15 ms·

Why Is It So Hard to Build Profitable Robot Companies?

160 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

lightedman 8y ago
Hey, I could probably answer this one without needing to read the article, as I have literal TONS of robots in my solar facility. You know those nice multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars Japanese robotic arms? We ditched them because it was just as simple to build our own robotic arms with basic framing and motors. At a literal tenth of the price ($70K for our Kawasaki armature, $7K for our hand-built array of framing and motors with vacuum lines for picking up and placing solar cells.) Our in-house robot runs faster as well.
vorpalhex 8y ago
The short answer is that Robots are still heavily in the research phase, and not useful enough outside of some industrial zones currently to generate any profit. That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue investing in them - they will most certainly become more useful and generate more profit. It just means at the moment, the best we can do commercially are more or less upgraded furbies and security guards who drown themselves.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  Precisely. I think we're heading into an era where we need to have a "hunker down for the long haul" mentality, and yet we're heading into this at a time when our culture is particularly impatient. The industry is up against several Hard Problems, and it may be a long while before any real gains are realized.
bitwize 8y ago
Robots are still too stupid to be used outside of niche applications such as military or heavy industry. In these applications, stupidity is a feature, not a bug, as a robot is expected to only do the tasks its owner wants it to do in the way its owner wants them to be done. But they still cannot be expected to work alongside people in their day-to-day because either they're not smart enough to interact safely with people, or people have expectations set by C-3PO and R2D2 that the robots just can't live up to (something the article touches on). Heck, people routinely get bored with Siri and Alexa because these technologies pretend to be smarter than they are, and ultimately outside of setting an alarm or playing a song, the value proposition they present does not even meet that of the stupider technologies people are used to. Real, exploitable stupidity is at the end of the day more valuable than fake smarts. So if you want to be a roboticist and make money at it, don't expect to be Dr. Noonien Soong or Dr. Light. You will spend your career building dumb machines to perform mind-numbing tasks for the world's militaries, factories, or fast-food joints. Adding smarts to robots is a moonshot project, as Alphabet learned with Waymo -- you need to be rich or have a rich patron just to get anywhere. That's where things stand now -- maybe in a decade or two, things'll be different. That said, I worked in robotics on such "dumb machines" for four years, and it was one of the coolest jobs I ever had. So if you can land a job in one of the niche industries where robotics is really useful, don't let my desexifying the industry dissuade you.
technobabble 8y ago
https://outline.com/C438br https://outline.com/C438br
ThomPete 8y ago
I am not sure I agree with the article's definition of robots. The way I see it an automatic blinder that reacts on either a timer or sunlight is in the spectrum of a robots. It's a very simple one, but it does things for me that I would otherwise have to do. Right now it seems like people are more trying to invest and push Robots in the image of "The Jetsons" which I don't think consumers are even close to being ready for yet, plus the technology and algorithms will always lead to disappointment until we get much much further. We need to think simpler. The irobot is successful because it doesn't try to be a Jefferson robot despite it's name but rather it solves a specific need.
- jopsen 8y ago
  Spot on! I give it 15 years my parents will have a robotic vacuum cleaner :)
- superqd 8y ago
  My kids get confused when I refer to my 3d printer as a robot. Heck, even the 2d paper printer is a robot. In that respect, I do have some very useful robots. I would very much like a robot that could do household chores though, like laundry.
tsukurimashou 8y ago
When I saw Chobits as a kid I was excited about home robots, but I feel like Instead we got smartphones. I still think home robots could be amazing, they could interface with you easily by voice and control everything connected to your network, act as GPS when they follow you to your car, go buy groceries for you. But I'm well aware that, if a robot like that is made, the implications on privacy would be terrible (if privacy still exists by then)
- jopsen 8y ago
  We got home robots, my Roomba works fine most of them time.. only get stuck rarely. The problem is that we imagine smart home robots as something that can do what humans does.
  - tsukurimashou 8y ago
    How is that a problem? Do you think this can't be achieved?
    - RosanaAnaDana 8y ago
      >How is that a problem? Do you think this can't be achieved? My brain is aching trying to parse that. Mind restating?
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        One can partly achieve it, thereby falling into an "uncanny valley" of robots which are crappy cleaners, crappy laundry folders, crappy cooks...
        RosanaAnaDana 8y ago
        Thank you.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
hhs 8y ago
"Overselling is a dangerous strategy that can be counterproductive, even for the whole robotics community. Both companies and researchers publish videos of robots doing tasks, but sometimes they fail to point out the limitations of the technology or that those results were achieved in lab conditions. This makes it much more difficult to explain to non-roboticist industry executives the difference between creating a one-off demo and creating a real product that works reliably." This makes me think of automobiles - cars were first seen as "a rich man's toy", but Henry Ford worked hard to change that perception. He said cars are for anyone. They can be used to go to work, to visit family, to go sightseeing. I still don't see basic needs like that being addressed with robotics. For instance, is it going to take out the trash? Clean the toilets? Fix the plumbing?
- seibelj 8y ago
  If you look at videos of factories in poor countries that make textiles, trinkets, and other low-margin goods it is extremely labor intensive because labor is so cheap. Eventually, as the world continues to be lifted out of poverty, robots will be cheaper than labor. But they aren't cost effective for many tasks right now.
  - gingerbread-man 8y ago
    There's another advantage for which human workers that don't get nearly enough much credit: flexibility. When Tesla tried to create the world's most automated assembly line for the Model 3, they learned the hard way why Toyota and others have abandoned the idea: complex automated systems are, perhaps necessarily, tightly coupled and complicated. For Tesla, this led to cascading errors and insurmountable "debugging" challenges. Eventually it became evident to Tesla and Musk that, even at first-world prices, human workers were the better buy. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/musk-tips-his-tesla-cap-to-humans-after-robots-undercut-model-3 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/musk-tips...] When you think about it, the work involved in building software systems may only be economically justifiable right now because computers can perform certain tasks many orders of magnitude more efficiently than humans can. In the physical realm, the differences shrink tremendously (or even reverse), making it far more difficult to compete with human workers.
syntaxing 8y ago
Most hardware based consumer technology is derived from industrial technology. Let this be electrical components (motor and such), computers, dishwashers, or cars/automobile. Even though consumer purchasing power has been getting stronger these past two decades thanks to the large boom in software development, it's still not strong enough to push key technology. If the industry does not adapt "general" robotic technology, there is very little chance that consumers will see this in their households any time soon.
- FrojoS 8y ago
  Counter example: LiPo phone batteries
  - syntaxing 8y ago
    But the cellphone industry started in with the industry. Either from the early shoebox cellphone to the later model of Nokia and Sony Ericsson in the 90s. The main purchasing driver was for business use. It eventually got to the point of BlackBerry and iPhone which the consumer can buy.
jcfrei 8y ago
It's simply too early. The product cycle is probably going to be very similar to smartphones. Two decades with lots of prototypes but negligible market impact (Apple Newton, PalmPilot, HTC P Series). Followed by a decade of rapid expansion when all the desired features can finally be implemented (like in the iPhone). We are probably still in the Newton decade.
bluGill 8y ago
There are a lot of profitable robot companies. They make washing machines for clothing and dishes. I have one to open my garage door. Like industrial robots they have people on either end feeding them. I'm sure more robots will appear and some will be successful and called something else. (I'm a lot adopter of the vacuum, but there are others in developement)
