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Speaking of applications, I could see something like this being helpful for people in old age, cooking or stocking small shelves. Was there talk of the final fo

by amrb 4y ago

Speaking of applications, I could see something like this being helpful for people in old age, cooking or stocking small shelves. Was there talk of the final form of this tech?

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
There was talk of these sorts of things. At one point they talked seriously about the robot cleaning people's homes, which seemed absurd to me. It can't go up a step, it can't grab a spray bottle and use it, and they are very expensive. I was long gone by the time the project shuttered but I suspect Tesla's entrance in to the robotics space may have been the nail in the coffin for this project. Tesla can do a manufacturing-first design approach with serious DFM the whole way through. I am still not sure if Tesla's humanoid will every come to light (right now beyond the demos we have seen my guess is that it will not become a useful product), but Tesla has the advantage that they can produce high volumes immediately with a modest cost due to their manufacturing integration, something you just cannot get with engineers in Mountain View sending designs to China. That said the commercial prospects for this project were always limited, and they canned basically all speculative R&D while I was there 4 years ago. My in palm grip sensor was the last thing output by the small R&D subgroup I was hired in to before that group was dissolved, and that is when I moved to hardware test engineering. Lots of people wanted to develop better grippers, etc, but they wanted to try to narrow in on the existing design and commercialize it, and I just don't think this form factor has wide enough utility. It is also fairly expensive and the software side of things is very difficult. That is another area where Tesla may be able to succeed, though as much as their stack has promise, we have seen them struggle even in structured environments like roadways.

by amrb 4y ago

Speaking of applications, I could see something like this being helpful for people in old age, cooking or stocking small shelves. Was there talk of the final form of this tech?

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

There was talk of these sorts of things. At one point they talked seriously about the robot cleaning people's homes, which seemed absurd to me. It can't go up a step, it can't grab a spray bottle and use it, and they are very expensive. I was long gone by the time the project shuttered but I suspect Tesla's entrance in to the robotics space may have been the nail in the coffin for this project. Tesla can do a manufacturing-first design approach with serious DFM the whole way through. I am still not sure if Tesla's humanoid will every come to light (right now beyond the demos we have seen my guess is that it will not become a useful product), but Tesla has the advantage that they can produce high volumes immediately with a modest cost due to their manufacturing integration, something you just cannot get with engineers in Mountain View sending designs to China. That said the commercial prospects for this project were always limited, and they canned basically all speculative R&D while I was there 4 years ago. My in palm grip sensor was the last thing output by the small R&D subgroup I was hired in to before that group was dissolved, and that is when I moved to hardware test engineering. Lots of people wanted to develop better grippers, etc, but they wanted to try to narrow in on the existing design and commercialize it, and I just don't think this form factor has wide enough utility. It is also fairly expensive and the software side of things is very difficult. That is another area where Tesla may be able to succeed, though as much as their stack has promise, we have seen them struggle even in structured environments like roadways.