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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 highl

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.
  - Swizec 8y ago
    I never thought of this and now that you told me it makes so much sense. Obviously a fork lift that isn’t heavy enough couldn’t lift heavy stuff because it would just tip over. It doesn’t matter how strong you are if you don’t have the mass to balance what you’re holding. Mind blown.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    This is a mischaracterization of the size and operational use of the average forklift. Small (like under 5k curb weight) forklifts outnumber the big guys by an order of magnitude. If you count the small ones that the big box stores use I'd say it's two orders of magnitude. Most fork lifts are used to move small (<1000lb) things on pallets in indoor settings. I personally think human form factor robots are a dead end but if the Incredible Hulkbot was as readily available as a forklift then then you wouldn't see so many things being palletized in the first place because you'd just have Hulkbot move them. The reason we have so many fork lifts is because we've settled on the pallet as a form factor and forklifts are good at moving pallets.
    - abakker 8y ago
      Maybe so - I looked around on practical machinist and on some of the website before making that statement and found that few items that really looked like forklifts were available that had load capacities under 3-5K, so those probably weight about 2x their load capacity. the kind of ride-behind pallet movers aren't really forklifts, but obviously do come with lighter duty availability. For reference, a pallet of bottled water weighs about 2000lbs. and most big box stores would rather operate forklifts with some capacity overhead.
  - seppel 8y ago
    > 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. Yes, to lift 10t, you need the material and support to lift 10t. But a robot the size and weight of a child is much stronger and faster than any human and can easily kill one with the wrong movement. That's why they often are not allowed to work in the same location as humans. There are currently exoskeletons developed to bring human strength back on par. But the speed race for anything repetitive is lost.
- zaroth 8y ago
  $20 - $30 bullion sounds much too small to be the robotics market. With all the fearmongering of “robots taking your jobs” I would have guessed the overall market was at least 10x that.
  - Invictus0 8y ago
    Sounds like you're conflating automation and robotics: not necessarily the same thing.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Just want to highlight the "incredibly capable" comment. While robots are excellent at some very specific things, they are absolutely horrible at some things an 8 year old can do easily. Folding clothes is probably my favorite example. While there are some "clothes folding" robots that have been released or are in development, almost all of them take about as much prep work as the time it takes to just fold clothes themselves. Once we get to a state where a robot can just take a basket of clothes and fold (and sort) them like a human, I think you'll see an explosion of robot applications. However, I think that time is very far off.
- jowiar 8y ago
  I was at a talk recently where one of the main points was that doing pretty much anything with fabric is exceedingly difficult for robots.
throwaway_9168 8y ago
Isn't that because we haven't yet figured out how to actually get them to do complex stuff? If you could actually have a bot which could just go out and shovel snow perfectly, would you still prefer the status quo of doing it by yourself?
- dougmwne 8y ago
  Mars rovers are incredibly complex because we had a reason to spend the money needed to build them. Who is going to pay people to figure out how to build a snow shoveling robot? It does not seem beyond our current level of tech, just beyond any current economic need.
  - rightbyte 8y ago
    You mean a snow blower crossed with a automatic lawn mower? Sounds like a quite simple and fun student project, but the hard part is probably making it safe enough for an actual product. As a side note, here's a automatic hamburger restaurant from the 50s. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&t=437s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&t=437s
philwelch 8y ago
> It seems like we'd need something like off-world colonies, a fertility crisis or environmental collapse to really create a need. Two out of three ain't bad, so I think we'll have that need soon enough.
edzillion 8y ago
> It seems like we'd need something like off-world colonies, a fertility crisis or environmental collapse to really create a need. Simpler than that: increase the price of labour such that robots doing menial tasks become profitable. A UBI would achieve this goal without catastrophic change.
r_smart 8y ago
I work at a company that provides industrial laser measurement systems using robots. This is a niche where robots are far superior to humans because they're much much more repeatable. Our clients are specifying their manufactured parts with .001" tolerances, and a human with a hard gauge is going to introduce a lot of noise in the QC process.
maccam94 8y ago
Or people to stop believing that you have to work to live. Imagine how the world would have to change if everyone decided to stop doing crappy jobs because they don't like them.
lisper 8y ago
> I think I'm happy with the status quo on this one. That's probably because you're not one of the cheap people.
- tjr 8y ago
  They would be happier being replaced by robots, and having to find something else to do? If so, could they not voluntarily do that now, without robots?
  - lisper 8y ago
    A lot of the "cheap people" would be absolutely thrilled to be able to leave their "job" (indentured servitude is probably a more accurate description) in an asian sweatshop or an African subsistence farm and go to school. And no, they can't do that now because they can't afford it. Whether robots would materially change that is debatable. What is not debatable is that having "cheap people" is a better deal for the buyer than it is for the seller.
    - tjr 8y ago
      Whether robots would materially change that is debatable. Indeed, that is the only thing here I was questioning. :-) If they can’t afford to learn a new trade now, how would losing their current jobs to robots help?
      - lisper 8y ago
        Well, it would give them time for starters. And it's possible that society would see the benefit of having an overall better educated population and decide to subsidize the cost using some of the newly generated wealth that robots would produce.
LockNess0 8y ago
If the USA and Europe enforce their borders properly, then these robots will be required. Just from Trump's actions there has already been a marked uptick in the agricultural robotics sector since South/Central American labourers are less available.
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
That might not be as true is the people were well paid, rested, happy and motivated. Robots are very easy to satisfy (some maintenance), if the human workforce was kept satisfied, robots would be cheaper.
null000 8y ago
> a fertility crisis or environmental collapse Not sure it really makes sense to fix a lack of people with something that's extremely labor intensive (at least up front). Not to mention, getting robots to be cheap requires a really highly advanced society, which requires a lot of people and a lot of time. That said, it'd be interesting to see at what point or under what conditions a robot's total labor output exceeds it's total labor input (including watching it, debugging, programming, etc)

