6 ms·

Making a sandwich or cleaning a toilet is certainly not an easy thing to do. Getting a robot that can understand a scene, any scene and plan motions within it h

by Cybiote 10y ago

Making a sandwich or cleaning a toilet is certainly not an easy thing to do. Getting a robot that can understand a scene, any scene and plan motions within it has been very difficult to do. Far more difficult than playing Go at a superhuman level for example. This is known by various names, with one common being the Moravec Paradox. The problem of energy storage further multiplies this difficulty.

freehunter 10y ago
I think we're getting confused on the definition of how the robot accomplishes its task. To clean a toilet like a human would, yeah that's difficult. To clean a toilet like a robot would, it's not. A toilet cleaning robot would have a spinning brush like a drill and would circle the bowl of the toilet a couple of times. Really, really easy thing to do. If a Roomba can clean my entire house, not fall down the stairs, and find its way back to its dock by itself, you can put it on stilts and attach a spinning brush to the bottom and let it find the toilet. Likewise for a sandwich, if the meat and cheese and bread are all in robot-compatible forms, it's just layering them together. Not much more complicated than a printer that can pull from multiple paper trays. You can even combine the two for maximum efficiency. What's hard is making a robot behave like a human, because even humans struggle at behaving like a human. IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant. If you don't think there are sandwich-making robots that actually exist, I'd wonder how you think gas station ham sandwiches are made. Hint: it's a conveyor belt that drops bread, then cheese, then ham, then more bread. That's a robot that makes sandwiches. I'd sell you one for $1m, but you'd probably say "I can make my own for free, thank you!"
- gregpilling 10y ago
  Here you go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE&t=8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE&t=8s
- adwn 10y ago
  > A toilet cleaning robot would have a spinning brush like a drill and would circle the bowl of the toilet a couple of times. But that robot can't refill its consumables, it can't mop up the floor, and it can't deal with the mess after your semi-demented grandpa missed half the bowl. This solution is useful for a large rest stop with a dozen toilettes and thousands of customers per day (and employees that do the above tasks), and utterly useless for your own home. > IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant. Our bodies have a huge advantage: they are incredibly flexible, and surprisingly strong for their dexterity. No robot we have ever built even comes close. You can have lots of robots in your home (Roomba, toilet bowl cleaner, dish washer, sandwich maker, a kitchen machine, uuh, is there anything else you can automate?) and you'll still need a human doing a lot of work. Or you can have a single human working half-time in your home, and you don't need a single robot. Give me a robot that can do 90% of all household chores, and I'm sold.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    But now you're getting into scope creep. What was asked for was a robot that could clean toilets, or a robot that could make a sandwich.
    - asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
      Wasn't the original discussion about robots replacing human labor? A single human can do those things. I think it's another discussion whether we can make robots who each do one thing well. Roomba, etc. Besides the space constraints with multiple robots, I think it's clear there are significant advantages in having just 1 entity that can perform all the required cleaning tasks. Much like single-purpose hardware has given way (mostly) to software, except in areas with interesting requirements (GPu etc.)
- yannis 10y ago
  And a self-cleaning toilet with that brush and software would be more effective and cheaper...
- Cybiote 10y ago
  The comment which originated this subthread was about telling a bot to get a sandwich and clean the toilet. This implies a single bot and the verbiage implies an agent with strong autonomy. The disadvantage of the specialized machines you speak of is their limited to no adaptability, inflexibility to novel situations and obsolescence upon changing environments. There's need for actually smart appliances (which is what the kind of robots you spoke would be) but they'd be best suited to easily circumscribable tasks. Not what many have in mind when they think robots.

by Cybiote 10y ago

freehunter 10y ago

I think we're getting confused on the definition of how the robot accomplishes its task. To clean a toilet like a human would, yeah that's difficult. To clean a toilet like a robot would, it's not. A toilet cleaning robot would have a spinning brush like a drill and would circle the bowl of the toilet a couple of times. Really, really easy thing to do. If a Roomba can clean my entire house, not fall down the stairs, and find its way back to its dock by itself, you can put it on stilts and attach a spinning brush to the bottom and let it find the toilet. Likewise for a sandwich, if the meat and cheese and bread are all in robot-compatible forms, it's just layering them together. Not much more complicated than a printer that can pull from multiple paper trays. You can even combine the two for maximum efficiency. What's hard is making a robot behave like a human, because even humans struggle at behaving like a human. IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant. If you don't think there are sandwich-making robots that actually exist, I'd wonder how you think gas station ham sandwiches are made. Hint: it's a conveyor belt that drops bread, then cheese, then ham, then more bread. That's a robot that makes sandwiches. I'd sell you one for $1m, but you'd probably say "I can make my own for free, thank you!"

gregpilling 10y ago
Here you go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE&t=8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE&t=8s
adwn 10y ago
> A toilet cleaning robot would have a spinning brush like a drill and would circle the bowl of the toilet a couple of times. But that robot can't refill its consumables, it can't mop up the floor, and it can't deal with the mess after your semi-demented grandpa missed half the bowl. This solution is useful for a large rest stop with a dozen toilettes and thousands of customers per day (and employees that do the above tasks), and utterly useless for your own home. > IMO there's no purpose to making a robot have the same physical constraints as a human. Our bodies are pretty shitty when you think about it. Robots can be much more elegant. Our bodies have a huge advantage: they are incredibly flexible, and surprisingly strong for their dexterity. No robot we have ever built even comes close. You can have lots of robots in your home (Roomba, toilet bowl cleaner, dish washer, sandwich maker, a kitchen machine, uuh, is there anything else you can automate?) and you'll still need a human doing a lot of work. Or you can have a single human working half-time in your home, and you don't need a single robot. Give me a robot that can do 90% of all household chores, and I'm sold.
- freehunter 10y ago
  But now you're getting into scope creep. What was asked for was a robot that could clean toilets, or a robot that could make a sandwich.
  - asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
    Wasn't the original discussion about robots replacing human labor? A single human can do those things. I think it's another discussion whether we can make robots who each do one thing well. Roomba, etc. Besides the space constraints with multiple robots, I think it's clear there are significant advantages in having just 1 entity that can perform all the required cleaning tasks. Much like single-purpose hardware has given way (mostly) to software, except in areas with interesting requirements (GPu etc.)
yannis 10y ago
And a self-cleaning toilet with that brush and software would be more effective and cheaper...
Cybiote 10y ago
The comment which originated this subthread was about telling a bot to get a sandwich and clean the toilet. This implies a single bot and the verbiage implies an agent with strong autonomy. The disadvantage of the specialized machines you speak of is their limited to no adaptability, inflexibility to novel situations and obsolescence upon changing environments. There's need for actually smart appliances (which is what the kind of robots you spoke would be) but they'd be best suited to easily circumscribable tasks. Not what many have in mind when they think robots.