Good move. I think the next step of mobility is a mobile robot. The cars of the future should be a central hub for move people between places, but able to do a lot more through physical manipulation, instead of becoming a enlarged mobile information terminal. Thus, developing cars as robots are going to be more useful in that future. I personally will invest time in building products that are mobility robots, not car…
Riding a robot horse could be fun! Such a thing would likely have an easier time navigating complicated terrain than any vehicle with wheels.
These are one of the few times I can say that I don't care if Boston Dynamics are making money as yet. Boston Dynamics are one of the few real serious players in the robotics space worldwide doing deep R&D. Hyundai are basically paying for the BD Labs research. And they are well positioned to reap the products and techniques from the lab with their own manufacturing and engineering prowess and experience over the nex…
Great for Hyundai. Not such a good ROI for the taxpayers who kept BD afloat with decades of DARPA funding.
Normally tech companies tend to be overpriced, but $880M for 80% of Boston Dynamics (total value of $1.1 billion), doesn't that seem a little low? Other tech companies can seemingly lose millions, as long as there's an advertising or data-mining angle to the product. Because Boston Dynamics aim to actually create physical products they then get valued lower?
The research they've done is undeniably awesome, but valuations aren't based on awesomeness, they're based on ability to make money. So far, Boston Dynamics hasn't done much there. There's potential to make a lot of money, but that's far off.
1- Unitrees robot looks identical - though it looks like it lacks Lidar? 2- Is the Unitree robot so similar because of talent poaching or just a coincidence? 3-How could a person invest in a company like unitree? Thanks
The more expensive versions of the Go1 have Lidar.
Robot dogs are going to look like dogs - a body with legs. According to the about page, the CEO has been developing quadruped robots since 2013 (his masters thesis).
https://www.unitree.com/aboutus
> Take a look around the neighborhood. Maybe that’s the point? Probably not, since South Korea maintains pretty good relations with its neighbors. South Korea (as well as the rest of the world) doesn't see the U.S. anymore as a rational partner, but as something to be managed with caution. North Korea is unironically seen as a more predictable and reliable enemy than the U.S. is seen as a reliable ally. Nobody is hap…
Are you actually from South Korea to be able to comment on what the South Korean perception on their neighborhood is? Like, this is a no offense intended genuine question. Because from an outside perspective the neighborhood really looks challenging. China is growing stronger and throws muscle around a lot with diplomatic rows ensuing even over traditional ways of cabbage preparation. Relationships with Japan are cor…
As a South Korean, I can share some perspective. There has always been pro-American and anti-American atmosphere in South Korea. Recently, the scale seems to be more and more skewed towards the United States. We're definitely not in favor of North Korea, and even regarding China, more and more South Korean are seeing them as a threat rather than a partner. We don't love the US either, but when faced to choose between the US and China, most Korean would choose the US. I guess the GP was just salty about the Trump administration.
They bleed money and are not revenue positive yet. And all those re-acquisitions indicate that none of their parent company could provide a nurturing environment to enable the company to make profit. My two cents. If not military use or a very expensive niche use, e.g. for emergency services, then those things will have a pretty hard time to enter the mass-consumer market. What will probably happen is that a Chinese…
Unitree's Go1 is currently $2.7K. I commented on the HN thread below that if walking robots have any use/future - A company like Unitree could become the DJI of the industry and make Boston Dynamics even more of a niche player than it already is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569631
As someone who has worked with both Unitree and Boston Dynamics I can tell you there is a marked difference in the ability for Boston dynamic's ability to walk vs Unitree's. The ANYMal is closer to Boston Dynamic's capabilities but also at a similar price point. That being said what Unitree is lacking is good software so theres a chance that they may be able to incrementally catch up while maintaining a relatively low pricepoint. I don't think we're gonna see a DJI moment any time soon in this space purely because the other algorithms around this area are still in their infancy. Furthermore, motor prices don't seem to have fallen all that much making innovation in this space much harder than with drones.
Robots that build cars seem most likely? Not sure how many staff your average car factory has, but due to sheer product complexity it's still more than other industries like food manufacturing. Maybe we'll see vast car factories, churning out thousands of cars per day, with only a half dozen staff in years to come?
Robots already build cars, and supply of new cars is often out-stripped by demand. It's not really new ground. The limitations in car production are always the component supply chain, not the actual manufacture.
Robots indeed build cars, but not from start to finish.
Especially customisation and snapping delicate plastic trim pieces in place is still done by hand.
> it wouldn't make economical sense in have a fleet large enough to handle peak hours, but have the cars do nothing most of the day. But that’s the current state of the world. Even if you have enough cars to meet peak demand you will have an efficiency saving (at least where I live you see a lot of cars in driveways during rush hour traffic). That said I agree that for a lot of people their car is an extension of the…
> But that’s the current state of the world. True, but the difference is who's carrying the financial risk of the buying the car. Right now it's the individual consumers, who are mostly forced to do so, because better alternatives are not available. Leasing companies would never buy a fleet of cars that would sit mostly unused. Their cars needs to be on the road most of the time. This puts us back in Uber vs. taxis.…
The fleet would be sized to whatever was profitable. If people were willing to pay more at rush hour, there would be some capacity to capture that demand.
Thinking through what it costs me to own a car, I'm going to carefully do the math if they price my trip into the office at more than about $5 (it's a short drive). That's probably the bigger problem.
Normally tech companies tend to be overpriced, but $880M for 80% of Boston Dynamics (total value of $1.1 billion), doesn't that seem a little low? Other tech companies can seemingly lose millions, as long as there's an advertising or data-mining angle to the product. Because Boston Dynamics aim to actually create physical products they then get valued lower?
It's the same issue faced by other "moonshot" R&D enterprises like DeepMind. They burn tremendous amounts of cash, and as other comments have noted, the path to profit is unlikely to be a direct path through their core competency, whether that be general purpose robotics or AGI.
DeepMind's greatest commercial achievement seems to have been around optimizing energy usage in Google's datacenters, which as a standalone product would have a relatively small addressable market. The progress that BD has made is likely similar: immediately valuable to a small number of players, even if the long term winds up being something far more grand.