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If you could teleport packages to my front porch, would you be willing to give that to Amazon in exchange for $25k and "exposure"? Amazon becomes the first tril

If you could teleport packages to my front porch, would you be willing to give that to Amazon in exchange for $25k and "exposure"? Amazon becomes the first trillion dollar company in history and you get your name on a press release and some snack money. I would never want any sort of exposure that told people that I'm easily duped about the value of my brain.

melling 11y ago
That's a bit of a ridiculous analogy. People are making incremental improvements. Perhaps or technology is good enough to get vc funding.
robotresearcher 11y ago
The problem is very very far from solved. Amazon is supporting students to work on problems Amazon cares about, and these events are very important for Amazon to recruit engineers. Some of these young people will go work for Amazon and some of them will start companies that Amazon will buy. I don't think they are being duped. Amazon's robotics group is the Kiva Systems startup they bought for a huge amount of money a few years ago. I was at the conference and dropped in to this event. Lots of energy and committed teams. Many/most teams did pretty badly. I heard (but couldn't confirm) that only one item was correctly picked on the first day. It's not easy.
- phlyingpenguin 11y ago
  Do they fund the research groups? Having been a grad student (EDIT: Hey, it turns out my research group has published at ICRA! But not while this has gone on.), I get why these events are interesting/important. However it seems like AMZ could do a little more than <1/8th of an engineer in prize money (not counting the cost of running the conference).
  - robotresearcher 11y ago
    I believe they did not directly fund these group's research. Just the challenge. Amazon does in-house R&D and is precious about the IP, like most companies. Academic research needs to have flexible IP deals. Most of the Amazon funding for this event went to supporting student travel and registrations, plus gear shipping. Details are probably confidential but think roughly an order of magnitude more than the cash prize. Shipping is expensive. Funding challenges is smart. Some groups are doing funded research anyway, on more-or-less related things like grasping, vision, manipulation, planning, whatever. The challenge gets teams to focus on a more complete and realistic task, thus guiding the development of their general tech in Amazon's direction. Bottom line: Amazon, the historically conservative low-margin retailer, showed up at the premier IEEE robotics research conference, brought some money and hired some grad students. Students worked hard, learned a lot. Amazon and winners got some good press. Awesome. It's interesting how the best team was way ahead of everyone else. I'd be very interested to see what Amazon can do internally.
    - marincounty 11y ago
      "Amazon, the historically conservative low-margin retailer" They are slowly raising prices. It's off topic, but I have noticed their prices are slowly rising. I saw this happen to Home Depot, and Costco. I'm not knocking Amazon, I just got too comfortable clicking away, and should have been looking around for the best price.
IanCal 11y ago
Rarely have the comments on HN made me so sad. These research groups are building useful tools and giving the results away to the world for free. If you'd invented the teleport system, it'd be so wide-rangingly amazingly useful that I hope it'd be released openly.

melling 11y ago

That's a bit of a ridiculous analogy. People are making incremental improvements. Perhaps or technology is good enough to get vc funding.

robotresearcher 11y ago

The problem is very very far from solved. Amazon is supporting students to work on problems Amazon cares about, and these events are very important for Amazon to recruit engineers. Some of these young people will go work for Amazon and some of them will start companies that Amazon will buy. I don't think they are being duped. Amazon's robotics group is the Kiva Systems startup they bought for a huge amount of money a few years ago. I was at the conference and dropped in to this event. Lots of energy and committed teams. Many/most teams did pretty badly. I heard (but couldn't confirm) that only one item was correctly picked on the first day. It's not easy.

phlyingpenguin 11y ago
Do they fund the research groups? Having been a grad student (EDIT: Hey, it turns out my research group has published at ICRA! But not while this has gone on.), I get why these events are interesting/important. However it seems like AMZ could do a little more than <1/8th of an engineer in prize money (not counting the cost of running the conference).
- robotresearcher 11y ago
  I believe they did not directly fund these group's research. Just the challenge. Amazon does in-house R&D and is precious about the IP, like most companies. Academic research needs to have flexible IP deals. Most of the Amazon funding for this event went to supporting student travel and registrations, plus gear shipping. Details are probably confidential but think roughly an order of magnitude more than the cash prize. Shipping is expensive. Funding challenges is smart. Some groups are doing funded research anyway, on more-or-less related things like grasping, vision, manipulation, planning, whatever. The challenge gets teams to focus on a more complete and realistic task, thus guiding the development of their general tech in Amazon's direction. Bottom line: Amazon, the historically conservative low-margin retailer, showed up at the premier IEEE robotics research conference, brought some money and hired some grad students. Students worked hard, learned a lot. Amazon and winners got some good press. Awesome. It's interesting how the best team was way ahead of everyone else. I'd be very interested to see what Amazon can do internally.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    "Amazon, the historically conservative low-margin retailer" They are slowly raising prices. It's off topic, but I have noticed their prices are slowly rising. I saw this happen to Home Depot, and Costco. I'm not knocking Amazon, I just got too comfortable clicking away, and should have been looking around for the best price.

IanCal 11y ago

Rarely have the comments on HN made me so sad. These research groups are building useful tools and giving the results away to the world for free. If you'd invented the teleport system, it'd be so wide-rangingly amazingly useful that I hope it'd be released openly.