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Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

ok-robot.github.io

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Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#21

Post by ativzzz »

fishbotics wrote: post #18
dlivingston wrote: post #3

That's very cool. I have almost no experience with robotics, so excuse the silly questions: - How does it know what objects are? Does it use some sort of realtime object classifier neural net? What limitations are there here? - Does the robot know when it can't perform a request? I.e. if you ask it to move a large box or very heavy kettlebell? - How well does it do if the object is hidden or obscured? Does it go look…

Disclaimer: I'm not one of the authors, but I work in this area. You basically hit the nail on the head with these questions. This work is super cool, but you named a lot of the limitations with contemporary robot learning systems. 1. It's using an object classifier. It's described here ( https://github.com/ok-robot/ok-robot/tree/main/ok-robot-navi... ), but if I understanding it correctly basically they are using a…

> While they could use a huge model on the cloud, that would introduce a lot of latency.

Will all the recent work to make gen. AI faster (see groq for LLM & fal.ai for stable diffusion), I wonder if the latency will become low enough to make this a non-issue or at least good enough

Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#22

Post by devmor »

ativzzz wrote: post #21
fishbotics wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I'm not one of the authors, but I work in this area. You basically hit the nail on the head with these questions. This work is super cool, but you named a lot of the limitations with contemporary robot learning systems. 1. It's using an object classifier. It's described here ( https://github.com/ok-robot/ok-robot/tree/main/ok-robot-navi... ), but if I understanding it correctly basically they are using a…

> While they could use a huge model on the cloud, that would introduce a lot of latency. Will all the recent work to make gen. AI faster (see groq for LLM & fal.ai for stable diffusion), I wonder if the latency will become low enough to make this a non-issue or at least good enough

If AI/ML home systems become significantly common for consumers before the onboard technology is capable, I could see home cacheing appliances for LLMs.

Like something that sits next to your router (or more likely, routers that come stock with it).

Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#23

Post by aidenn0 »

sonofhans wrote: post #19
happytiger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to counterpoint, but just for the sake of discussion, i kind of want the opposite but for maybe similar reasons. I want flexible robots that can replace my human labor. I don’t want specialist robots that are obligate specialists. Laundry, cooking, dishes, sweeping, vacuuming, and other constantly recurring tasks are what I would love to see automated not just a “robot that sweeps” like the market has been trying…

I applaud — for real — your ideas and feelings here. I’ve had similar thoughts my whole life, growing up reading golden age science fiction. But I worry very much that tools like this will be used primarily to increase corporate profits and reduce money spent on humans, rather than remove drudgery from people’s lives and allow them to do things more aligned with their goals and natures. E.g., if we make a cleaning ro…

> Old-school science fiction often proposed that we’d be entering a new age of art and leisure, as robots and AI take over menial tasks. In fact today I think we’re seeing AI and robots — in part — taking jobs from humans, and in order to provide entertainment and economic leverage to richer humans.

It was also predicted in the mid 20th century that rising productivity would create a shorter work-week; instead we have figured out how to prevent workers from being compensated for higher productivity.

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#25

Post by ativzzz »

devmor wrote: post #22
ativzzz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While they could use a huge model on the cloud, that would introduce a lot of latency. Will all the recent work to make gen. AI faster (see groq for LLM & fal.ai for stable diffusion), I wonder if the latency will become low enough to make this a non-issue or at least good enough

If AI/ML home systems become significantly common for consumers before the onboard technology is capable, I could see home cacheing appliances for LLMs. Like something that sits next to your router (or more likely, routers that come stock with it).

Does a robot that moves things in a home need this? The challenging decisions are (off the top of my head):

1. what am i picking up? - this can be AI in the cloud as it does not need to be real time

2. how do i pick it up? - this can be AI in the cloud as it does not need to be real time - the robot can take its time picking the object up

3. after pickup, where do i put the object? localization while moving probably needs to be done locally but identifying where to put down can be done via cloud, again, no rush

4. how do put the object down? again, the robot can take its time

You can see in the video the robot pauses before performing the actions after finding the object in its POV, so real time isn't a hard req for a lot of these

Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#26

Post by syedkarim »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16
khnov wrote: post #4

It is opensource but still costs nearly 25k dollar. why is it that expensive ?

It’s a low volume product that has to support the salaries of the engineers who create and maintain the product.

I’m always surprised by how difficult it is for people to understand this.

Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#28

Post by mikeegg1 »

bozhark wrote: post #9
jamesdwilson wrote: post #7

I'd love to see this be usable as potentially a mower and or vacuum/mop with different swappable components.

Make it micro. I want mini robots cleaning dust and debris, silently and out of my way. I don’t want macro bots getting in my way

That's what Zorg though in _Fifth Element_.

Re: Show HN: OK-Robot: open, modular home robot framework for pick-and-drop anywhere

#30

Post by TaylorAlexander »

syedkarim wrote: post #26
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a low volume product that has to support the salaries of the engineers who create and maintain the product.

I’m always surprised by how difficult it is for people to understand this.

Yep. I was recently looking at building an art project that required a gas valve that can freely rotate while under pressure.

If you need one gas line, you can get a swivel for a normal shop hose reel for $15. If you need two gas lines on the same axis, the part is similar but way lower volume, so you have to go to a specialty supplier and the price is $350.

The business that makes hose reel swivels makes lots of high volume parts, has lots of competition, and needs to charge close to cost to sell them. The business that makes specialty gas swivels for industry that offers multiple gas lines in one swivel, lots of different options, and makes them higher quality needs to charge a lot more to keep their business operational.

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