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.
- Swizec 8y ago
  I never thought of this and now that you told me it makes so much sense. Obviously a fork lift that isn’t heavy enough couldn’t lift heavy stuff because it would just tip over. It doesn’t matter how strong you are if you don’t have the mass to balance what you’re holding. Mind blown.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This is a mischaracterization of the size and operational use of the average forklift. Small (like under 5k curb weight) forklifts outnumber the big guys by an order of magnitude. If you count the small ones that the big box stores use I'd say it's two orders of magnitude. Most fork lifts are used to move small (<1000lb) things on pallets in indoor settings. I personally think human form factor robots are a dead end but if the Incredible Hulkbot was as readily available as a forklift then then you wouldn't see so many things being palletized in the first place because you'd just have Hulkbot move them. The reason we have so many fork lifts is because we've settled on the pallet as a form factor and forklifts are good at moving pallets.
  - abakker 8y ago
    Maybe so - I looked around on practical machinist and on some of the website before making that statement and found that few items that really looked like forklifts were available that had load capacities under 3-5K, so those probably weight about 2x their load capacity. the kind of ride-behind pallet movers aren't really forklifts, but obviously do come with lighter duty availability. For reference, a pallet of bottled water weighs about 2000lbs. and most big box stores would rather operate forklifts with some capacity overhead.
- seppel 8y ago
  > 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. Yes, to lift 10t, you need the material and support to lift 10t. But a robot the size and weight of a child is much stronger and faster than any human and can easily kill one with the wrong movement. That's why they often are not allowed to work in the same location as humans. There are currently exoskeletons developed to bring human strength back on par. But the speed race for anything repetitive is lost.
zaroth 8y ago
$20 - $30 bullion sounds much too small to be the robotics market. With all the fearmongering of “robots taking your jobs” I would have guessed the overall market was at least 10x that.
- Invictus0 8y ago
  Sounds like you're conflating automation and robotics: not necessarily the same thing.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

