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Look at it this way. Useful Humanoid robots are at least as hard as useful self-driving cars. It took about 20 years to get from the DARPA Grand Challenge (can

Look at it this way. Useful Humanoid robots are at least as hard as useful self-driving cars. It took about 20 years to get from the DARPA Grand Challenge (can drive OK on an empty road) to Waymo (take one across town today.).

AndrewKemendo 1y ago
It’s actually going faster because it does not require public approval the same way that driving cars do because you’re in public space. We’re seeing a lot of robotic trials happening in private warehouses and on private test ranges at pretty rapid scale Beyond that the methods for transfer learning behavior cloning behavior authoring are very robust so that I can get joint angles directly from a human via instrumentation through vision or even commodity sensors which captured trajectories that can be immediately applied to robotic joint positions. The real challenge is actually capturing demonstration recordings from humans because it’s the hardest thing to instrument. The core task is instrumenting data capture of existing human tasks that are not done through machines, such that they can transfer to machines. This is easiest done with existing human operated robots because the instrumentation is free, so data can go directly into real2sim2real pipelines. There might seem counterintuitive but most of the actual technical bits and bites are already there it’s re-orienting the economic and logistical process of labor execution that is the major challenge. I will say though, I’m seeing less and less barriers there as time goes on. Employers really want to not have to hand human employees
- SequoiaHope 1y ago
  Municipal approval was probably only a minor part of the development time tho no? Google was operating Waymo in Mountain View for years before they expanded. The vast majority of the time cost was in development. I think technology development can be faster thanks to better AI systems like VLA models, but I do think the time to real deployment will be long. My pet issue is that the dexterity of the hands is still really poor. A human hand is incredible with what it can do. I think between the general manipulation tasks, world understanding, and more these systems are still a long ways out for widespread use, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they find niche uses near term.
b112 1y ago
I think some of the car role will port to robot role. Vision for cars already includes object detection, and the better that is, the better robot object detection gets. The same for "human ran out on road" would work for "walking in house, small human is now in front of me, stop!". I wonder how much of the one will port to the other. A house has paths aka "roads", inside and out. Places the robot may walk, and not. So path navigation is a thing too. Maybe 'getting around' is mostly solved, while of course other challenges are still there. Sort of replying to others in this part, the reason people are all hung up on humanform, is that our entire world is made for humans. Whether stairs, doors, sidewalks, doorknobs, cupboards, or even space to walk in a small kitchen... it's all made to work with human shape and size. (Yes, while there is wheelchair access mandated, that doesn't extend to the inside of every home, and all the spaces in homes, and even then everything we have is designed to be operated by fingers/arms/hands.) So if you solve humanform, the robot can go anywhere and manipulate/do anything a human can. That means no change to the environment when you get one. Right or wrong, that's why everyone is after humanform.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Tesla went into humanoid robots because they noticed what kind of thing was their AI architecture developing into. They realized just how much of what an autonomous vehicle needs to do to navigate real world roads is similar to what an advanced robot would need to do to operate in real world environments. If they could get anywhere close to solving FSD, it would be an "in" on advanced robotics too. The triumph of LLMs then made it glaringly obvious that the kind of advanced decision-making that you would need to power truly universal robots is no longer in the realm of science fiction, so a lot more companies followed.
  - Animats 1y ago
    > Tesla went into humanoid robots because they noticed what kind of thing their AI architecture was developing into. Tesla went into humanoid robots to pump the stock. Musk recently claimed that 80% of Tesla's value is in Optimus.[1] (What is it with US auto company management? Tesla did well for a while, then Musk got distracted. No new models in years, and the Cybertruck turned out to be a dud. Stellantis has cut Chrysler down to one line of mini-vans, raised prices on everything, and messed up Jeep, which killed sales. The dealers demanded the CEO be fired, which was done. GM is being GM, plugging along. The CEO of Ford seems to have a clue. He got a BYD car to drive around and has been telling everybody that Ford has to get that good and that cheap, and fast, which they are trying to do.) [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-story-of-optimus-the-humanoid-robot-at-the-heart-of-elon-musks-growth-plans-for-tesla/ss-AA1M6rRq https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-story-of-optim...
Earw0rm 1y ago
(a few specific towns, which have done various things to smooth operating conditions for Waymo.) It's useful, don't get me wrong, but when Waymo can handle Cairo and Rome, I'll consider it a solved problem.
- stackedinserter 1y ago
  Maybe cities like Cairo are problems, not the algorithms that can't drive there.
  - _diyar 1y ago
    The problem with respect to what? The end-goal of self-driving cars (and humanoid robots) is to work in the environments created for humans. Otherwise we can just put down rails across all cities and call it a tram, or design purpose-built robots for all tasks. Edit: Stated more explicitly: the human world is the way it is because of many reasons and can't always be changed naively (it's not like nobody in Cairo has thought about improving the traffic situation, or architects haven't thought about the ease of cleaning different flooring material). Robots which are general purpose with respect to their human-like capabilities must necessarily also accept a world in which humans live.
    - stackedinserter 1y ago
      The end goal of is to make them work in reasonable environments. If it works fine in 90% of cities but doesn't work in Cairo, then fuck Cairo, no driverless cars for them.
- AlotOfReading 1y ago
  What specific things do you think the "towns" of SF, LA, NYC, and Tokyo have done to smooth operating conditions for Waymo?
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Drive according to western standards. If you've never driven outside of those, then it's hard to imagine. No one follows the laws. Lanes are entirely made up, no one follows the lines on the road. If you're not agressive to the point of someone in LA about to shoot you, you won't get in. I ride Waymos and I believe they can be made to work in Rome et al, but honestly, I doubt most human drivers can drive in eg Mumbai.
modeless 1y ago
ASIMO is 25 years old. PETMAN is 16 years old and Atlas is 12.
HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago
> Humanoid robots are at least as hard as useful self-driving cars A self-driving car only has to do one thing - drive. It's also got a stable wheeled base and only a couple of degrees of freedom - got to steer and regulate it's speed. Even if the only thing you wanted the humanoid robot to do is drive your car, it'd be massively harder for it since it's got all those degrees of freedom, will be bouncing around in the drivers seat, and presumably doesn't even know how to drive. If the humanoid is more than a gimick - meant to be general purpose, then it needs an AGI brain and ability to learn for itself. It's not going to be learning in a simulator like your FSD car - it's be learning on the road like your teenage kid.

