4 ms·

To be honest, the autonomous control of the robot seems like the easier part of the equation. (doing it safely in a room with guests, unguided... thats another

To be honest, the autonomous control of the robot seems like the easier part of the equation. (doing it safely in a room with guests, unguided... thats another matter). The physical limitations and packaging are a big challenge, and I dont think I saw Optimus lift anything remotely heavy.. just pull a beer tap.. a decision that probably speaks volumes about current limits of the technology. To apply my first point to reality: put an Optimus in its current state/capability, on a commercial 0-turn lawn mower, plug Optimus into the mower's power takeoff, and have someone in another country remotely pilot the mower. That right there is worth every commercial lawn service having at least one on their crew TODAY. The appeal of hot swapping an operator real time on the equipment you already own, whether it's a push lawn mower or a huge mining truck, provides enormous value right out of the gate. Especially in tasks where the Optimus can handle 90% of the task autonomously but needs to step aside or oversight for the last 10% of the job. Compare to a business model that requires purchase of all new very expensive and unique equipment.

wslh 2y ago
> To be honest, the autonomous control of the robot seems like the easier part of the equation. I agree but it is frustrating watching Elon like Michael Copperfield but thinking it is real like a 4 year old. I don't see a clear advantage of Tesla against other competitors if he will launch it in a couple of years.
- Philadelphia 2y ago
  David Copperfield is the magician’s name, if that’s who you meant
  - wslh 2y ago
    Yes, my fault! Thanks! David Copperfield, the illusionist.
jvanderbot 2y ago
I've worked in robotics for over 10 years, at state of the art labs and high quality startups. There are really only two hard problems in robotics: Perception and Funding. Perception, especially around a bunch of people, with depth, mapping, understanding traffic and gestures, all in real time etc etc will be a huge problem for these machines for a while. Funding though? I doubt that's an issue right now.
- sterlind 2y ago
  That surprises me. I thought motion planning and motor control would be harder - old memories of Asimo falling helplessly trying to climb stairs, the clunkiness of a robot aligning itself perfectly with a drawer before executing a scripted-looking action to pull the handle, the obvious recorded sequence Atlas uses to get up from a fall. I know Boston Dynamics does impressive acrobatics, but it's all legs and no arms. Are kinematics and planning solved now? I want to move into the field so I'm trying to learn.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    > Asimo falling helplessly trying to climb stairs IIRC, that wasn't a control problem but a mechanical failure of a gearmotor shaft.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Here's some closed-course manipulation with arms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuG-qNgLHws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuG-qNgLHws There are others. Controls is hard! You need investment and to solve difficult engineering problems. But we have a pretty good idea that those things are solveable and can demonstrate success b/c they are engineering challenges, not things we fundamentally don't have an approach for yet.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    How much of that is actually perception though? "Where can I put my feet safely?" "What is the orientation and 6 higher order velocities of my body?" etc. I've been told that a perfectly observable / estimable system is trivially controllable. It's one of the reasons I believe perception is upstream of everything - interaction dynamics alone are nearly impossible to just wave away with models. I don't even work in perception. But I know that everything is fine until you try to go online with perception in the loop. Then you are behind the perception team's debugging nearly all the time.
XorNot 2y ago
What stood out to me is that the speed of the movements makes it clear the autonomous balance control just isn't there. You can simulate this: try to move your upper body while standing up without changing the balance or stance of your legs and hips - unless you move slowly you can't do it, whereas if you put any force or momentum behind it you'll feel yourself straining pretty hard to stay upright. When you see the bits and pieces of behind the scenes for Boston Dynamics it's clear that's where a lot of the magic actually is (and also if you look at how say, Atlas moves) - by necessity it looks much more "natural" because to get any power or speed behind the motions the whole robot needs to actively compensate the movements (obviously having enough power behind the drive system to actually do it is also critical).
mysteria 2y ago
I would imagine latency would be an issue if companies were considering teleoperation using staff in a country with cheaper labor. For example I work with people in India and China and they regularly complain about the several hundred ms of latency they get when using their American VDIs. That off the shelf lawn mower is going to be hard to control safely with all that delay, and there's also the risk of connection drops and the like. You would need a specialized mower with collision detection/etc. to handle this, and at this point you might as well discard the robot and just have a remotely operated mower instead. However there are cases where this can work well, say in a factory handling dangerous chemicals with the teleoperator in an adjacent room. Or maybe it's doing some sort of task where delays and connectivity loss are acceptable.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Let's see, New York to Mumbai over the Earth's surface is maybe 12,500 km, assume a direct fiber optic cable where light travels noticeably slower than in a vacuum at 200,000 km per second... So a minimum of 62.5 ms one way with the best terrestrial equipment. While one can play network games at 125 ping, it relies rather heavily on tricks that only work in a virtual environment. (Back in the '90s I used to play with 300 ping, no latency compensation, uphill both ways.)
  - mysteria 2y ago
    Realistically it's in the several hundred range. I just did a ping using Vultr's Looking Glass from New Jersey to Mumbai and got around ~240ms on commercial fiber. For people working from home in India (with cable/DSL overhead + distance from the IX) connected to servers in LA I regularly see 300-400ms. Also keep in mind in a VDI or teleoperation setting there's not only network latency but additional delay from the video encoding, compression/packetization, and decoding on the other side plus a bit of buffer. Honestly I think cloud gaming is a good test case for this - and in my experience that only works well when you have fiber and have the game server in the same city as you (basically <10ms).
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  Don't get me wrong I think this guy's idea is incredibly stupid. But, have you ever operated a mower? They're not fast. A few hundred ms of latency on a mower is no problem at all.

wslh 2y ago

> To be honest, the autonomous control of the robot seems like the easier part of the equation. I agree but it is frustrating watching Elon like Michael Copperfield but thinking it is real like a 4 year old. I don't see a clear advantage of Tesla against other competitors if he will launch it in a couple of years.