Just want to highlight the "incredibly capable" comment. While robots are excellent at some very specific things, they are absolutely horrible at some things an 8 year old can do easily. Folding clothes is probably my favorite example. While there are some "clothes folding" robots that have been released or are in development, almost all of them take about as much prep work as the time it takes to just fold clothes themselves. Once we get to a state where a robot can just take a basket of clothes and fold (and sort) them like a human, I think you'll see an explosion of robot applications. However, I think that time is very far off.

jowiar 8y ago
I was at a talk recently where one of the main points was that doing pretty much anything with fabric is exceedingly difficult for robots.

throwaway_9168 8y ago

Isn't that because we haven't yet figured out how to actually get them to do complex stuff? If you could actually have a bot which could just go out and shovel snow perfectly, would you still prefer the status quo of doing it by yourself?

dougmwne 8y ago
Mars rovers are incredibly complex because we had a reason to spend the money needed to build them. Who is going to pay people to figure out how to build a snow shoveling robot? It does not seem beyond our current level of tech, just beyond any current economic need.
- rightbyte 8y ago
  You mean a snow blower crossed with a automatic lawn mower? Sounds like a quite simple and fun student project, but the hard part is probably making it safe enough for an actual product. As a side note, here's a automatic hamburger restaurant from the 50s. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&t=437s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&t=437s

philwelch 8y ago

> It seems like we'd need something like off-world colonies, a fertility crisis or environmental collapse to really create a need. Two out of three ain't bad, so I think we'll have that need soon enough.

edzillion 8y ago

> It seems like we'd need something like off-world colonies, a fertility crisis or environmental collapse to really create a need. Simpler than that: increase the price of labour such that robots doing menial tasks become profitable. A UBI would achieve this goal without catastrophic change.

r_smart 8y ago

I work at a company that provides industrial laser measurement systems using robots. This is a niche where robots are far superior to humans because they're much much more repeatable. Our clients are specifying their manufactured parts with .001" tolerances, and a human with a hard gauge is going to introduce a lot of noise in the QC process.

maccam94 8y ago

Or people to stop believing that you have to work to live. Imagine how the world would have to change if everyone decided to stop doing crappy jobs because they don't like them.

lisper 8y ago

> I think I'm happy with the status quo on this one. That's probably because you're not one of the cheap people.

tjr 8y ago
They would be happier being replaced by robots, and having to find something else to do? If so, could they not voluntarily do that now, without robots?
- lisper 8y ago
  A lot of the "cheap people" would be absolutely thrilled to be able to leave their "job" (indentured servitude is probably a more accurate description) in an asian sweatshop or an African subsistence farm and go to school. And no, they can't do that now because they can't afford it. Whether robots would materially change that is debatable. What is not debatable is that having "cheap people" is a better deal for the buyer than it is for the seller.
  - tjr 8y ago
    Whether robots would materially change that is debatable. Indeed, that is the only thing here I was questioning. :-) If they can’t afford to learn a new trade now, how would losing their current jobs to robots help?
    - lisper 8y ago
      Well, it would give them time for starters. And it's possible that society would see the benefit of having an overall better educated population and decide to subsidize the cost using some of the newly generated wealth that robots would produce.

LockNess0 8y ago

If the USA and Europe enforce their borders properly, then these robots will be required. Just from Trump's actions there has already been a marked uptick in the agricultural robotics sector since South/Central American labourers are less available.

DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago

That might not be as true is the people were well paid, rested, happy and motivated. Robots are very easy to satisfy (some maintenance), if the human workforce was kept satisfied, robots would be cheaper.

null000 8y ago

> a fertility crisis or environmental collapse Not sure it really makes sense to fix a lack of people with something that's extremely labor intensive (at least up front). Not to mention, getting robots to be cheap requires a really highly advanced society, which requires a lot of people and a lot of time. That said, it'd be interesting to see at what point or under what conditions a robot's total labor output exceeds it's total labor input (including watching it, debugging, programming, etc)