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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 muc

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.
cr0sh 8y ago
> The near impossibility of building a robot to do something as simple as taking out the trash Part of this issue is that we think we need the robot to do it like a human would; in this example of "taking out the trash", we imagine the robot grabbing the bag of garbage from wherever, going outside, and throwing the garbage away, then returning. Instead, what if the robot was the garbage bins themselves? You have an inside robot garbage bin, and an outside one. The inside one would - once full - wheel itself outside and interface with the larger one to dump, then return. The outside one would periodically wheel itself to the curb to be dumped by the (probably someday fully automated - it's already most of the way there) garbage truck. Essentially, make each robot a slightly smaller "garbage truck" that can be dumped by the larger units. Of course, that still means the robot needs to be able to navigate a home, open and close doors, etc. If the home had automatic doors, that would make things easier. Then it would become a navigation problem mostly. It's kind of like something I told a guy at my work who said he wanted to build a robot to bring him a beer. He was wondering about all the complexity, etc. I told him - why don't you make the robot be the refrigerator, then you'd just summon the fridge to wherever you were, and it would dispense a beer, then return back to the kitchen. Dish cleaning? What if the cabinets were dishwashers instead? Plumbing would be a nightmare - but in theory it would be possible. Basically - think of ways to make the problems more tractable for the machine, instead of trying to make the machine act like a human (note the automation in many factories that does jobs humans use to do - they didn't make the machines/robots look like humans to do them, right? In many cases, the tasks and such were even changed for the sake of the machine handling/assembly - such home tasks could be looked at in the same manner, to an extent).
- sethhochberg 8y ago
  Thats the whole challenge we're dealing with now, right? Robots are trying to participate in a world where all of the interfaces are designed for humans, and thats why we get hung up on humanoid designs. I think its probably equal parts whatever the futurism equivalent of nostalgia is and and the raw practicality of making robots that understand human-world interfaces seeming easier than rebuilding the entire human world with robots in mind.

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.

cr0sh 8y ago

> The near impossibility of building a robot to do something as simple as taking out the trash Part of this issue is that we think we need the robot to do it like a human would; in this example of "taking out the trash", we imagine the robot grabbing the bag of garbage from wherever, going outside, and throwing the garbage away, then returning. Instead, what if the robot was the garbage bins themselves? You have an inside robot garbage bin, and an outside one. The inside one would - once full - wheel itself outside and interface with the larger one to dump, then return. The outside one would periodically wheel itself to the curb to be dumped by the (probably someday fully automated - it's already most of the way there) garbage truck. Essentially, make each robot a slightly smaller "garbage truck" that can be dumped by the larger units. Of course, that still means the robot needs to be able to navigate a home, open and close doors, etc. If the home had automatic doors, that would make things easier. Then it would become a navigation problem mostly. It's kind of like something I told a guy at my work who said he wanted to build a robot to bring him a beer. He was wondering about all the complexity, etc. I told him - why don't you make the robot be the refrigerator, then you'd just summon the fridge to wherever you were, and it would dispense a beer, then return back to the kitchen. Dish cleaning? What if the cabinets were dishwashers instead? Plumbing would be a nightmare - but in theory it would be possible. Basically - think of ways to make the problems more tractable for the machine, instead of trying to make the machine act like a human (note the automation in many factories that does jobs humans use to do - they didn't make the machines/robots look like humans to do them, right? In many cases, the tasks and such were even changed for the sake of the machine handling/assembly - such home tasks could be looked at in the same manner, to an extent).

sethhochberg 8y ago
Thats the whole challenge we're dealing with now, right? Robots are trying to participate in a world where all of the interfaces are designed for humans, and thats why we get hung up on humanoid designs. I think its probably equal parts whatever the futurism equivalent of nostalgia is and and the raw practicality of making robots that understand human-world interfaces seeming easier than rebuilding the entire human world with robots in mind.