Philadelphia 2y ago
David Copperfield is the magician’s name, if that’s who you meant
- wslh 2y ago
  Yes, my fault! Thanks! David Copperfield, the illusionist.

jvanderbot 2y ago

I've worked in robotics for over 10 years, at state of the art labs and high quality startups. There are really only two hard problems in robotics: Perception and Funding. Perception, especially around a bunch of people, with depth, mapping, understanding traffic and gestures, all in real time etc etc will be a huge problem for these machines for a while. Funding though? I doubt that's an issue right now.

sterlind 2y ago
That surprises me. I thought motion planning and motor control would be harder - old memories of Asimo falling helplessly trying to climb stairs, the clunkiness of a robot aligning itself perfectly with a drawer before executing a scripted-looking action to pull the handle, the obvious recorded sequence Atlas uses to get up from a fall. I know Boston Dynamics does impressive acrobatics, but it's all legs and no arms. Are kinematics and planning solved now? I want to move into the field so I'm trying to learn.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  > Asimo falling helplessly trying to climb stairs IIRC, that wasn't a control problem but a mechanical failure of a gearmotor shaft.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Here's some closed-course manipulation with arms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuG-qNgLHws https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuG-qNgLHws There are others. Controls is hard! You need investment and to solve difficult engineering problems. But we have a pretty good idea that those things are solveable and can demonstrate success b/c they are engineering challenges, not things we fundamentally don't have an approach for yet.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  How much of that is actually perception though? "Where can I put my feet safely?" "What is the orientation and 6 higher order velocities of my body?" etc. I've been told that a perfectly observable / estimable system is trivially controllable. It's one of the reasons I believe perception is upstream of everything - interaction dynamics alone are nearly impossible to just wave away with models. I don't even work in perception. But I know that everything is fine until you try to go online with perception in the loop. Then you are behind the perception team's debugging nearly all the time.

XorNot 2y ago

What stood out to me is that the speed of the movements makes it clear the autonomous balance control just isn't there. You can simulate this: try to move your upper body while standing up without changing the balance or stance of your legs and hips - unless you move slowly you can't do it, whereas if you put any force or momentum behind it you'll feel yourself straining pretty hard to stay upright. When you see the bits and pieces of behind the scenes for Boston Dynamics it's clear that's where a lot of the magic actually is (and also if you look at how say, Atlas moves) - by necessity it looks much more "natural" because to get any power or speed behind the motions the whole robot needs to actively compensate the movements (obviously having enough power behind the drive system to actually do it is also critical).

mysteria 2y ago

I would imagine latency would be an issue if companies were considering teleoperation using staff in a country with cheaper labor. For example I work with people in India and China and they regularly complain about the several hundred ms of latency they get when using their American VDIs. That off the shelf lawn mower is going to be hard to control safely with all that delay, and there's also the risk of connection drops and the like. You would need a specialized mower with collision detection/etc. to handle this, and at this point you might as well discard the robot and just have a remotely operated mower instead. However there are cases where this can work well, say in a factory handling dangerous chemicals with the teleoperator in an adjacent room. Or maybe it's doing some sort of task where delays and connectivity loss are acceptable.

Terr_ 2y ago
Let's see, New York to Mumbai over the Earth's surface is maybe 12,500 km, assume a direct fiber optic cable where light travels noticeably slower than in a vacuum at 200,000 km per second... So a minimum of 62.5 ms one way with the best terrestrial equipment. While one can play network games at 125 ping, it relies rather heavily on tricks that only work in a virtual environment. (Back in the '90s I used to play with 300 ping, no latency compensation, uphill both ways.)
- mysteria 2y ago
  Realistically it's in the several hundred range. I just did a ping using Vultr's Looking Glass from New Jersey to Mumbai and got around ~240ms on commercial fiber. For people working from home in India (with cable/DSL overhead + distance from the IX) connected to servers in LA I regularly see 300-400ms. Also keep in mind in a VDI or teleoperation setting there's not only network latency but additional delay from the video encoding, compression/packetization, and decoding on the other side plus a bit of buffer. Honestly I think cloud gaming is a good test case for this - and in my experience that only works well when you have fiber and have the game server in the same city as you (basically <10ms).
mvdtnz 2y ago
Don't get me wrong I think this guy's idea is incredibly stupid. But, have you ever operated a mower? They're not fast. A few hundred ms of latency on a mower is no problem at all.