- gingerbread-man 8y ago
  “'I would say that a robot is a physically embodied artificially intelligent agent that can take actions that have effects on the physical world,' says roboticist Anca Dragan of UC Berkeley." [https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-a-robot/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-a-robot/] Industrial robots and Roombas may fit this definition, because they are controlled by fairly sophisticated software that synthesizes inputs from arrays of sensors to perform complex physical tasks. But less advanced machines like dishwashers and garage-door openers don't really reach that level. Garage door openers do take input from an optical "obstruction" sensor, but the response is binary: don't close the door. In contrast, robotic vacuums translate distance sensor readings into a motion plan to cover every square foot of your room while avoiding obstacles.
  - ovi256 8y ago
    Like AI, which is whatever's left that current ML can't do well, robotics seems to be whatever current automation can't do well. If you showed a modern dish washer to Karel Kapek I bet he would have called it a robot.
  - rhino369 8y ago
    That is a pretty narrow definition of robot. The term is often used to describe programmable, but not artically intelligent, machines. Like robots used in car manufacturing. I agree that washing machines shouldn’t qualify though. I think robot implies complicated actions that are reprogramable to perform a wider array of functions.
hellllllllooo 8y ago
> Overselling is a dangerous strategy that can be counterproductive. Both companies and researchers publish videos of robots doing tasks, but sometimes they fail to point out the limitations of the technology or that those results were achieved in lab conditions. This. Autonomous vehicles are the most obvious example of the overselling of robotics with the inevitable extending of the timelines that were promised a few years ago. The more we learn the less likely it seems we'll get AVs anytime soon, although anyone actually working in the area knew this already. People were selling the idea of AV production systems that can solve hard robotics problems that havn't been solved in research in the most benign conditions. This was all driven by hype and money and it doesn't seem like there was much of a downside to those overpromising. Unless this changes and people are held accountable for their overselling then we'll keep seeing this behavior. It has a genuine negative impact on anyone trying to do something that is actually possible and useful as their pitch will seem underwhelming compared to all the noise being generated by the people overpromising.
stcredzero 8y ago
Perhaps highly contextually constrained applications are where we should look first? Machine Learning used for power tool kickback detection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdW7vhYYSdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdW7vhYYSdM EDIT: This is a bit risque, but I'm seriously asking: Has anyone applied Deep Learning to sex toys? The timing and processing of feedback involved seem like a good target for current tech.
- 05 8y ago
  People aren't generally fond of sharing their intimate encounters with a sex toy [1]. Some types might even need cameras, and that's definitely not flying.. How are you going to develop and improve the product if you can't collect the training data? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/341529556/We-Vibe-Settlement https://www.scribd.com/document/341529556/We-Vibe-Settlement
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    People aren't generally fond of sharing their intimate encounters with a sex toy...Some types might even need cameras...How are you going to develop and improve the product if you can't collect the training data? However, specific people producing online media very much are. Many of these media people are effectively social media influencers, so marketing to them, specifically, might be a viable strategy providing access to a larger market. This is a population for whom making silicone impressions of their intimate body parts is just business as usual for producing merch. Products incorporating deep learning data based on their "performances" wouldn't be so big a step.
- scotty79 8y ago
  Possibly NSFW https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/autoblow-a-i-replicates-human-oral-sex-techniques#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/autoblow-a-i-replicates-h...
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Possibly NSFW Possibly. o_O
ngngngng 8y ago
The near impossibility of building a robot to do something as simple as taking out the trash leads me to believe that the impending automation apocalypse is much further out than many people think. There are limitless tasks that humans can perform with ease. There are very few tasks we've discovered that machines do with ease. Those few discoveries have changed the world. In 2019, we can design and implement solutions for robots to do almost anything. But with very few exceptions these designs fall apart when they perform outside of a controlled environment or even inside of controlled environments when tasks need to be done reliably.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  with very few exceptions these designs fall apart when they perform outside of a controlled environment or even inside of controlled environments when tasks need to be done reliably. Automobile Factories have gone to a model of humans minding robots doing a specific task. Early Roombas kind of fit into this model. They mostly worked by themselves, but they benefited greatly if you checked in on them to troubleshoot if need be. Broken washing machines and dishwashers are somewhat like this. There was one washing machine I had, where you had to wait until the end of the fill, then hit the top left rear of the machine like you were Fonz on "Happy Days," and it would magically work. Dishwashers work much, much better if people pay attention to how they place dishes, rinse dishes beforehand, and ensure the rotors aren't blocked. DevOps fits into this model. Even programmers can feel like compiler/build process jockeys. (I often feel this way.)
- mdorazio 8y ago
  Keep in mind that automation is not just for manual labor. In many cases, it's easier to automate a white collar job these days with software than it is to automate a blue collar job requiring flexible physical tasks with robotics. To me, the big automation job killers are going to be autonomous vehicles, but then a slew of basic white collar jobs that people have just been doing for decades because that's the way they always did them.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  I dunno the world where 99% of humans are employed taking out the trash that robots generate seems bleaker than the world where they're just unemployed.
edoo 8y ago
What we now think of as "robot" companies aren't really robot companies, they are software companies. The hardware is easy and will be commoditized.
roland35 8y ago
I worked on a consumer robotics project which had great promise (in my biased take at least) but ultimately was canceled and scrapped due to poor management leadership in my opinion. It is expensive to bring a hardware group up and running, and I believe that there were expectations to create a class-leading product from nothing in under 5 years when it should have been at least 10 (see iRobot's Terra project timeline). It was a very exciting project and I am slowly getting over it's untimely and premature demise :( The constant changing of requirements was a challenge but that is normal for any engineering project. I think the ultimate problem was the lack of understanding of the "Iron Triangle[1]" in project management. The company wanted it Fast Fast Fast Cheap and Good (in that order) but my team was trying to make it Good Cheap Fast (in that order). So, I think if we did it all over again we would have reprioritized from the beginning and dropped all the complicated design decisions we made, and work on those in version 2 just like any good MVP[2]!! I think the key for a successful hardware project is strong technical leadership who understands the pitfalls and timelines of designing the mechanical, electrical, and software as well as can evaluate when and where to build vs buy across the project lifetime. With robotics in particular it is also important to understand how we can limit the environment to make things easier for the robot to operate, with things like magnetic or painted stripes on a floor, ultrawideband beacons, things like that. Making an autonomous system robust is difficult enough in a controlled environment! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle [2] Some examples of things we could have completely dropped to save development time: Bluetooth and phone app, designing low cost custom motor drives, use standard materials instead of injection molded parts
- fest 8y ago
  I really wish product development failures were described in as much detail as successes. So much time is wasted by repeating mistakes someone, somewhere has already made.
yinyang_in 8y ago
I see google as more of robotics company in making. They have software to identify things, surrounding and object like we humans do(which I think is a big feat). They have a lot more pieces of complete robot problem.
