4 ms·

I'm looking forward to the mass production of next-gen robotics platforms and components; hopefully these companies will get a good product improvement feedback

by gary_0 2y ago

I'm looking forward to the mass production of next-gen robotics platforms and components; hopefully these companies will get a good product improvement feedback loop going like other manufactured goods (cars, batteries, screens, electronics, etc). Once that gets going and they can sell reliable actuators, control systems, and chassis components on the mass market for cheap, then robotics is going to get crazy. Hopefully we get some open source designs as well, and open collaboration in the engineering community. And hopefully humanoid robots don't turn out like most "smart" devices, where all the guts are closed-source binary blobs the user has no control over. (I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that). Not to mention the consequences of having your humanoid robot hacked remotely could be quite horrific...

barelyauser 2y ago
We will probably get as much collaboration as the car industry does with some basic components and standards. But perhaps big differences in the major hardware (hands, chassis). The most valuable part, the AI models, will certainly be closed. With that said, it is hard to imagine the economics of humanoid robots. The trend seems to favor automation in controlled environments for certain products. Then the displaced factory workers flood remaining jobs driving down labor costs and shutting down any prospect of a humanoid machine.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Teever 2y ago
  Yes, the economics of such a device are the interesting part. The point where it all changes is when the humanoid robot can repair itself / make a copy of itself. That's a physical compiler that can bootstrap itself. That's a genie that lets you wish for more wishes. What that does to the economy is anybody's guess. When we'll make one and when the average joe will be able to get their hands on one are some interesting questions. Once people know it's possible with off the shelf materials they'll soon seek to replicate it, so it can't remain controlled unless it's hidden, because they will succeed in that attempt to replicate it. Who wouldn't? What would the average joe do with a humanoid robot that can do most domestic and industrial tasks as well as self replicate?
  - TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    I just want to say, as a robotics engineer that used to be a CNC machinist and now plasma cuts and welds together farming robots of my own design... There's not really such a thing (even conceptually) as a humanoid robot that can "self replicate" without a broader robot factory with additional machinery. When you ask "what would the average joe do with a humanoid that can ... self replicate" this sort of misunderstands how robots will be built. Certainly the average joe could ask the robot to go build more if the average joe also had access to a robot factory with CNC machines, metal 3D printers, plastic injection molding machines, PCB fabrication equipment, etc etc. But additional machinery will always be needed. People in the 3D printer world got really excited about self replicating machines, but motors, cable harnesses, PCBs with lots of different chips on them, metal housings etc still cannot be 3D printed on such machines. If the average joe has his own robot factory, he's not the average joe. It is theoretically possible that all these different machines will be collapsed in to some sort of single machine - it's hard to say what will happen in 100 years or more - but that's not really anything I would get too worked up about right now.
    - Teever 2y ago
      Imagine a humanoid robot that is comparable to your average joe in terms of dexterity and stamina like let's say as a high water mark it can rebuild a car engine and do basic dentistry for sixteen hours of the day as long as it recharges for the other eight. Let's say that it has the ability to carry a robot of equal weight about 25 km and can repair that fellow robot provided that it has the necessary parts and a basic tool set and the equivalent to your average residential garage type environment to work in[0] (but like really could do it in the field). If you had a pair of two of these robots and your run of the mill warehouse full of their spare parts (assume a tape of infinite length...) so that with careful planning between the two of them they could do the necessary preventative maintenance on each other so that they didn't break down at the same time, or could go rescue the other if it broke down unexpectedly