7 ms·
Eka’s robotic claw feels like we're approaching a ChatGPT moment
https://archive.is/Wro1e https://archive.is/Wro1e
- dataking 6mo agono paywall: https://archive.is/Wro1e https://archive.is/Wro1e
- kentonv 6mo agoarchive.is is malicious -- as in, uses your browser to launch DDoS attacks, and other things. Stop using it. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-archive-today-after-site-executed-ddos-and-altered-web-captures/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-a...
- haarts 6mo agoIs there an alternative?
- sanskritical 6mo agohttps://removepaywalls.com/https://www.wired.com/story/when-robots-have-their-chatgpt-moment-remember-these-pincers/ https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.wired.com/story/when-... Works for me. I use only Tor so it is actually far more accessible. Archive.is uses Google's Recaptcha, which for some reason rejects valid solutions submitted via Tor.
- chatmasta 6mo agoI’m not sure that is always a valid CAPTCHA and not one being proxied to you for solving it on behalf of some bot (presumably a crawler).
- sanskritical 6mo agoI don't know. I think people would notice if Google were being MITM'd on Tor.
- chatmasta 6mo agoYou don’t need to MITM it, this was a common pattern for a long time (not sure it still works though). There was no origin verification so you could just use a different site ID and have people respond to captchas you encountered on that site.
- cubefox 6mo ago> archive.is is malicious -- as in, uses your browser to launch DDoS attacks, and other things. I think the attack was itself a response to a doxxing attempt. Also, archive.is being a free service doesn't quite fit with claiming they are malicious. The overall picture seems still positive.
- kentonv 6mo agoI don't care what the attack is responding to, nor do I care what services are being provided. If, when I visit your site, your site causes my browser to participate in a DDoS attack without my knowledge, your site is malicious.
- cubefox 6mo agoIf you didn't care about the service you wouldn't visit their website in the first place, in which case there is no problem.
- BeetleB 6mo agoIs the person behind archive.today the same operator as archive.is?
- papercrane 6mo agoYes, they have a number of domain names, archive.is and archive.today are the most well known ones.
- ReptileMan 6mo agoJust run in the console window=null and you are good. It is valuable service until the websites get their shit together and finally fix their payments model.
- martythemaniak 6mo agoRodney Brooks has a great essay on why he's skeptical that the current humanoid hype will deliver and the central claim is that human dexterity is extremely advanced any today's humanoids lack even the sensors and data needed to start building the models needed to match human performance. https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dexterity/ https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex... I saw him post this article on his Bluesky saying that they're the first ones he's seen that are close to cracking this issue (he's an investor/adviser).
- dyauspitr 6mo agoYeah I’m going to completely disregard this because I feel like we are less than a year away from completely human feeling humanoids. This is based on nothing but obsessively watching and following humanoid progress on the internet.
- jfengel 6mo agoI obsessively avoid any kind of "technology is going thataway" content. So I haven't seen anything that looks like humanoid progress in quite some time. About the only thing that has snuck around my barrier is Musk apparently claiming he'll have it by the end of the year, which is pretty conclusive evidence that they won't have it by the end of the year. So if you're seeing anything that actually seems to merit attention, I'd love a few pointers. I could use some good news.
- ManuelKiessling 6mo agoWhat was eye-opening, or rather, sobering for me was when I read an interview with an engineer who explained how incredible difficult it is for a robot to orient itself when it is lying on the floor and wants to stand up. Yes, it can do the required motions just fine, that’s not the point. But think about yourself when you are lying on the floor: it’s really easy to determine if this is safe, if you are lying underneath something and so on. You just feel that. A robot cannot do that; all they can do is look around as good as possible and visually determine their situation.
- jfengel 6mo agoBack in the 90s, I developed a rule of thumb: if I saw it in Wired, it's because it was either already over, or it wasn't going to happen at all. I was so disappointed when I saw BetterPlace (the car with replaceable batteries) on the cover of Wired. It seemed like such a good idea. Too bad the rule of thumb meant it wouldn't work. Rules of thumb were made to be broken. Maybe this time it will be different.
- eichin 6mo agoYeah, betterplace made it from 2008 (wired) to 2013 (bankruptcy.) Nio is trying again and it looks like they hit wired in 2018, again in 2023, and are still active today...
- chrisweekly 6mo agoAnyone else here have happy memories of playing with Armatron? Circa 1984?
- manyturtles 6mo agoApparently yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43718493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43718493
- iancmceachern 6mo agoYes! The most amazing part about those things was they achieved all those axis' of motion with one or two motors.
- euroderf 6mo agoAnd the associated grinding noises were kinda scary but damn if the thing didn't hold up.