wojtekd 8y ago
I guess a big problem is being realistic about the market needs. Maybe give up on dreams about humanoid helpers and focus on industries that actually are desperate for smart automation (e.g. logistics). If you're interested in AI+robotics jobs check out https://nomagic.ai/ https://nomagic.ai/ - we're hiring! Super exciting work with xooglers, academics and oxbridge/ETH grads.
dougmwne 8y ago
The main competition for robots are people and people are cheap, plentiful, and incredibly capable. It makes sense that robots would only be profitable in highly niche areas that were too dangerous for people or so repetitive that the bot is cheaper than the person. It seems like we'd need something like off-world colonies, a fertility crisis or environmental collapse to really create a need. I think I'm happy with the status quo on this one.
- ddeck 8y ago
  That's true, and yet we already have a $20-30 billion (depending on who you ask) industrial robotics market. There are a large number of highly profitible robotics companies in this area. Fanuc with over $1 billion in net income from about $5 billion in revenue stands out[0], but also ABB ($2 billion in net income from $34 billion in revenue)[1], Omron, Kuka, etc. They not be as interesting to report on as humanoid models, or the consumer market, but it's an enormous, rapidly growing market. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FANUC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FANUC [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABB_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABB_Group
  - abakker 8y ago
    Yeah - those robotics company do exactly that stuff which is too dangerous or too repetitive for humans. There's also the issue of strength. Robots are a good candidate for handling materials when people literally can't. But, yeah, those robots don't look like people. Here's an interesting fact. Most people think of forklifts as being stronger than people, and that we use them to lift stuff that people can't. That's true. But, what most people don't think about is why it can lift stuff like that. Hydraulic multiplication provides the power to actually do the lifting, but, a human shaped robot with the same hydraulics couldn't. Most forklifts weight about 3x the weight of a car and are mostly filled with lead. The same will go for robots. the form factor of improving human strength doesn't really benefit from changing the strength to weight ratio, it benefits from scaling both. edit: as context, the average forklift is so heavy that when put on a trailer they exceed the tow rating of 1500-class pickup.
chhib 8y ago
https://youtu.be/1o_1d26JU5s https://youtu.be/1o_1d26JU5s
Symmetry 8y ago
The more structured the task the sooner robots will be doing it. They've already eaten factory assembly where you do the same repetitive action every time. Now they're making their way into cleaning the floor, mowing the grass, cleaning up spills at stores, and (cough) putting items into boxes for online deliveries. Soon they'll probably be stocking shelves too. But a robot that can pick up your house the way a cleaning service can is probably the last thing we'll see before AGI.
gauravjain13 8y ago
Isn’t it very hard to build _any_ profitable company? Or are robot companies appreciably/an order of magnitude harder to make profitable?
- SwellJoe 8y ago
  Just from a logistics perspective hardware is harder than software to make profitable, and robots as a business involves a lot of hardware. More things have to go right, fewer things have to go wrong, etc. You rely on an entire supply chain to get things mostly right mostly on time, and that supply chain is mostly out of your control; you can have strong contracts, you can line up multiple suppliers for each part, you can vet them carefully, but at the end of the day you're tossing the dice that they'll deliver. I've been working with a robotics startup for the past few months, and I'm often struck by how much extra stuff has to come together to deliver the product (in our case, we have to integrate with phone and elevator systems, have to deal with various regulatory compliance in every country we ship to, etc.). The sales pipeline is also long and expensive, involving shipping out multi-thousand dollar devices for evaluations, sending people out to demo the devices, etc. It's a production involving a half dozen people and thousands of dollars worth of resources to make every single sale. So, yes, I think they are harder than some kinds of businesses. At least an order of magnitude harder than software. Though, because of it, the competitive landscape is somewhat smaller...robots are cool, so a lot of people want to work on them, so there's more than the market will support, but it's less pronounced than, say, the mobile app market in terms of competition for customers.
  - gauravjain13 8y ago
    This makes sense to me. I think the word "robot" has some historical/cultural connotations that lead us down this rabbit hole of defining what a robot is. Rosie from the Jetson’s? R2D2? FANUC industrial robots? It’s tempting then to cherry pick one’s own definition of a robot, and point out challenges and theorize why it’s hard to build profitable robot companies. The question is fallacious. In general, I think the hardware business is hard for all the reasons you mention. Or better stated, the hardware business has characteristics that make it difficult to get right the first time (more important in hardware than software, I’d argue) and scale. It’s not inconceivable for a single (or a small team) to build a useful software product that makes money (several successful mobile apps, companies like 37signals, etc.). It’s difficult for me to think of similar hardware analogs (I’d love examples!). This isn’t to say that scaling software—building companies like Google–isn’t incredibly hard. It is. But for a hardware company to even have a chance, it needs a minimum scale threshold from the very get-go (besides all the other things that any business needs – a useful product, luck, etc.). I used to work for a large aerospace company in the early/mid 2000s, and the products we built were useful, and amazing (hunks of metal weighing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds flying in the air transporting people). I was absolutely awestruck by the fact that upcoming companies like Google and Facebook (which were “just websites” in my then-naive worldview) had fewer people, and made way more money than us.
erodr015 8y ago
Brain Corp in San Diego is solving this problem as we speak. In about two years, they've enabled floor care machines, a vacuum, and now an inventory tug for grocery stores.
- colebot2000 8y ago
  Just checked out their tech - pretty interesting stuff. Leveraging other peoples machinery cuts out a huge amount of manpower needed to build a robot from the ground up.
Animats 8y ago
It's frustrating. Even basic industrial robots have not been hugely successful outside of a few areas, such as automobile assembly. Amazon seems to have given up on the Amazon Picking Challenge; the last competition was in 2017. Here's the winner.[1] That's just bin-picking. Manipulation in unstructured environments is still very poor. DARPA's manipulation and humanoid robot programs got as far as public competitions and were then discontinued. Here's how far that got.[2] On top of that, good robot arms are expensive. Startups announce low-cost ones, but many don't hold up in continuous use. Universal Robot from Denmark seems to be doing well, but their arms start around $35,000. Rethink Robotics went bust. Even with more "AI", the smartness is mostly limited to targeting objects that aren't perfectly aligned. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AljePt7Mh6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AljePt7Mh6U [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeABMoYJGEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeABMoYJGEU
- petra 8y ago
  >> Robots ... low-cost ones, but many don't hold up in continuous use. Universal Robot from Denmark seems to be doing well, but their arms start around $35,000. $35,000 is the price of new, reliable car. and cars are much more complex, and suffer more forces trying to wear them out. So why are robots so expensive ? is it mostly a matter of volume ? or is it something expensive about the tech ?
  - sgillen 8y ago
    I think it is largely a matter of volume, Not just the volume of robots sold but also of the sensors and actuators that go into them. It's also a matter of market, no one is really selling robots in this price range to consumers, it's all going to large manufacturing companies or to large research institutes. There are of course even lower cost robot arms, ~$100 toys, $1000 educational platforms etc. They just don't have the precision or power needed for industrial or research applications.
- pratyushag2 8y ago
  Would the costs and development be much lower and easier if the focus was augmenting humans strength in physical work? Would that still qualify as a robot company?
SwellJoe 8y ago