in the field, how long would it take them to build the infrastructure necessary to produce new parts to replenish their stockpile and generate new robots so that they could experience exponential growth? When I watch stuff like Primitive Technology[1] I'm in awe at how asingle well-fed and educated human being can with the right preparation and research can go into a jungle setting and speed run up to the iron age. It makes me wonder about the minimum viable number of people and education/knowledge/experience required to do the same thing for realsies to the computer age. It's just a pipe dream or two about when a robot equivalent to the average joe is a thing and when I see videos like the one we're talking about or the recent one from Boston Dynamics the gears in my mind start turning. There was a time when computers didn't exist. Then they did. At first computers used to be the size of buildings, then they became the size of floors of buildings, then the size of rooms, then the size of appliances[2], and so on and so forth. we're seeing this sort of miniaturization across segments of industry driven in large part by the miniaturization of semiconductors. If you take a big picture view the economy as a whole it is a self replicating machine. As are the vertiable Adam and Eve that made that economy. In a complicated sort of orobourous way the entire economy is made up of humanoids (and let's not forget our quadroped hoven friends who serve as feedstock btw, or chickens and tuna and so on...) who replicate in some way or another. There is this sort of impending collision between the organic and inorganic self replicating aspects of our economic system. Ribozyme and hominid, compiler and automobile assembly line, what are the difference exactly? [0] https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/doctor-working-on-robot-woman-royalty-free-illustration/152406222 https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/doctor-workin... [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA [2] https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/111014015647-dennis-ritchie-ken-thompson-bell-labs.jpg?q=x_23,y_269,h_1200,w_2133,c_crop/h_653,w_1160/f_webp https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/11101401564...
- rlt 2y ago
  > Then the displaced factory workers flood remaining jobs driving down labor costs and shutting down any prospect of a humanoid machine. I think the market for consumer humanoid robots would be similar to that of the consumer automotive market. I’d certainly pay the cost of a midrange car to never have to do housework/yardwork again. And that’s not including industrial use cases.
- staplers 2y ago
  it is hard to imagine the economics of humanoid robots Their video gives subtle hints at the capabilities they're selling. Once you catch on it's quite startling. What department of every municipality in the United States would love to get their hands on these? Law enforcement will be chomping at the bit to get these on the budget. Learned repetitive movement, taking punches, crushing "walnuts", easily packed away in a trunk..
- dr_dshiv 2y ago
  It works when you think about how much work there is to do—and how much new intellectual capacity just came online to manage work. There is an enormous amount of work to be done, we aren’t running out.
btbuildem 2y ago
> I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that We're already there with GPT, why would you expect anything else from a robotics company?
- throwup238 2y ago
  At least we haven't gotten to the "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid my sponsors don't want me to do that" stage yet.
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    We'll likely get straight to the point AI actions or answers will be quietly cherry picked among sponsor-approved ones. People is going to trust AI, just like most did with television and the Internet; pretending that AI won't be polluted by advertising would be foolish. There's just too much money at stake.
    - maxwell 2y ago
      Hence the calls for crackdowns on speech under the guise of "safety," i.e. only the multinational-approved models are to be deemed "safe."
squarefoot 2y ago
> Not to mention the consequences of having your humanoid robot hacked remotely could be quite horrific... Hacked or not, I would be suspicious of anything closed source and connected to the Internet, especially if it has cameras, mikes, can roam around and possibly access to the local network too. This robot is insanely cool, but to me the chances that it contains code that phones home to do more than simply upgrading it are too high, like in every closed device.