- pugworthy 6mo agoOh hell yea! Just a few weeks ago at work we got a Universal Robots UR5 from another project in-house along with a Hand-E gripper. I've never had so much fun programming and playing with a device ever. And it completely took me back to getting an Armatron 40 years ago and having so much fun - but also wishing I could somehow control it with software.
- voxadam 6mo agoI still have mine sitting on a shelf in my office.
- HardCodedBias 6mo agoThis one is different? What about unitree? What about their demo at the Spring Festival Gala? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykiuz1ZdGBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykiuz1ZdGBc That sure felt "different". No doubt hands are important, but I think you've missed a lot here Wired.
- darenr 6mo agothose were impressive but were also RC. I think an important part of robotics is not just the mechanics of humanoid motion, but the independent control of those mechanics.
- unsnap_biceps 6mo agoCan you expand on what was RC? Was the compute off device?
- mediaman 6mo agoMany of the Chinese companies are doing very impressive open-loop sim2real. They make great demonstrations. They are not great at dealing with the real world and unpredictable environments. (That's not true of all Chinese companies - some are doing really impressive work with closed loop systems in unpredictable environments. But many of the highly viewed ones with coordinated dance performances or martial arts are intended more as theater to government financial sponsors than useful function. The technically impressive performances do not look as visually impressive.)
- SpaceNoodled 6mo ago> a ChatGPT moment for the physical world. That's not a good thing, WIRED.
- gwbas1c 6mo agoI want Rosie (fictional robot from the TV show "The Jetsons") Basically, I want a robotic butler / maid that will do most of the cleanup around the house.
- davely 6mo agoHaha! Instead, you’ll get a robot that will make you art, music, and tell you stories and you get to toil away cleaning the house.
- conception 6mo ago“Sure I’ll clean up the house, Mr. J. While I’m doing, so have you seen the new shoes from crocs? They’re sponsored by the Jenners and have great new designs with all of your favorite movie characters on them! Would you like me to order you a pair?”
- baldeagle 6mo agoThe first voice accessed (in my brain) by this dialog was Harley Quinn, it took a moment for it to fall back to Rosie.
- conception 6mo ago“Hey Mr J for a low 7.99 a month I can unlock the Harley Quinn voice pack! For 39.99 we can upgrade you to unlock TikTok Rosie dance mode with special Harley Fortnite dance, a joker LCD breastplate for me and special “psycho partner” romance mode. What so you say, Mr J?”
- mitthrowaway2 6mo agoUnfortunately, the only robots available will be connected to the cloud, paid by subscription, and will gather a continuous feed of audio-video data from you and your home. And sometimes it will be teleoperated, and you might not know when. I'd rather do my own cleanup, personally.
- tuatoru 6mo agoThe robotics Turing test: change the nappies of the designer's and company owners' baby daughters or grand-daughters.
- xg15 6mo agoI'd already be fine with some decent laundry folding in general.
- ceejayoz 6mo agoI think the idea is that before they sell it to the public they should trust it with their own loved ones.
- crooked-v 6mo agoOr to put it another way, before selling it for laundry folding, make sure it won't fold the baby that was left on the wrong table.
- dmix 6mo agoThere's a video of the founder of Figure robotics trusting it enough to let it do laundry next to his kids https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/1950685253447913798 https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/1950685253447913798 The first phase is likely don't let the kids go near it since it could easily hurt a human by accident.
- xp84 6mo ago“Eka, open claw!!!!” “I’m sorry, OpenClaw is not approved for an account on your subscription tier.” suffocates from being choked by robotic claw
- SpyCoder77 6mo agoThis comment is not going unappreciated
- handfuloflight 6mo agoMasterpiece.
- sebastiennight 6mo agoExtra billing activated until further notice
- notatoad 6mo agoIt seems silly to be talking about a “ChatGPT moment” for a piece of industrial hardware that no regular person will ever have any cause to consider buying. The ChatGPT moment was when they launched a product that was generally useful to the average person. Something that isn’t a consumer product at all is very unlikely to achieve success in the consumer market.
- yakbarber 6mo agoIn less than 10 years there’s going to be millions of bipedal robots everywhere, doing all sorts of chores for us. They’re going to need hands.
- nkrisc 6mo agoThat’s an incredibly optimistic timeline.
- pedalpete 6mo agoSlowly, then all at once. Computers were nowhere for ever, then everyone had them. The internet was tiny, then everywhere. Smartphones were a teensy market, then everyone had them. GLP1s were for a small group of diabetics, now a significant portion of the population take them. This is how things playout time and time again. Does it mean the commentors 10 years is correct? No. But it also doesn't need to be incredibly optimistic. All it takes is getting the robots right, and there are multiple companies who seem very close.
- marcosdumay 6mo agoIt took almost 20 years from computers that nobody brought on electronics and photography stores to computers in everybody's desk. Robots will probably be slower, because there is way less room for optimizing their cost.
