A robot I didn't expect to build
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
I think that rather underestimates what people can and have done (cue John Henry story).
I worked in an Amazon warehouse for two different stints:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/dmnuts/53mamazon_fulfi...
and it was rather like a gym membership which I couldn't skip out on (glances at exercise equipment cluttering living space) and during which I could ponder life choices and consequences while wishing there was a soundtrack/music.
That said, this sort of thing, LLMs/AIs and data centers, and so forth feel like a perfect storm leading up to singularity (as envisioned by some optimistic science fiction authors) or something far worse, cue Marshall Brain's novella "Manna":
If you want to build a general purpose industrial robot, surely a wheeled base with arms/hands is a better starting point. Cheaper, much easier to increase payload weight, and no risk of having it fall over onto someone.
If you want to build something which can navigate general terrain, then surely a robot dog is a better solution.
90% of use cases don't need both, and once you've solved building a general purpose industrial robot I promise you won't have trouble finding funding to add legs to it.
And it’s a winner take all market as the learning curve and efficiencies of scale will drive down the cost for the most general purpose form of robot.
It may be true that it might be more efficient, but it feels similar to the farming paradigm. You can actually get more calories per acre if you have ecosystems with varying heights. However, we don’t do this because it is much more scalable to drive massive machines over flat, unimpeded land.
It might be the case that my home would be more robot-friendly if I lived in a flat warehouse that was designed so that robots could easily handle tasks. But I don’t want to live in a warehouse, and I don’t want my house to be optimized for robots. And this isn’t even to mention the long tail of existing houses that do not adhere to a robot-optimized standard. The cost of replacing or retrofitting all of them would be astronomical.
It's just that it's cheaper since we're talking about land and other physical constraints. With humanoid robots we're talking about labor. Many processes done by humans are designed to be possible by humans. As soon as you remove the ability constraints of humans, you can design more efficient processes. This is evident is all jobs pre- vs post-mechanization.
For example, do you need lights in a warehouse without people? Do you need maximum shelf height or forklift speeds for safety standards? Do you even need forklifts if the bots are stronger enough; if not, aisles can be narrowed and density increased. Etc.
Even for in-home assistance, you might be better off with multiple smaller bots tailored to different tasks. A bipedal robot designed for cleaning gutters or shoveling snow sounds like a poor design decision.
No, and they aren't just bipedal. It is for replacing humans.
The question is why legs now - when the top half of the robot still can't complete most basic tasks.
That tells us that the latter (for their intended use) is a superior design.
The height vs width form factor kills the whole idea as a general solution.
https://www.agibot.com/products/G2
https://rainbow-robotics.com/en/products/rb-y1/
https://www.aurixrobotics.com/products/astribot-s1-ai-humano...
Both build humanoids, but apart from that the companies are quite different.
I did not intend for a picture of a robot in a factory environment to make me go awwww :[
It was very sad to watch the ambitions of excited robotics researchers turn towards making what are essentially digital slaves. I am not saying that manufacturing or logistics couldn't, or even shouldn't be automated. But the true factories and distribution centers of the future will have to fundamentally rethink what productivity and coordinated work looks like, including having a greater imagination about work and employment.
Mimicking the human form inelegantly is not going to cut it, let alone reduce labor costs. I am all for the research, but the dream of replacing bin pickers with humanoid robots is cynical and hopeless.
The distinction between these and a laptop or a car is just form factor, from a "slavery" point of view.
This is like calling a child's doll a cloth slave.
I specifically used that term to point out the folly of replacing the human form as a business exercise. It get that it is a very simple business proposition - retrofit existing workspaces designed for humans around digital atomatons that mimic humans and eliminate your labor costs. Theoretically you are eliminating the messy step of systems integration. However, systems integration is a process that you simply can't get away from - you will have to figure out charging stations for these robots, issues will pop up, you will have to maintain them etc. It is not the exchange of money for labor between 2 parties - one is fundamentally a machine and it requires operations and maintenance to keep in working order.
Trying to mimic the human form then starts to undermine the very point of owning a site of business in the first place. While I think that understanding more about our bodies and replicating the motion and control of biomechanics is a very noble research aim, in egineering applications it is a very impractical one. These robots would be much better suited if they were on wheels for instance.
The distance between the pratical applications for these kinds of robots and the imagination that provides them their research and development funding is too much of a gap - it facilitated me leaving the industry to work in software. I found that there was a fundemental mis-alignment. Researchers want to explore motion, business want to solve practical problems. This platform is a compromise that does neither very well.
So the point is that the digital slave term was very intentional, and you actually grokked it pretty well. I wouldn't call a laptop a digital slave - a digital slave would be a human robot that you could program to use your computer for you while you were away from your desktop workstation. That would be a really dumb invention.
have you seen Astra's computer use harness? it's literally that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ2bqz3HPJE
we are still struggling with making a robot walk?
Real world is messy. Lowering the sim2real gap is challenging. The sim above doesn't model actuator dynamics, overheating, probably doesn't model inertia correctly, joint friction, delays, etc.
That's a disturbing sentence. Most jobs are "dull". Peolpe work not to fill their otherwise empty existence, but in order to earn money. Dullness could be solved by making the tasks less dull, or empowering employees (even if the term has been abused).
The sentence is also dishonest. Businesses want robots to save costs and increase profits, not to make their employees happier.
> Peolpe work not to fill their otherwise empty existence, but in order to earn money
Unless they are desperate, they'd still prefer less dull jobs. Desperate employees are disaster in the waiting.
> Dullness could be solved by making the tasks less dull
That's the recipe for unsafe working environments.
I think the political problems are much harder than the technical problems, fwiw. I can readily imagine ending up in a neo-feudalist dystopia.
That said, after a while, one can be surprisingly fast when picking --- on one occasion I walked up to a bin full of non-descript cardboard boxes, grabbed one, spun it in my hands for the six-sided box check and scanned it to verify it was the correct pick, and then was asked to explain how I had gotten that right by a trainer w/ a bunch of trainees--- it seemed like almost five minutes of explanation of minor differences in cardboard texture, box shape, construction and so forth to explain how it was that at first glance, that was the only correct choice.
I've always wondered if LLMs would arrive at a similar conclusion with on-going training as they are used.
Also, I wonder if (as in the case of XGO) it isn't easier to just automate the moving of crates onto the conveyor belt instead of using a robot picking them up and hauling them there.
Yes, because as the author says, they actually had to try to make a humanoid that can do something useful, whereas the Chinese humanoids are simply demo-fodder for the uninitiated.
> Also, I wonder if (as in the case of XGO) it isn't easier to just automate the moving of crates onto the conveyor belt instead of using a robot picking them up and hauling them there.
It is, and there are many other better solutions as well, but it doesn't attract the notoriety that humanoids do.