by gary_0 2y ago

barelyauser 2y ago

We will probably get as much collaboration as the car industry does with some basic components and standards. But perhaps big differences in the major hardware (hands, chassis). The most valuable part, the AI models, will certainly be closed. With that said, it is hard to imagine the economics of humanoid robots. The trend seems to favor automation in controlled environments for certain products. Then the displaced factory workers flood remaining jobs driving down labor costs and shutting down any prospect of a humanoid machine.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Teever 2y ago
Yes, the economics of such a device are the interesting part. The point where it all changes is when the humanoid robot can repair itself / make a copy of itself. That's a physical compiler that can bootstrap itself. That's a genie that lets you wish for more wishes. What that does to the economy is anybody's guess. When we'll make one and when the average joe will be able to get their hands on one are some interesting questions. Once people know it's possible with off the shelf materials they'll soon seek to replicate it, so it can't remain controlled unless it's hidden, because they will succeed in that attempt to replicate it. Who wouldn't? What would the average joe do with a humanoid robot that can do most domestic and industrial tasks as well as self replicate?
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  I just want to say, as a robotics engineer that used to be a CNC machinist and now plasma cuts and welds together farming robots of my own design... There's not really such a thing (even conceptually) as a humanoid robot that can "self replicate" without a broader robot factory with additional machinery. When you ask "what would the average joe do with a humanoid that can ... self replicate" this sort of misunderstands how robots will be built. Certainly the average joe could ask the robot to go build more if the average joe also had access to a robot factory with CNC machines, metal 3D printers, plastic injection molding machines, PCB fabrication equipment, etc etc. But additional machinery will always be needed. People in the 3D printer world got really excited about self replicating machines, but motors, cable harnesses, PCBs with lots of different chips on them, metal housings etc still cannot be 3D printed on such machines. If the average joe has his own robot factory, he's not the average joe. It is theoretically possible that all these different machines will be collapsed in to some sort of single machine - it's hard to say what will happen in 100 years or more - but that's not really anything I would get too worked up about right now.
  - Teever 2y ago
    Imagine a humanoid robot that is comparable to your average joe in terms of dexterity and stamina like let's say as a high water mark it can rebuild a car engine and do basic dentistry for sixteen hours of the day as long as it recharges for the other eight. Let's say that it has the ability to carry a robot of equal weight about 25 km and can repair that fellow robot provided that it has the necessary parts and a basic tool set and the equivalent to your average residential garage type environment to work in[0] (but like really could do it in the field). If you had a pair of two of these robots and your run of the mill warehouse full of their spare parts (assume a tape of infinite length...) so that with careful planning between the two of them they could do the necessary preventative maintenance on each other so that they didn't break down at the same time, or could go rescue the other if it broke down unexpectedly in the field, how long would it take them to build the infrastructure necessary to produce new parts to replenish their stockpile and generate new robots so that they could experience exponential growth? When I watch stuff like Primitive Technology[1] I'm in awe at how asingle well-fed and educated human being can with the right preparation and research can go into a jungle setting and speed run up to the iron age. It makes me wonder about the minimum viable number of people and education/knowledge/experience required to do the same thing for realsies to the computer age. It's just a pipe dream or two about when a robot equivalent to the average joe is a thing and when I see videos like the one we're talking about or the recent one from Boston Dynamics the gears in my mind start turning. There was a time when computers didn't exist. Then they did. At first computers used to be the size of buildings, then they became the size of floors of buildings, then the size of rooms, then the size of appliances[2], and so on and so forth. we're seeing this sort of miniaturization across segments of industry driven in large part by the miniaturization of semiconductors. If you take a big picture view the economy as a whole it is a self replicating machine. As are the vertiable Adam and Eve that made that economy. In a complicated sort of orobourous way the entire economy is made up of humanoids (and let's not forget our quadroped hoven friends who serve as feedstock btw, or chickens and tuna and so on...) who replicate in some way or another. There is this sort of impending collision between the organic and inorganic self replicating aspects of our economic system. Ribozyme and hominid, compiler and automobile assembly line, what are the difference exactly? [0] https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/doctor-working-on-robot-woman-royalty-free-illustration/152406222 https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/illustration/doctor-workin... [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA [2] https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/111014015647-dennis-ritchie-ken-thompson-bell-labs.jpg?q=x_23,y_269,h_1200,w_2133,c_crop/h_653,w_1160/f_webp https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/11101401564...
rlt 2y ago
> Then the displaced factory workers flood remaining jobs driving down labor costs and shutting down any prospect of a humanoid machine. I think the market for consumer humanoid robots would be similar to that of the consumer automotive market. I’d certainly pay the cost of a midrange car to never have to do housework/yardwork again. And that’s not including industrial use cases.
staplers 2y ago
it is hard to imagine the economics of humanoid robots Their video gives subtle hints at the capabilities they're selling. Once you catch on it's quite startling. What department of every municipality in the United States would love to get their hands on these? Law enforcement will be chomping at the bit to get these on the budget. Learned repetitive movement, taking punches, crushing "walnuts", easily packed away in a trunk..
dr_dshiv 2y ago
It works when you think about how much work there is to do—and how much new intellectual capacity just came online to manage work. There is an enormous amount of work to be done, we aren’t running out.

btbuildem 2y ago

> I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that We're already there with GPT, why would you expect anything else from a robotics company?

throwup238 2y ago
At least we haven't gotten to the "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid my sponsors don't want me to do that" stage yet.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  We'll likely get straight to the point AI actions or answers will be quietly cherry picked among sponsor-approved ones. People is going to trust AI, just like most did with television and the Internet; pretending that AI won't be polluted by advertising would be foolish. There's just too much money at stake.
  - maxwell 2y ago
    Hence the calls for crackdowns on speech under the guise of "safety," i.e. only the multinational-approved models are to be deemed "safe."

squarefoot 2y ago

> Not to mention the consequences of having your humanoid robot hacked remotely could be quite horrific... Hacked or not, I would be suspicious of anything closed source and connected to the Internet, especially if it has cameras, mikes, can roam around and possibly access to the local network too. This robot is insanely cool, but to me the chances that it contains code that phones home to do more than simply upgrading it are too high, like in every closed device.