I recently took a job with a robotics startup...it's a tough business to operate in with huge operating costs (compared to software), but I think there are a lot of opportunities yet untapped. The old Feynman saying "There's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely true in robotics. There are markets where robots have been (profitably) in service for a decade or more, but they are big robots with extremely limited roles: An arm that lifts a door onto a car, a glorified cart that follows a yellow line around a warehouse or hospital or whatever, etc. The new generation of robots is human scale and has more flexibility built in. They deliver door-to-door/peer-to-peer, instead of along a fixed route. They carry small packages instead of a stack of boxes. They do inspections in places that aren't safe for humans. etc. Plenty of room for smaller, smarter, cheaper, robots. But, it is definitely a tough/expensive business to build in, and the market probably doesn't have room for at least half of the companies currently running on investor money.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  > They deliver door-to-door/peer-to-peer... I like the idea of p2p delivery ("robot: take this saw I borrowed back over to my friend Joe"), but I think that's v2.0 of the package delivery bots which are in beta (or maybe alpha) right now, unless I'm missing out on something? Not to mention the legal implications of on-demand bots as drug mules or bomb delivery...
  - SwellJoe 8y ago
    Sure, it's in the future, but it's not the distant future. The company I work with does P2P within a given environment. It has a map of the hotel/hospital where it works and can basically deliver anywhere on that map (barring stairs, and a few other limitations). It has no fixed routes, and is demand-driven. Someone calls it, drops in whatever needs to be delivered, and tells it where to go. It arrives, maybe calls the recipient to let them know it's at the door, and hands the delivery over, after verifying recipient identity. There are many companies doing this kind of thing in various environments. Doing it at the scale of a city, like calling an Uber/Lyft, is probably a few years out, at least. Maybe in major cities taking the place of bike couriers it'll come sooner, I dunno. "Not to mention the legal implications of on-demand bots as drug mules or bomb delivery..." UPS and FedEx and the USPS have that problem.
outworlder 8y ago
It is very difficult to have a company culture that optimized both for software and hardware. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work when you have to retool your production line or throw away inventory, or call a supplier to request changes. Conversely, hardware development processes tend to be too rigid and slow when applied to software. It is very, very hard to get these working together even (and particularly) when they are two distinct groups in a company. I have had to deal with 'firmware' updates on a VM. You know, the full "build and download a binary" thing from some website, upload to FTP, then login to a website and point to that FTP server, so the binary would be applied and the instance restarted. No big deal, right? We do that sort of thing for OS upgrades, right? Except it wasn't an OS upgrade or actual firmware, it was updating the application running on that machine. The sort of thing that could be accomplished by an automated CD job, and a docker pull (or heck, apt-get update). All because the thing was an appliance. So it was lifted and shifted as-is and now "it's a cloud app, because it's on AWS!". I have had to argue against authentication for a HTTP health check. "But if there is no authentication, people can spam the endpoint, and it's slow and returns a lot of data". Ok, first thing: it's not a public accessible endpoint. Second, I'm not interested in testing auth or taking the machine down when credentials expired. And third, if it is slow, then just return a HTTP 200 for me if it is ok, I don't care about anything else. "But if I just return 200, it doesn't mean the app is actually working". Ok, so go do the checks at whatever interval you want, and return the last run. "But this needs authentication, otherwise there could be a DOS, as the checks are slow." No you don't understand, they are supposed to be async... This went on and on for months. I finally got the health check. ... but then, now they want to log all packets to our centralized logging, so that they can count them. Dude, expose a metrics endpoint, Prometheus will call it periodically. "But there are too many messages, we can't hold all of these!" No, you give me a counter. Return the counter. "But counting messages is even slower". No... you increment the counter _as you receive them, not when I request_. sigh So anyway. Even when hardware is amazing, software development can lag behind. Or vice-versa.
slowmovintarget 8y ago
Why wouldn't this work like personal computers? You use them at work or encounter them in school. When they're prevalent in those places, people begin bringing them home.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Note that they aren't talking about Kubota, Cincinatti Milacron, etc. People that make robots for manufacturing are doing ok. But that also points to a big hole in this story, robots and what they are. Back when I was running the Homebrew Robotics Club the question of "what is a robot" came up several times. Typically the definition is a machine that can perform some task while responding to changes in its environment that might otherwise prevent the task from being completed. The essence being sensing, executing an action to achieve a result, and identifying/signalling completion of the action. By this definition your dishwasher is a robot, it senses water temperature, dish placement, and sometimes even the amount of soiling on the dishes. It may adjust its cycle to insure the dishes are clean. But most people mean mobile, anthropomorphic devices that interact with people when they think "robot." And making a business in that space is very hard indeed. In part because we don't really have a way to "value" what the robot is doing. When you replace a union auto worker with a robot, you can directly compare the what you would have paid the worker in salary/benefits/training with what it costs to operate the robot. The math is "easy". But when you have a robot that is more "companionable" than not having a robot? How do you value that? And if you have tasks like "fetch me a beer from the fridge" that the robot can do, how do you evaluate the value of that versus doing it yourself? Most people say "I'd love a robot that would pick up laundry off the floor and put it into the basket next to the washing machine." But if you say, "Here you go, for only $20,000 (ask about our payment plan), our picker-upper 1000 will collect dirty laundry and put it in the basket." people always blanch and say, "Heck for that much money I'll do it myself."
- dsr_ 8y ago
  Which is a little weird, because a $10/hour job for 40 hours/week for 50 weeks/year is $20K. The robot can presumably work 168 hours/week for 52 weeks/year, which means that it's roughly 1/4 the cost of a human (and that doesn't count hiring time, HR training, sick days, worker's comp, taxes...) The real issue is that we expect minimum wage workers to operate independently on minimal instructions, and as every programmer knows, explaining what you want done to a computer is much harder than telling a competent adult.
- GeorgeTirebiter 8y ago
  So what is the intersection of value and utility? Roomba meets the criteria, but nothing else? What about https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombot/tombot-affordable-robotic-companion-animals-for-se/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombot/tombot-affordabl... ? Or is that too light on the 'sensing' part to be considered a robot? Is a Furby a robot? The problem seems to be one of semantics.
lkrubner 8y ago
They are working with a terrible definition of "robot". Most robot companies are profitable, if we are talking about all of the companies that participated in the huge surge of automation that swept of the Western world during the postwar boom of 1945 to 1973. Some of the biggest of the companies are still profitable. This is also a line of work that has, somewhat, consolidated into the hands of German firms. Siemens is probably the best known of the older companies, and SAP is the best known of the modern software companies, but there is a lot out there. See: https://ias.german-pavilion.com/en/home/ https://ias.german-pavilion.com/en/home/
CodingSucks 8y ago
http://cultstate.com/2019/03/15/The-Robodollar/ http://cultstate.com/2019/03/15/The-Robodollar/ "Now you’re starting to see the brutal minutia of robotic labor tally up into a considerable challenge."
iandanforth 8y ago
1. Robots get classified as toys which sets an unreasonable price point. 2. Robots arn't good enough yet despite any hype you've heard. 3. In cases where a the product works better than the alternative and people are willing to pay a sustainable price the company does well ... just like every product ever.
rangersanger 8y ago
Gall's Law : A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
- contingencies 8y ago
  Added to http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
bigbadgoose 8y ago
supply chain, rapid tech shift that affects and effects capex, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
muktaakash 8y ago
Discussions often goes out of topic - anyway, here is vid on soothing melody. It's Sitar - ancient string instrument. Hope everybody feel the human skill and uniqueness. https://youtu.be/nDHrd1QByL8 https://youtu.be/nDHrd1QByL8
ChuckMcM 8y ago
Apropos of nothing, Intuitive Surgical is a profitable robot company.