AndrewKemendo 1y ago

It’s actually going faster because it does not require public approval the same way that driving cars do because you’re in public space. We’re seeing a lot of robotic trials happening in private warehouses and on private test ranges at pretty rapid scale Beyond that the methods for transfer learning behavior cloning behavior authoring are very robust so that I can get joint angles directly from a human via instrumentation through vision or even commodity sensors which captured trajectories that can be immediately applied to robotic joint positions. The real challenge is actually capturing demonstration recordings from humans because it’s the hardest thing to instrument. The core task is instrumenting data capture of existing human tasks that are not done through machines, such that they can transfer to machines. This is easiest done with existing human operated robots because the instrumentation is free, so data can go directly into real2sim2real pipelines. There might seem counterintuitive but most of the actual technical bits and bites are already there it’s re-orienting the economic and logistical process of labor execution that is the major challenge. I will say though, I’m seeing less and less barriers there as time goes on. Employers really want to not have to hand human employees

SequoiaHope 1y ago
Municipal approval was probably only a minor part of the development time tho no? Google was operating Waymo in Mountain View for years before they expanded. The vast majority of the time cost was in development. I think technology development can be faster thanks to better AI systems like VLA models, but I do think the time to real deployment will be long. My pet issue is that the dexterity of the hands is still really poor. A human hand is incredible with what it can do. I think between the general manipulation tasks, world understanding, and more these systems are still a long ways out for widespread use, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they find niche uses near term.

b112 1y ago

I think some of the car role will port to robot role. Vision for cars already includes object detection, and the better that is, the better robot object detection gets. The same for "human ran out on road" would work for "walking in house, small human is now in front of me, stop!". I wonder how much of the one will port to the other. A house has paths aka "roads", inside and out. Places the robot may walk, and not. So path navigation is a thing too. Maybe 'getting around' is mostly solved, while of course other challenges are still there. Sort of replying to others in this part, the reason people are all hung up on humanform, is that our entire world is made for humans. Whether stairs, doors, sidewalks, doorknobs, cupboards, or even space to walk in a small kitchen... it's all made to work with human shape and size. (Yes, while there is wheelchair access mandated, that doesn't extend to the inside of every home, and all the spaces in homes, and even then everything we have is designed to be operated by fingers/arms/hands.) So if you solve humanform, the robot can go anywhere and manipulate/do anything a human can. That means no change to the environment when you get one. Right or wrong, that's why everyone is after humanform.