- dmix 6mo ago
- semiquaver 6mo agohttps://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- Animats 6mo agoWe'll know this works when it starts replacing Amazon pickers in quantity. Amazon has been trying to automate that for years, with many demos and contests. So far, nothing can quickly and reliably take random products out of one bin and put them in another. Amazon's robotic systems move larger containers and shelves of bins around, but do not yet pick individual items.
- dmix 6mo agoThere's a lot more money being thrown at this than in previous years. Seems to be growing beyond corporate R&D labs and university research towards startups trying to productize it. I've seen multiple articles about robotic claws. This one made the rounds previously https://www.firgelli.com/pages/humanoid-robot-actuators https://www.firgelli.com/pages/humanoid-robot-actuators
- sigmoid10 6mo ago>A humanoid robot takes roughly 5,000 steps per hour. Each step sends a shock of 2–3× body weight through the leg actuators—forces that would be fine occasionally, but become destructive when repeated thousands of times without pause. As someone who comes from the world of running and knee problems, I feel this misses the issue. Normal walking should not produce these kinds of shocks unless your gait is really jumpy or otherwise screwed up. You only start to see these forces when running and that's where technique becomes important even for humans if you want to prevent damage to your joints over long distances. But at least for walking I suppose that a fully articulated humanoid with all the degrees of freedom of human gait should be mostly a control problem, not a mechanical engineering one.
- imtringued 6mo agoThe force an impulse generates on a contact depends on the speed of deceleration. It's just F=m*a Slow deceleration leads to low forces. If you have a contact event with a hard substance, like a rigid metal for accurate kinematics, the deceleration to zero upon a contact has to happen instantly. Meaning the deceleration is incredibly high, resulting in extremely high forces for a few milliseconds. Human bodies are made out of a flexible and impact resistant material: water. When a contact event happens, your body deforms, which means that the deceleration happens over a longer time frame with less force. Not just that, your muscles also have a certain amount of flexibility in them and basically zero internal inertia. All the inertia is in the limb as a whole, whereas for a robot there is a spinning motor and gearbox that needs to slow down as well. You could solve this as a control problem by adding series elastic actuators, which means you need to change your mechanical design.
- rossdavidh 6mo agoDo they mean, the moment when everyone realizes it's not as useful as they at first thought?
- arjie 6mo agoAll my life I've loved robotics, so I was very eager to get things in the house, but my primary problem with humanoid robots is that they're very different from my Roomba-successor Dreame vacuum in a crucial way: they can fall. The Dreame can occupy the same space as my toddler, but the more industrial grade robotics machines cannot. The Unitree Sun Wukong is unbelievably impressive and I could completely imagine a world where it replaces humans in existing dangerous spaces without requiring the spaces themselves retooled. But in my house, perhaps the future will be like what these guys say and I'll have an Eka Claw on my kitchen counter and another by my washing machine, and so on. In the classic example of old-guy-gets-surprised-by-new-tech, I bet people will find a way around the problem: but the thing has to be powerful to be fast, and if it's powerful it can hurt. Who can tell. It was just prior to the pandemic when I was showing my wife talktotransformer.com and thinking about how much needs to be solved before it's useful. More fool am I HAHA!
- dmix 6mo ago> in a crucial way: they can fall. The question is do they fall and can't get back up The main issue is how heavy duty they are, because they operate on lithium batteries you can't make them too heavy otherwise it burns battery. So these humanoid robots durability will be closely aligned with innovation in lithium battery tech, or having larger and expensive robots with lots of battery.
- nealabq 6mo agoI think he meant it can fall onto his toddler, causing injury.
- GCUMstlyHarmls 6mo agoCould we not simply encase the weaker unit some kind of armored robotic shell?
- m463 6mo agoThen we would need better baby-gates. But that might lead to escalating scenarios.
- NalNezumi 6mo agoI have high respect of Tuomas and his work around SAC for RL in robotics. But this is slightly unconvincing, most because of the author >They spend thousands of computer hours practicing movements inside simulated worlds and inventing their own solutions. This is exactly what almost every other picking startups have been doing for the last couple of years. I can think of at least a dozens, some even making their custom gripper hardware. It still relies on sim2real transfer and then there's a bottleneck of things such as representing deformable objects. And that's still just scratching the surface of it. I can definitely see that they have the right team. But the claim made by this author is far removed from the actual demo he describes. I've seen same demo for years, last one was in CoRL by Google (Gemini) and even then you could see clever robotics guy (some Boston dynamics engineers) that came by and gave it a clever task it failed on.