160 points by headalgorithm 8y ago

Hey, I could probably answer this one without needing to read the article, as I have literal TONS of robots in my solar facility. You know those nice multi-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars Japanese robotic arms? We ditched them because it was just as simple to build our own robotic arms with basic framing and motors. At a literal tenth of the price ($70K for our Kawasaki armature, $7K for our hand-built array of framing and motors with vacuum lines for picking up and placing solar cells.) Our in-house robot runs faster as well.

vorpalhex 8y ago

The short answer is that Robots are still heavily in the research phase, and not useful enough outside of some industrial zones currently to generate any profit. That doesn't mean we shouldn't continue investing in them - they will most certainly become more useful and generate more profit. It just means at the moment, the best we can do commercially are more or less upgraded furbies and security guards who drown themselves.

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
Precisely. I think we're heading into an era where we need to have a "hunker down for the long haul" mentality, and yet we're heading into this at a time when our culture is particularly impatient. The industry is up against several Hard Problems, and it may be a long while before any real gains are realized.

bitwize 8y ago

Robots are still too stupid to be used outside of niche applications such as military or heavy industry. In these applications, stupidity is a feature, not a bug, as a robot is expected to only do the tasks its owner wants it to do in the way its owner wants them to be done. But they still cannot be expected to work alongside people in their day-to-day because either they're not smart enough to interact safely with people, or people have expectations set by C-3PO and R2D2 that the robots just can't live up to (something the article touches on). Heck, people routinely get bored with Siri and Alexa because these technologies pretend to be smarter than they are, and ultimately outside of setting an alarm or playing a song, the value proposition they present does not even meet that of the stupider technologies people are used to. Real, exploitable stupidity is at the end of the day more valuable than fake smarts. So if you want to be a roboticist and make money at it, don't expect to be Dr. Noonien Soong or Dr. Light. You will spend your career building dumb machines to perform mind-numbing tasks for the world's militaries, factories, or fast-food joints. Adding smarts to robots is a moonshot project, as Alphabet learned with Waymo -- you need to be rich or have a rich patron just to get anywhere. That's where things stand now -- maybe in a decade or two, things'll be different. That said, I worked in robotics on such "dumb machines" for four years, and it was one of the coolest jobs I ever had. So if you can land a job in one of the niche industries where robotics is really useful, don't let my desexifying the industry dissuade you.

technobabble 8y ago

https://outline.com/C438br https://outline.com/C438br

ThomPete 8y ago

I am not sure I agree with the article's definition of robots. The way I see it an automatic blinder that reacts on either a timer or sunlight is in the spectrum of a robots. It's a very simple one, but it does things for me that I would otherwise have to do. Right now it seems like people are more trying to invest and push Robots in the image of "The Jetsons" which I don't think consumers are even close to being ready for yet, plus the technology and algorithms will always lead to disappointment until we get much much further. We need to think simpler. The irobot is successful because it doesn't try to be a Jefferson robot despite it's name but rather it solves a specific need.

jopsen 8y ago
Spot on! I give it 15 years my parents will have a robotic vacuum cleaner :)
superqd 8y ago
My kids get confused when I refer to my 3d printer as a robot. Heck, even the 2d paper printer is a robot. In that respect, I do have some very useful robots. I would very much like a robot that could do household chores though, like laundry.

tsukurimashou 8y ago

When I saw Chobits as a kid I was excited about home robots, but I feel like Instead we got smartphones. I still think home robots could be amazing, they could interface with you easily by voice and control everything connected to your network, act as GPS when they follow you to your car, go buy groceries for you. But I'm well aware that, if a robot like that is made, the implications on privacy would be terrible (if privacy still exists by then)

jopsen 8y ago
We got home robots, my Roomba works fine most of them time.. only get stuck rarely. The problem is that we imagine smart home robots as something that can do what humans does.
- tsukurimashou 8y ago
  How is that a problem? Do you think this can't be achieved?
  - RosanaAnaDana 8y ago
    >How is that a problem? Do you think this can't be achieved? My brain is aching trying to parse that. Mind restating?
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      One can partly achieve it, thereby falling into an "uncanny valley" of robots which are crappy cleaners, crappy laundry folders, crappy cooks...
      - RosanaAnaDana 8y ago
        Thank you.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

hhs 8y ago

"Overselling is a dangerous strategy that can be counterproductive, even for the whole robotics community. Both companies and researchers publish videos of robots doing tasks, but sometimes they fail to point out the limitations of the technology or that those results were achieved in lab conditions. This makes it much more difficult to explain to non-roboticist industry executives the difference between creating a one-off demo and creating a real product that works reliably." This makes me think of automobiles - cars were first seen as "a rich man's toy", but Henry Ford worked hard to change that perception. He said cars are for anyone. They can be used to go to work, to visit family, to go sightseeing. I still don't see basic needs like that being addressed with robotics. For instance, is it going to take out the trash? Clean the toilets? Fix the plumbing?

seibelj 8y ago
If you look at videos of factories in poor countries that make textiles, trinkets, and other low-margin goods it is extremely labor intensive because labor is so cheap. Eventually, as the world continues to be lifted out of poverty, robots will be cheaper than labor. But they aren't cost effective for many tasks right now.
- gingerbread-man 8y ago
  There's another advantage for which human workers that don't get nearly enough much credit: flexibility. When Tesla tried to create the world's most automated assembly line for the Model 3, they learned the hard way why Toyota and others have abandoned the idea: complex automated systems are, perhaps necessarily, tightly coupled and complicated. For Tesla, this led to cascading errors and insurmountable "debugging" challenges. Eventually it became evident to Tesla and Musk that, even at first-world prices, human workers were the better buy. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/musk-tips-his-tesla-cap-to-humans-after-robots-undercut-model-3 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-13/musk-tips...] When you think about it, the work involved in building software systems may only be economically justifiable right now because computers can perform certain tasks many orders of magnitude more efficiently than humans can. In the physical realm, the differences shrink tremendously (or even reverse), making it far more difficult to compete with human workers.

syntaxing 8y ago

Most hardware based consumer technology is derived from industrial technology. Let this be electrical components (motor and such), computers, dishwashers, or cars/automobile. Even though consumer purchasing power has been getting stronger these past two decades thanks to the large boom in software development, it's still not strong enough to push key technology. If the industry does not adapt "general" robotic technology, there is very little chance that consumers will see this in their households any time soon.

