen run on gas engines. When the DoD is your customer, the last thing you want to sell them is a tool that'll give away their soldiers' positions.
I've seen ROS projects on commodity hardware that's 75% of the way to a decent home robot. I think this is doable within the next 10 years. Having a home robot will be like having a smartphone today. We'll wonder how we got along without them. Hell, I'm half-tempted to get into this field myself.
Everything about robots from these big companies has been "big picture" bullshit; big spending, big PR releases, big promises, untried tech, and sadly lots of questionable patent filing sprees. None of these big companies are interested in making a real affordable product it seems, or believe it to be too difficult or unprofitable. Its like they're trying to sell mainframes in 1980 and the PC Jr, Commodore64, Apple //, etc are soon going to eat their lunch. The big iron approach failed in computing the same way its failing in robotics.
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago>> The big iron approach failed in computing If you mean 'failed' as in 'is widely used by all major financial organisations and thousands of businesses besides', sure, big iron failed.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoIn the consumer space, which is what we're all talking about, right? Unless by 'robots' you mean giant arms that put cars together, but that's 1970s technology there. Gates/Jobs couldn't sell you a basement mainframe with a house full of terminals, and for good reason.
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y agoEh, you said "in computing". I didn't catch the "consumer" context there.
- coupdetaco 11y agoYou can't think of any context in which a consumer relies on a server somewhere?
- CamperBob2 11y agoGates/Jobs couldn't sell you a basement mainframe with a house full of terminals, and for good reason. One of the points Woz made in his recent AMA at Reddit was that the mainframes have won, pretty much decisively. As everything moves into the cloud, what we think of as computers -- from our watches to our phones to our laptops and desktops -- are really just terminals. What's a Web browser, after all, if not a highly evolved time-sharing terminal?
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- talideon 11y agoHell, every time you use some -AAS or 'The Cloud', you're basically using big iron.
- samstave 11y agoWhat I am surprised about most is that Google didn't put BD on the path to make "street-view for the ocean floor" robots. A literal fleet of robots that could map the ocean BUT also start cataloging all the fish in the ocean. We talk about seafood collapse, what if there were thousands of robots that would suffice and charge via solar then dive and map and count fish. That's a fucking vision for robots I would like to see.
- jessaustin 11y agoWho would pay for that? Street View is worth all the effort it requires because it's useful for the millions of people who are travelling on streets. Besides a robot that could catalog fish would immediately be outfitted with a spear gun, with disastrous consequences for already-dwindling stocks of large pelagic fish.
- stonemetal 11y agoFishermen and environmentalists alike.
- sdenton4 11y agoPeople laying and inspecting undersea fiberoptic cables?
- Retra 11y agoAKA a tiny niche.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ethbro 11y ago> big spending, big PR releases, big promises, untried tech, and sadly lots of questionable patent filing sprees I thought that was generally how one became a defense contractor? The billboards on DC transit always made me chuckle.
- vonmoltke 11y agoThe first three? Sure. The last two? Not so much.
- pjungwir 11y agoSome humble things I can imagine a robot doing: - Mow my lawn - Stain my deck - Paint my walls - Roof my house - Spread moss killer on my roof - Clean my gutters - Spray Raid into hornet nests - Hunt down and destroy dandelions Maybe some of these I buy it, and others the painters/roofers buy it. But it seems like there is a lot of opportunity here as hardware prices fall.
- cm2187 11y agoOr something even more brave than spraying Raid on a hornet nest: do your ironing for you!
- beambot 11y agoWhat's the killer app that single-handedly gets you to fork over $30k for a reliable robot? The "robot app store" idea alone has never worked for driving adoption... even smart phones originated with phone calls.
- AndrewKemendo 11y ago>What's the killer app that single-handedly gets you to fork over $30k for a reliable robot? It would have to be absolutely required for your life at that price. The car is the closest to this given that price point and many people forgo that, so I can't think of anything that you would absolutely need a robot for.
- beambot 11y agoExactly... I've looked at a lot of these opportunities -- see profile! I mean, I did my PhD on in-home healthcare robots! There are a few good applications in healthcare that can (and do!) justify the expense of current robots. Still, it's often easier to target concentrations of people where you can cost-share a robot (eg. nursing homes) rather than operating in individual homes. But problems in nursing homes abound too: abysmal connectivity (no WiFi!), antiquated enterprise sales; excessive regulatory costs (FDA), etc. Maybe costs will come down... but most "good" applications require manipulation, which makes a "general purpose" robot much more expensive than an autonomous car's sensor suites.
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- CamperBob2 11y agoThere's a massive opportunity for a startup to move towards the personal/home robot market and make a killing, without any government help nor without some fabled visionary type person. My guess is that patents will cause this process to take longer than most of us will live. Look how long it's taken for competitive robotic vacuum cleaners -- which are probably the simplest domestic robotics applications! -- to emerge, after Roomba's initial land grab.
- tonyhb 11y agoIMO robots are asics. Robots are single purpose objects that do one thing well. The cost of making a system that works under many pretences scales exactly the same as making software that works for any set of criteria. Shit just doesn't happen. You're living a pipe dream. Wait 15 years and maybe. For now, revel that we're advanced enough to automate one task.
- nailer 11y ago> IMO robots are asics. In case anyone else wanted to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrate...
- sdgsfsfgfg 11y agolol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY