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Isn't this just a slightly more advanced / evolved factory robotic arm / pick&place type mechanism? The robot is not "making coffee". It is placed in front of

Isn't this just a slightly more advanced / evolved factory robotic arm / pick&place type mechanism? The robot is not "making coffee". It is placed in front of a Keurig, coffee cup already in place, water already filled, powered on.. with a pod in front. It is doing essentially 3 things - pick&place pod, secure latch, press go.

graypegg 3y ago
I think the thing they want to communicate here is the training method. Rather than a pick and place tool path, this is just trained on videos of someone using a coffee machine, and imitating that. Which… now that I think about it… is probably drawing a skeleton over top of the video Kinect-style, and… drawing a tool path… But at least it seems to understand when it’s made a mistake, which is interesting.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Right I mean, for B2B industrial robotic arm applications this might actually be a big improvement / breakthrough. I just find it annoying how many of these AI companies are pumping goofy B2C applications. Like they make it look as though they are building a breakthrough humanoid robotic assistant or something, but really that is still very very far away and not at all related to the "video trained robotic arm" breakthrough they are trying to communicate.
- WiSaGaN 3y ago
  I’m wondering what cost function it’s using. Does it use a simulator?
fabian2k 3y ago
I don't find this particularly impressive as well. Anything except a pod machine would likely present the robot with tasks it can't handle like e.g. handling actual beans or ground coffee and filling water. And most household tasks would often involve this kind of task that is not entirely straightforward as your house and its contents aren't designed with limited robots in mind.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  This Keurig queued up perfectly use case is fundamentally unimpressive because I could expect my 5 year old nephew to pass it with 1 minute of verbal direction or watching me do it once, not 10 hours of deep learning. Now expand the Keurig use case to the real world. Present it with a machine: * filled / not filled with water * used pod bin empty / used pod bin filled * pods available / pods in a box on counter / pods in a box in the cabinet * cup on counter / cup in cabinet / cup in dishwasher / cup in sink We now have ~50 permutations of even the simple Keurig use case and let me know how many years of training to accomplish even this. All of this to make fairly bad coffee. We haven't even gotten into your example of actually making real coffee.
  - xbar 3y ago
    I am more impressed than you. A general purpose robot can learn new tasks in a modest amount of time. As you argue, fluidly chaining sequences of learned tasks together is tricky, but current AI technology is capable of solving nearly all those problems within a handful of years. With centralized learning labs, over-the-air updates, and a 2x or 3x improvement in execution speed of precision tasks, I think this type of solution is going to be ubiquitous within the decade.

graypegg 3y ago

I think the thing they want to communicate here is the training method. Rather than a pick and place tool path, this is just trained on videos of someone using a coffee machine, and imitating that. Which… now that I think about it… is probably drawing a skeleton over top of the video Kinect-style, and… drawing a tool path… But at least it seems to understand when it’s made a mistake, which is interesting.

steveBK123 3y ago
Right I mean, for B2B industrial robotic arm applications this might actually be a big improvement / breakthrough. I just find it annoying how many of these AI companies are pumping goofy B2C applications. Like they make it look as though they are building a breakthrough humanoid robotic assistant or something, but really that is still very very far away and not at all related to the "video trained robotic arm" breakthrough they are trying to communicate.
WiSaGaN 3y ago
I’m wondering what cost function it’s using. Does it use a simulator?

fabian2k 3y ago

I don't find this particularly impressive as well. Anything except a pod machine would likely present the robot with tasks it can't handle like e.g. handling actual beans or ground coffee and filling water. And most household tasks would often involve this kind of task that is not entirely straightforward as your house and its contents aren't designed with limited robots in mind.

steveBK123 3y ago
This Keurig queued up perfectly use case is fundamentally unimpressive because I could expect my 5 year old nephew to pass it with 1 minute of verbal direction or watching me do it once, not 10 hours of deep learning. Now expand the Keurig use case to the real world. Present it with a machine: * filled / not filled with water * used pod bin empty / used pod bin filled * pods available / pods in a box on counter / pods in a box in the cabinet * cup on counter / cup in cabinet / cup in dishwasher / cup in sink We now have ~50 permutations of even the simple Keurig use case and let me know how many years of training to accomplish even this. All of this to make fairly bad coffee. We haven't even gotten into your example of actually making real coffee.
- xbar 3y ago
  I am more impressed than you. A general purpose robot can learn new tasks in a modest amount of time. As you argue, fluidly chaining sequences of learned tasks together is tricky, but current AI technology is capable of solving nearly all those problems within a handful of years. With centralized learning labs, over-the-air updates, and a 2x or 3x improvement in execution speed of precision tasks, I think this type of solution is going to be ubiquitous within the decade.