FrojoS 8y ago
Counter example: LiPo phone batteries
- syntaxing 8y ago
  But the cellphone industry started in with the industry. Either from the early shoebox cellphone to the later model of Nokia and Sony Ericsson in the 90s. The main purchasing driver was for business use. It eventually got to the point of BlackBerry and iPhone which the consumer can buy.

jcfrei 8y ago

It's simply too early. The product cycle is probably going to be very similar to smartphones. Two decades with lots of prototypes but negligible market impact (Apple Newton, PalmPilot, HTC P Series). Followed by a decade of rapid expansion when all the desired features can finally be implemented (like in the iPhone). We are probably still in the Newton decade.

bluGill 8y ago

There are a lot of profitable robot companies. They make washing machines for clothing and dishes. I have one to open my garage door. Like industrial robots they have people on either end feeding them. I'm sure more robots will appear and some will be successful and called something else. (I'm a lot adopter of the vacuum, but there are others in developement)

gingerbread-man 8y ago
“'I would say that a robot is a physically embodied artificially intelligent agent that can take actions that have effects on the physical world,' says roboticist Anca Dragan of UC Berkeley." [https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-a-robot/ https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-a-robot/] Industrial robots and Roombas may fit this definition, because they are controlled by fairly sophisticated software that synthesizes inputs from arrays of sensors to perform complex physical tasks. But less advanced machines like dishwashers and garage-door openers don't really reach that level. Garage door openers do take input from an optical "obstruction" sensor, but the response is binary: don't close the door. In contrast, robotic vacuums translate distance sensor readings into a motion plan to cover every square foot of your room while avoiding obstacles.
- ovi256 8y ago
  Like AI, which is whatever's left that current ML can't do well, robotics seems to be whatever current automation can't do well. If you showed a modern dish washer to Karel Kapek I bet he would have called it a robot.
- rhino369 8y ago
  That is a pretty narrow definition of robot. The term is often used to describe programmable, but not artically intelligent, machines. Like robots used in car manufacturing. I agree that washing machines shouldn’t qualify though. I think robot implies complicated actions that are reprogramable to perform a wider array of functions.

hellllllllooo 8y ago

> Overselling is a dangerous strategy that can be counterproductive. Both companies and researchers publish videos of robots doing tasks, but sometimes they fail to point out the limitations of the technology or that those results were achieved in lab conditions. This. Autonomous vehicles are the most obvious example of the overselling of robotics with the inevitable extending of the timelines that were promised a few years ago. The more we learn the less likely it seems we'll get AVs anytime soon, although anyone actually working in the area knew this already. People were selling the idea of AV production systems that can solve hard robotics problems that havn't been solved in research in the most benign conditions. This was all driven by hype and money and it doesn't seem like there was much of a downside to those overpromising. Unless this changes and people are held accountable for their overselling then we'll keep seeing this behavior. It has a genuine negative impact on anyone trying to do something that is actually possible and useful as their pitch will seem underwhelming compared to all the noise being generated by the people overpromising.

stcredzero 8y ago

Perhaps highly contextually constrained applications are where we should look first? Machine Learning used for power tool kickback detection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdW7vhYYSdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdW7vhYYSdM EDIT: This is a bit risque, but I'm seriously asking: Has anyone applied Deep Learning to sex toys? The timing and processing of feedback involved seem like a good target for current tech.

05 8y ago
People aren't generally fond of sharing their intimate encounters with a sex toy [1]. Some types might even need cameras, and that's definitely not flying.. How are you going to develop and improve the product if you can't collect the training data? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/341529556/We-Vibe-Settlement https://www.scribd.com/document/341529556/We-Vibe-Settlement
- stcredzero 8y ago
  People aren't generally fond of sharing their intimate encounters with a sex toy...Some types might even need cameras...How are you going to develop and improve the product if you can't collect the training data? However, specific people producing online media very much are. Many of these media people are effectively social media influencers, so marketing to them, specifically, might be a viable strategy providing access to a larger market. This is a population for whom making silicone impressions of their intimate body parts is just business as usual for producing merch. Products incorporating deep learning data based on their "performances" wouldn't be so big a step.
scotty79 8y ago
Possibly NSFW https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/autoblow-a-i-replicates-human-oral-sex-techniques#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/autoblow-a-i-replicates-h...
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Possibly NSFW Possibly. o_O

ngngngng 8y ago

The near impossibility of building a robot to do something as simple as taking out the trash leads me to believe that the impending automation apocalypse is much further out than many people think. There are limitless tasks that humans can perform with ease. There are very few tasks we've discovered that machines do with ease. Those few discoveries have changed the world. In 2019, we can design and implement solutions for robots to do almost anything. But with very few exceptions these designs fall apart when they perform outside of a controlled environment or even inside of controlled environments when tasks need to be done reliably.

stcredzero 8y ago
with very few exceptions these designs fall apart when they perform outside of a controlled environment or even inside of controlled environments when tasks need to be done reliably. Automobile Factories have gone to a model of humans minding robots doing a specific task. Early Roombas kind of fit into this model. They mostly worked by themselves, but they benefited greatly if you checked in on them to troubleshoot if need be. Broken washing machines and dishwashers are somewhat like this. There was one washing machine I had, where you had to wait until the end of the fill, then hit the top left rear of the machine like you were Fonz on "Happy Days," and it would magically work. Dishwashers work much, much better if people pay attention to how they place dishes, rinse dishes beforehand, and ensure the rotors aren't blocked. DevOps fits into this model. Even programmers can feel like compiler/build process jockeys. (I often feel this way.)
mdorazio 8y ago
Keep in mind that automation is not just for manual labor. In many cases, it's easier to automate a white collar job these days with software than it is to automate a blue collar job requiring flexible physical tasks with robotics. To me, the big automation job killers are going to be autonomous vehicles, but then a slew of basic white collar jobs that people have just been doing for decades because that's the way they always did them.
Avshalom 8y ago
I dunno the world where 99% of humans are employed taking out the trash that robots generate seems bleaker than the world where they're just unemployed.

edoo 8y ago

What we now think of as "robot" companies aren't really robot companies, they are software companies. The hardware is easy and will be commoditized.

roland35 8y ago

I worked on a consumer robotics project which had great promise (in my biased take at least) but ultimately was canceled and scrapped due to poor management leadership in my opinion. It is expensive to bring a hardware group up and running, and I believe that there were expectations to create a class-leading product from nothing in under 5 years when it should have been at least 10 (see iRobot's Terra project timeline). It was a very exciting project and I am slowly getting over it's untimely and premature demise :( The constant changing of requirements was a challenge but that is normal for any engineering project. I think the ultimate problem was the lack of understanding of the "Iron Triangle[1]" in project management. The company wanted it Fast Fast Fast Cheap and Good (in that order) but my team was trying to make it Good Cheap Fast (in that order). So, I think if we did it all over again we would have reprioritized from the beginning and dropped all the complicated design decisions we made, and work on those in version 2 just like any good MVP[2]!! I think the key for a successful hardware project is strong technical leadership who understands the pitfalls and timelines of designing the mechanical, electrical, and software as well as can evaluate when and where to build vs buy across the project lifetime. With robotics in particular it is also important to understand how we can limit the environment to make things easier for the robot to operate, with things like magnetic or painted stripes on a floor, ultrawideband beacons, things like that. Making an autonomous system robust is difficult enough in a controlled environment! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_triangle [2] Some examples of things we could have completely dropped to save development time: Bluetooth and phone app, designing low cost custom motor drives, use standard materials instead of injection molded parts

fest 8y ago
I really wish product development failures were described in as much detail as successes. So much time is wasted by repeating mistakes someone, somewhere has already made.

yinyang_in 8y ago

I see google as more of robotics company in making. They have software to identify things, surrounding and object like we humans do(which I think is a big feat). They have a lot more pieces of complete robot problem.

wojtekd 8y ago

I guess a big problem is being realistic about the market needs. Maybe give up on dreams about humanoid helpers and focus on industries that actually are desperate for smart automation (e.g. logistics). If you're interested in AI+robotics jobs check out https://nomagic.ai/ https://nomagic.ai/ - we're hiring! Super exciting work with xooglers, academics and oxbridge/ETH grads.