- Joel_Mckay 6mo agoUniversal Robots ( https://www.universal-robots.com/ https://www.universal-robots.com/ ) force sensing collaborative platforms were very advanced years ago, but like most bot firms small market demand made retail consumer pricing unsustainable. >I can think of at least a dozens, some even making their custom gripper hardware. The simplest solution sometimes is more robust in practice: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/balloon-filled-ground-coffee-makes-ideal-robotic-gripper-research-shows https://news.uchicago.edu/story/balloon-filled-ground-coffee... Too many edge-case failure modes in an uncontrolled setting. Building platforms that could seriously harm people by just falling over is an inherent design risk. =3
- theteapot 6mo ago> But the claim made by this author is far removed from the actual demo he describes. I've seen same demo for years The article describes multiple demos. Are you referring to the chicken nuggets one? That sounded pretty impressive to me. Is there publicly available videos of this?
- NalNezumi 6mo agoI'm describing all of them. As for chicken nugget here's for example one (company) showing same capacity 4 years ago https://youtu.be/6SbpfN5ed38?si=srtdZCdKOdPZ_wRn https://youtu.be/6SbpfN5ed38?si=srtdZCdKOdPZ_wRn They today have similar system that can quickly sort dumplings (more sensitive than chicken nuggets) ob conveyor belt. No sim2real even needed. That haptics sensor is dirtcheap; camera based haptics sensor are today even available as open-source hardware that you can assemble for cheap. If we don't limit to company demos we can dig up demos from I think almost a decade ago, and at least ~5 years ago for company demos.
- bethekidyouwant 6mo agoCall me when it can tie a shoelace.
- serf 6mo agojust because it's an article about techie stuff doesn't mean all the photojournalism has to be color-graded like a Matrix movie. .. but it's kind of funny to read the fluff PR about saving humanity while juxtaposing it against photos that look like they may as well be screencaps from Prometheus or Black Mirror. see : two startled victims under a blue arctic sun - https://media.wired.com/photos/69f11cbf1b1015e12f65d23e/master/w_1600,c_limit/20260320-wired-eka-robotics-1198.jpg https://media.wired.com/photos/69f11cbf1b1015e12f65d23e/mast...
- NDlurker 6mo agoMount 2 of these on a Segway and I can think of several tasks that could be automated where I work.
- SpyCoder77 6mo agoIf Figure acquires Eka they are so winning the humanoid race.
- gurjeet 6mo agoA couple of minutes of video (presumably by the author): https://www.wired.com/video/watch/this-company-is-building-superhuman-robot-manipulation https://www.wired.com/video/watch/this-company-is-building-s...
- ofjcihen 6mo agoI don’t know when this ridiculous melodramatic style of writing started to pervade all of tech but it needs to go away. It’s resurrecting the pain of around 2016 when everyone presented like they were giving their own TED Talk.
- Morromist 6mo agoProblem is talking in a simple, rational way doesn't get people to frantically cram huge wads of money down your pants. Was the same back in the day men in striped suits roamed the land selling curative tonics that were just alcohol and some smelly herbs. I don't understand these frantic money people, but I do understand if you can figure out how to not be the greater fool you can make a lot of money. Seems kinda dumb this is how innovation is funded.
- vjvjvjvjghv 6mo agoI am waiting for a robot that can dust my shelves even when there are things on them. That would improve my life a lot.
- euroderf 6mo agoIMHO the big winner is gonna be the toilet/tub/shower-bot.
- svantana 6mo agoA product I think could work is a robo vacuum / drone combo. The drone will first fly around and blow dust from shelves etc, and most of it will end up on the floor. After that, the vacuum bot does its thing.
- vjvjvjvjghv 6mo agoI usually take a leaf blower. Works better than the drone to blow the dust off.
- mainmin8t 6mo ago[flagged]
- theteapot 6mo ago> Companies pay people to spend hours doing routine tasks with their hands while wearing cameras and motion-capture gloves. Dystopian. Which companies out of interest?
- HNisCIS 6mo agoI'm not sure I grasp the hype here. It's a few dynamixels screwed together. They're not even particularly good servos.
- everyone 6mo ago"a ChatGPT moment" doesnt seem very momentous. ChatGPT was surprisingly good compared to previous smaller models. But since then the LLM scene has just been insane amounts of hype and bullshit and financial skulduggery. Their actual utility is pretty niche imo.
- threefour 6mo ago“Trillions of dollars flow through the human hand,” Agrawal says. “To me, this is the biggest problem in the world to be solved.” They need to work on their messaging. "Human hands are a problem" is going to make enemies. Perhaps "relieve humans of menial chores" and "take over dangerous jobs" and "enable precision not possible with the human hand" etc.
- fluoridation 6mo agoPresumably the people they're talking to agree that that's the problem.
- teekert 6mo agoI can never not think of Howard Wolowitz anymore with such news.
- throwaway43957 6mo ago[dead]