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Comment by KronisLV | Hacker News Reader

What would you use it for that other machines are unsuitable for? Carrying stuff? Helping with somewhat heavy construction tasks? The torso seems a bit too in the way of the hands to be useful for anything. I mean, it looks cool but might be kinda useless.

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It's for throwing the alien queen off the spaceship, obviously.

(It looks uncannily like the loader Ripley drives in Aliens)

Or destroying AI controlled attackers swarming from the ceiling

(It's also close to the APUs in Matrix Revolutions).

Also looks like a rudimentary Fallout power armor.

>The torso seems a bit too in the way of the hands to be useful for anything.

The wide torso/cage is what's protecting the human operator should the robot fall over.

Tyeah, the ones from Avatar look cooler, but imagine you fall on your face in it, you'd get turned into mush.

For the boss to walk around the factory and strike fear and laughter deep into the hearts of employees.

If I were a billionaire, I would construct a 10 foot robot suit that looks exactly like me and survey the peasants in that.

Leisure Management Suit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj-gisszHM0

It might fit a niche between a forklift and a crane. Pick up large things and move them, with some of the versatility of the crane and mobility of a forklift. While being too big to fit in most places, and probably having a fraction of the load capacity of either

I think the article nails it:

> Early buyers are likely theme parks, industrial operators, or deep-pocketed enthusiasts

It looks cool, and unless you have a very specific niche that will be its main feature

There's no way this thing is stable enough or heavy enough to be even remotely useful for that application. They state 500kg including operator. No outriggers, all the weight is up high... that dog don't hunt.

Not to mention that there is no way it even has enough onboard power to operate long enough to do useful work.

Next iteration: the spider robot!

TBH the 1999 visionary documentary The Wild Wild West is the foundational pedestal upon which I emplace technology writ large.

>What would you use it for that other machines are unsuitable for?

The thing I love about the tech culture in China is that they never really seem to ask themselves this question. They just do cool things because they seem cool. See their EV market for more of this. A car with a movie projector for headlights? Why not? Wish we had more of that in the US.

Meta ray bans and evtol drone taxis and waymos... we've got plenty of cool stuff in the US that's cool and question.

I disagree - teleoperated robot arms with human like kinematics makes it possible for human operators to perform relatively delicate but heavy tasks that needed heavy machinery before.

Imagine one of these things working on a powerline or stacking bricks like legos to build a house.

Teledildonics was the future that never really materialized at the wider scale. If porn cant make it work then no one (other than military for obvious reasons) will.

I never wouldve thought my post about industrial robots would serve as a setup for an elaborate yo mama joke

It's a weird and kind of ridiculous vehicle, but it'll improve and find uses with time. I can't think anything outside warehouses and entertaining, though, because I couldn't ride one of these to work.

What is the use of a Hermes bag? Carrying stuff? Did you know that people buy sneakers for thousands of dollars and don't wear them at all? What is the use of that?

People like to have fun, you already know this; but perhaps what you don't know is that the "fun" segment of the world economy is trillions of dollars big. People like to have fun a lot, having fun on its own is enough of a trigger for many people to acquire stuff.

This thing will sell like hot cakes.

It's about as useful as an F1 car if you see it as a development platform.

The only thing I have seen that bipedal and quad robots have over wheels is the ability to traverse more terrain types.

I could see some applications for it. But they are selling it as a mode of transportation?

A forklift would be more useful and you'd have like $600k+ left over

Need a few prototype before we can create the penitent engine

boost the valuation of your company.

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