dougmwne 8y ago

The main competition for robots are people and people are cheap, plentiful, and incredibly capable. It makes sense that robots would only be profitable in highly niche areas that were too dangerous for people or so repetitive that the bot is cheaper than the person. It seems like we'd need something like off-world colonies, a fertility crisis or environmental collapse to really create a need. I think I'm happy with the status quo on this one.

ddeck 8y ago
That's true, and yet we already have a $20-30 billion (depending on who you ask) industrial robotics market. There are a large number of highly profitible robotics companies in this area. Fanuc with over $1 billion in net income from about $5 billion in revenue stands out[0], but also ABB ($2 billion in net income from $34 billion in revenue)[1], Omron, Kuka, etc. They not be as interesting to report on as humanoid models, or the consumer market, but it's an enormous, rapidly growing market. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FANUC https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FANUC [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABB_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABB_Group
- abakker 8y ago
  Yeah - those robotics company do exactly that stuff which is too dangerous or too repetitive for humans. There's also the issue of strength. Robots are a good candidate for handling materials when people literally can't. But, yeah, those robots don't look like people. Here's an interesting fact. Most people think of forklifts as being stronger than people, and that we use them to lift stuff that people can't. That's true. But, what most people don't think about is why it can lift stuff like that. Hydraulic multiplication provides the power to actually do the lifting, but, a human shaped robot with the same hydraulics couldn't. Most forklifts weight about 3x the weight of a car and are mostly filled with lead. The same will go for robots. the form factor of improving human strength doesn't really benefit from changing the strength to weight ratio, it benefits from scaling both. edit: as context, the average forklift is so heavy that when put on a trailer they exceed the tow rating of 1500-class pickup.

chhib 8y ago

https://youtu.be/1o_1d26JU5s https://youtu.be/1o_1d26JU5s

Symmetry 8y ago

The more structured the task the sooner robots will be doing it. They've already eaten factory assembly where you do the same repetitive action every time. Now they're making their way into cleaning the floor, mowing the grass, cleaning up spills at stores, and (cough) putting items into boxes for online deliveries. Soon they'll probably be stocking shelves too. But a robot that can pick up your house the way a cleaning service can is probably the last thing we'll see before AGI.

gauravjain13 8y ago

Isn’t it very hard to build _any_ profitable company? Or are robot companies appreciably/an order of magnitude harder to make profitable?

SwellJoe 8y ago
Just from a logistics perspective hardware is harder than software to make profitable, and robots as a business involves a lot of hardware. More things have to go right, fewer things have to go wrong, etc. You rely on an entire supply chain to get things mostly right mostly on time, and that supply chain is mostly out of your control; you can have strong contracts, you can line up multiple suppliers for each part, you can vet them carefully, but at the end of the day you're tossing the dice that they'll deliver. I've been working with a robotics startup for the past few months, and I'm often struck by how much extra stuff has to come together to deliver the product (in our case, we have to integrate with phone and elevator systems, have to deal with various regulatory compliance in every country we ship to, etc.). The sales pipeline is also long and expensive, involving shipping out multi-thousand dollar devices for evaluations, sending people out to demo the devices, etc. It's a production involving a half dozen people and thousands of dollars worth of resources to make every single sale. So, yes, I think they are harder than some kinds of businesses. At least an order of magnitude harder than software. Though, because of it, the competitive landscape is somewhat smaller...robots are cool, so a lot of people want to work on them, so there's more than the market will support, but it's less pronounced than, say, the mobile app market in terms of competition for customers.
- gauravjain13 8y ago
  This makes sense to me. I think the word "robot" has some historical/cultural connotations that lead us down this rabbit hole of defining what a robot is. Rosie from the Jetson’s? R2D2? FANUC industrial robots? It’s tempting then to cherry pick one’s own definition of a robot, and point out challenges and theorize why it’s hard to build profitable robot companies. The question is fallacious. In general, I think the hardware business is hard for all the reasons you mention. Or better stated, the hardware business has characteristics that make it difficult to get right the first time (more important in hardware than software, I’d argue) and scale. It’s not inconceivable for a single (or a small team) to build a useful software product that makes money (several successful mobile apps, companies like 37signals, etc.). It’s difficult for me to think of similar hardware analogs (I’d love examples!). This isn’t to say that scaling software—building companies like Google–isn’t incredibly hard. It is. But for a hardware company to even have a chance, it needs a minimum scale threshold from the very get-go (besides all the other things that any business needs – a useful product, luck, etc.). I used to work for a large aerospace company in the early/mid 2000s, and the products we built were useful, and amazing (hunks of metal weighing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds flying in the air transporting people). I was absolutely awestruck by the fact that upcoming companies like Google and Facebook (which were “just websites” in my then-naive worldview) had fewer people, and made way more money than us.

erodr015 8y ago

Brain Corp in San Diego is solving this problem as we speak. In about two years, they've enabled floor care machines, a vacuum, and now an inventory tug for grocery stores.

colebot2000 8y ago
Just checked out their tech - pretty interesting stuff. Leveraging other peoples machinery cuts out a huge amount of manpower needed to build a robot from the ground up.

Animats 8y ago

It's frustrating. Even basic industrial robots have not been hugely successful outside of a few areas, such as automobile assembly. Amazon seems to have given up on the Amazon Picking Challenge; the last competition was in 2017. Here's the winner.[1] That's just bin-picking. Manipulation in unstructured environments is still very poor. DARPA's manipulation and humanoid robot programs got as far as public competitions and were then discontinued. Here's how far that got.[2] On top of that, good robot arms are expensive. Startups announce low-cost ones, but many don't hold up in continuous use. Universal Robot from Denmark seems to be doing well, but their arms start around $35,000. Rethink Robotics went bust. Even with more "AI", the smartness is mostly limited to targeting objects that aren't perfectly aligned. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AljePt7Mh6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AljePt7Mh6U [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeABMoYJGEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeABMoYJGEU

petra 8y ago
>> Robots ... low-cost ones, but many don't hold up in continuous use. Universal Robot from Denmark seems to be doing well, but their arms start around $35,000. $35,000 is the price of new, reliable car. and cars are much more complex, and suffer more forces trying to wear them out. So why are robots so expensive ? is it mostly a matter of volume ? or is it something expensive about the tech ?
- sgillen 8y ago
  I think it is largely a matter of volume, Not just the volume of robots sold but also of the sensors and actuators that go into them. It's also a matter of market, no one is really selling robots in this price range to consumers, it's all going to large manufacturing companies or to large research institutes. There are of course even lower cost robot arms, ~$100 toys, $1000 educational platforms etc. They just don't have the precision or power needed for industrial or research applications.
pratyushag2 8y ago
Would the costs and development be much lower and easier if the focus was augmenting humans strength in physical work? Would that still qualify as a robot company?