ACCount37 1y ago
Tesla went into humanoid robots because they noticed what kind of thing was their AI architecture developing into. They realized just how much of what an autonomous vehicle needs to do to navigate real world roads is similar to what an advanced robot would need to do to operate in real world environments. If they could get anywhere close to solving FSD, it would be an "in" on advanced robotics too. The triumph of LLMs then made it glaringly obvious that the kind of advanced decision-making that you would need to power truly universal robots is no longer in the realm of science fiction, so a lot more companies followed.
- Animats 1y ago
  > Tesla went into humanoid robots because they noticed what kind of thing their AI architecture was developing into. Tesla went into humanoid robots to pump the stock. Musk recently claimed that 80% of Tesla's value is in Optimus.[1] (What is it with US auto company management? Tesla did well for a while, then Musk got distracted. No new models in years, and the Cybertruck turned out to be a dud. Stellantis has cut Chrysler down to one line of mini-vans, raised prices on everything, and messed up Jeep, which killed sales. The dealers demanded the CEO be fired, which was done. GM is being GM, plugging along. The CEO of Ford seems to have a clue. He got a BYD car to drive around and has been telling everybody that Ford has to get that good and that cheap, and fast, which they are trying to do.) [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-story-of-optimus-the-humanoid-robot-at-the-heart-of-elon-musks-growth-plans-for-tesla/ss-AA1M6rRq https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-story-of-optim...

Earw0rm 1y ago

(a few specific towns, which have done various things to smooth operating conditions for Waymo.) It's useful, don't get me wrong, but when Waymo can handle Cairo and Rome, I'll consider it a solved problem.

stackedinserter 1y ago
Maybe cities like Cairo are problems, not the algorithms that can't drive there.
- _diyar 1y ago
  The problem with respect to what? The end-goal of self-driving cars (and humanoid robots) is to work in the environments created for humans. Otherwise we can just put down rails across all cities and call it a tram, or design purpose-built robots for all tasks. Edit: Stated more explicitly: the human world is the way it is because of many reasons and can't always be changed naively (it's not like nobody in Cairo has thought about improving the traffic situation, or architects haven't thought about the ease of cleaning different flooring material). Robots which are general purpose with respect to their human-like capabilities must necessarily also accept a world in which humans live.
  - stackedinserter 1y ago
    The end goal of is to make them work in reasonable environments. If it works fine in 90% of cities but doesn't work in Cairo, then fuck Cairo, no driverless cars for them.
AlotOfReading 1y ago
What specific things do you think the "towns" of SF, LA, NYC, and Tokyo have done to smooth operating conditions for Waymo?
- fragmede 1y ago
  Drive according to western standards. If you've never driven outside of those, then it's hard to imagine. No one follows the laws. Lanes are entirely made up, no one follows the lines on the road. If you're not agressive to the point of someone in LA about to shoot you, you won't get in. I ride Waymos and I believe they can be made to work in Rome et al, but honestly, I doubt most human drivers can drive in eg Mumbai.

modeless 1y ago

ASIMO is 25 years old. PETMAN is 16 years old and Atlas is 12.

HarHarVeryFunny 1y ago

> Humanoid robots are at least as hard as useful self-driving cars A self-driving car only has to do one thing - drive. It's also got a stable wheeled base and only a couple of degrees of freedom - got to steer and regulate it's speed. Even if the only thing you wanted the humanoid robot to do is drive your car, it'd be massively harder for it since it's got all those degrees of freedom, will be bouncing around in the drivers seat, and presumably doesn't even know how to drive. If the humanoid is more than a gimick - meant to be general purpose, then it needs an AGI brain and ability to learn for itself. It's not going to be learning in a simulator like your FSD car - it's be learning on the road like your teenage kid.