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New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

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Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#31
post #6

How do they plan on dealing with vandalism and theft? Those robots look pretty defenseless.

I wouldn't be surprised if communists and Antifa would destroy them on purpose in the name of fighting for "working class" and jobs. And if not them, then other thieves/vandals do the job.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#33
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how many "AI-powered" startups are actually powered by BPOs located in Columbia/Philippines/India/etc.

Reminds me of x.ai. Didn't it turn out that the "AI assistant" is actually made of humans?

No! :) *we do continue to label data though and will probably have a large "AI Trainer" staff in place for any NEW skill we want Amy to have in the future.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#34

This reminds me of hearing Reed Hastings of netflix talking about starting the DVD mail-rental business as preparation for when streaming became technologically viable. They knew that internet delivery would eventually work, but to be the big first mover they needed to establish a customer base. As soon as broadband reached a level where streaming video is viable, they convert the customer base over to it. Likewise,…

So compete at a high burnrate in an extremely crowded space with a huge workforce faking your technology until you can pivot your product and market down the road?

I get what you're saying as a general heuristic; but this is not that in my opinion.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of x.ai. Didn't it turn out that the "AI assistant" is actually made of humans?

No! :) *we do continue to label data though and will probably have a large "AI Trainer" staff in place for any NEW skill we want Amy to have in the future.

Sorry :).

This was the story I was referring to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11520681.

Was it false, or did things change in the past year?

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely recommend uBlock Origin - https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

I recently switched to JavaScript by whitelist only and now I won't go back. I always thought disabling JavaScript was just for tinfoil-hat luddites, but now I realize how often JavaScript detracts from the experience and how little it enhances it. Speed-wise, it reminds me of going from 56k to DSL back in the day.

Are there any browser addons which selectively block Javascript? Something a little more curated than NoScript would be good.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#37
post #4

I hate to be negative; so I won't. I can't see this being scaleable, profitable or useful at a meaningfully higher level than people.

And imagine if it did scale. What an eyesore that would be. Would we count them in the census?

What if they were drones though? Would that be more palatable to the eyes?

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#38
Hi, Im the cofounder of kiwicampus.com, thanks a lot for the feedback, we are actually using monocular computer vision to navigate in the sidewalks and in some robots LIDARS for collision avoidance, we are also testing with SLAM detection in the smartphone we have in our kiwibots. We have made a great progress in automation and self driving, also in network software for take control of the robot if we need it (last 3 minutes of every delivery we control the car to make sure we deliver in the correct address, also for crossing streets and crowded sidewalks. Still in a semiautonomous phase but really excited about the future, let me know if you are interested in know more about us.

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#39
post #14

I hate to be so negative but this looks terrible. I remember seeing that other food delivery within San Francisco that uses a robot but at least it looks like there was real engineering put into it. https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/12/marble-and-yelp-eat24-star... This is just a glorified rc car with a basket on top being controlled by outsourced workers. Not even a MVP prototype imo.

We are actually using monocular computer vision to navigate in the sidewalks and in some robots LIDARS for collision avoidance, we are also testing with SLAM detection in the smartphone we have in our kiwibots. We have made a great progress in automation and self driving, also in network software for take control of the robot if we need it (last 3 minutes of every delivery we control the car to make sure we deliver in the correct address, also for crossing streets and crowded sidewalks. Still in a semiautonomous phase but really excited about the future, any feedback to improve our product?

Re: New food delivery service Kiwi brings robots to UC Berkeley campus

#40
post #24

Website: http://www.kiwicampus.com/home From https://angel.co/kiwicampus : "Current self driving algorithms require huge amounts of data to be trained with, so our robots are initially being controlled from Colombia." (not affiliated, I just found these DIY-like robots very fun)

" so our robots are initially being controlled from Colombia." There was a sci-fi movie about that[0]. In short a wall gets built between the US and Mexico, and telerobots controlled by workers in Mexico start being used for the jobs normally performed by migrant workers. That being said there are some interesting legal issues with telerobots. Currently, most laws we have presume the person performing the crime is ph…

Sci-Fi Short about telerobots controlled by gamers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXX0TRtg5Vk
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