SwellJoe 8y ago

I recently took a job with a robotics startup...it's a tough business to operate in with huge operating costs (compared to software), but I think there are a lot of opportunities yet untapped. The old Feynman saying "There's plenty of room at the bottom" is extremely true in robotics. There are markets where robots have been (profitably) in service for a decade or more, but they are big robots with extremely limited roles: An arm that lifts a door onto a car, a glorified cart that follows a yellow line around a warehouse or hospital or whatever, etc. The new generation of robots is human scale and has more flexibility built in. They deliver door-to-door/peer-to-peer, instead of along a fixed route. They carry small packages instead of a stack of boxes. They do inspections in places that aren't safe for humans. etc. Plenty of room for smaller, smarter, cheaper, robots. But, it is definitely a tough/expensive business to build in, and the market probably doesn't have room for at least half of the companies currently running on investor money.

blacksmith_tb 8y ago
> They deliver door-to-door/peer-to-peer... I like the idea of p2p delivery ("robot: take this saw I borrowed back over to my friend Joe"), but I think that's v2.0 of the package delivery bots which are in beta (or maybe alpha) right now, unless I'm missing out on something? Not to mention the legal implications of on-demand bots as drug mules or bomb delivery...
- SwellJoe 8y ago
  Sure, it's in the future, but it's not the distant future. The company I work with does P2P within a given environment. It has a map of the hotel/hospital where it works and can basically deliver anywhere on that map (barring stairs, and a few other limitations). It has no fixed routes, and is demand-driven. Someone calls it, drops in whatever needs to be delivered, and tells it where to go. It arrives, maybe calls the recipient to let them know it's at the door, and hands the delivery over, after verifying recipient identity. There are many companies doing this kind of thing in various environments. Doing it at the scale of a city, like calling an Uber/Lyft, is probably a few years out, at least. Maybe in major cities taking the place of bike couriers it'll come sooner, I dunno. "Not to mention the legal implications of on-demand bots as drug mules or bomb delivery..." UPS and FedEx and the USPS have that problem.

outworlder 8y ago

It is very difficult to have a company culture that optimized both for software and hardware. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work when you have to retool your production line or throw away inventory, or call a supplier to request changes. Conversely, hardware development processes tend to be too rigid and slow when applied to software. It is very, very hard to get these working together even (and particularly) when they are two distinct groups in a company. I have had to deal with 'firmware' updates on a VM. You know, the full "build and download a binary" thing from some website, upload to FTP, then login to a website and point to that FTP server, so the binary would be applied and the instance restarted. No big deal, right? We do that sort of thing for OS upgrades, right? Except it wasn't an OS upgrade or actual firmware, it was updating the application running on that machine. The sort of thing that could be accomplished by an automated CD job, and a docker pull (or heck, apt-get update). All because the thing was an appliance. So it was lifted and shifted as-is and now "it's a cloud app, because it's on AWS!". I have had to argue against authentication for a HTTP health check. "But if there is no authentication, people can spam the endpoint, and it's slow and returns a lot of data". Ok, first thing: it's not a public accessible endpoint. Second, I'm not interested in testing auth or taking the machine down when credentials expired. And third, if it is slow, then just return a HTTP 200 for me if it is ok, I don't care about anything else. "But if I just return 200, it doesn't mean the app is actually working". Ok, so go do the checks at whatever interval you want, and return the last run. "But this needs authentication, otherwise there could be a DOS, as the checks are slow." No you don't understand, they are supposed to be async... This went on and on for months. I finally got the health check. ... but then, now they want to log all packets to our centralized logging, so that they can count them. Dude, expose a metrics endpoint, Prometheus will call it periodically. "But there are too many messages, we can't hold all of these!" No, you give me a counter. Return the counter. "But counting messages is even slower". No... you increment the counter _as you receive them, not when I request_. sigh So anyway. Even when hardware is amazing, software development can lag behind. Or vice-versa.

slowmovintarget 8y ago

Why wouldn't this work like personal computers? You use them at work or encounter them in school. When they're prevalent in those places, people begin bringing them home.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Note that they aren't talking about Kubota, Cincinatti Milacron, etc. People that make robots for manufacturing are doing ok. But that also points to a big hole in this story, robots and what they are. Back when I was running the Homebrew Robotics Club the question of "what is a robot" came up several times. Typically the definition is a machine that can perform some task while responding to changes in its environment that might otherwise prevent the task from being completed. The essence being sensing, executing an action to achieve a result, and identifying/signalling completion of the action. By this definition your dishwasher is a robot, it senses water temperature, dish placement, and sometimes even the amount of soiling on the dishes. It may adjust its cycle to insure the dishes are clean. But most people mean mobile, anthropomorphic devices that interact with people when they think "robot." And making a business in that space is very hard indeed. In part because we don't really have a way to "value" what the robot is doing. When you replace a union auto worker with a robot, you can directly compare the what you would have paid the worker in salary/benefits/training with what it costs to operate the robot. The math is "easy". But when you have a robot that is more "companionable" than not having a robot? How do you value that? And if you have tasks like "fetch me a beer from the fridge" that the robot can do, how do you evaluate the value of that versus doing it yourself? Most people say "I'd love a robot that would pick up laundry off the floor and put it into the basket next to the washing machine." But if you say, "Here you go, for only $20,000 (ask about our payment plan), our picker-upper 1000 will collect dirty laundry and put it in the basket." people always blanch and say, "Heck for that much money I'll do it myself."

dsr_ 8y ago
Which is a little weird, because a $10/hour job for 40 hours/week for 50 weeks/year is $20K. The robot can presumably work 168 hours/week for 52 weeks/year, which means that it's roughly 1/4 the cost of a human (and that doesn't count hiring time, HR training, sick days, worker's comp, taxes...) The real issue is that we expect minimum wage workers to operate independently on minimal instructions, and as every programmer knows, explaining what you want done to a computer is much harder than telling a competent adult.
GeorgeTirebiter 8y ago
So what is the intersection of value and utility? Roomba meets the criteria, but nothing else? What about https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombot/tombot-affordable-robotic-companion-animals-for-se/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tombot/tombot-affordabl... ? Or is that too light on the 'sensing' part to be considered a robot? Is a Furby a robot? The problem seems to be one of semantics.

lkrubner 8y ago

They are working with a terrible definition of "robot". Most robot companies are profitable, if we are talking about all of the companies that participated in the huge surge of automation that swept of the Western world during the postwar boom of 1945 to 1973. Some of the biggest of the companies are still profitable. This is also a line of work that has, somewhat, consolidated into the hands of German firms. Siemens is probably the best known of the older companies, and SAP is the best known of the modern software companies, but there is a lot out there. See: https://ias.german-pavilion.com/en/home/ https://ias.german-pavilion.com/en/home/

CodingSucks 8y ago

http://cultstate.com/2019/03/15/The-Robodollar/ http://cultstate.com/2019/03/15/The-Robodollar/ "Now you’re starting to see the brutal minutia of robotic labor tally up into a considerable challenge."

iandanforth 8y ago

1. Robots get classified as toys which sets an unreasonable price point. 2. Robots arn't good enough yet despite any hype you've heard. 3. In cases where a the product works better than the alternative and people are willing to pay a sustainable price the company does well ... just like every product ever.

rangersanger 8y ago

Gall's Law : A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.

contingencies 8y ago
Added to http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup http://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

bigbadgoose 8y ago

supply chain, rapid tech shift that affects and effects capex, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

muktaakash 8y ago

Discussions often goes out of topic - anyway, here is vid on soothing melody. It's Sitar - ancient string instrument. Hope everybody feel the human skill and uniqueness. https://youtu.be/nDHrd1QByL8 https://youtu.be/nDHrd1QByL8

ChuckMcM 8y ago

Apropos of nothing, Intuitive Surgical is a profitable robot company.