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Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

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Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#131

Post by swagasaurus-rex »

nine_k wrote: post #114
echelon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US manufacturing industry is relatively dead Here's where we need to be spending our tax money. We should be buying overseas firms and onshoring manufacture.

The legal landscape in the U.S. may be harder to navigate, labor laws more strict, and salaries necessarily higher. This all makes it hard for U.S. manufacturing to compete on production of commodities. Like many of the EU industries, viable U.S. industries tends to produce and export unique things with relatively small physical volume: complex chips, complex chemical compounds (like medicines), precision mechanics,…

Not to mention land prices mean salaries need to be higher for the workers to afford rent/mortgages, facilities more expensive, higher property taxes, even ancillary purchases are more expensive.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#132

Post by bongoman37 »

JohnWhigham wrote: post #76
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great for Hyundai. Not such a good ROI for the taxpayers who kept BD afloat with decades of DARPA funding.

Not everything DARPA does is going to be a hit. Don't forget they're responsible for virtually all of the funding that helped build the myriad technologies that comprise the Internet.

DARPA funding is actually supposed to fail at a reasonably high rate. If they succeed a lot it means they are not taking big enough bets.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#133

Post by vibrio »

whymauri wrote: post #109
vibrio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe DARPA is a national treasure, and has driven a ton of otherwise neglected innovation, but let's not overstate their contribution to Moderna. For exsmple, AstraZeneca did a deal with Moderna including a $240MM upfront to another $180MM for potential milestones six months before the DARPA money. That is all on top of a pile of venture money and other corporate deals over those few years. The value of the DARP…

>For exsmple, AstraZeneca did a deal with Moderna including a $240MM upfront to another $180MM for potential milestones six months before the DARPA money. This is called "biobucks" in the industry. There's an incentive to close big deals for management and business types in biotech, so they love to craft these large headlines to drop it on their resume and grift at another big pharma. I'd be surprised if they ever re…

I think "grift" is a bit cynical. I agree the 'biobucks' concept largely exits, but it also good deal-making. A huge upfront is 100% risk on the buyer. Paying out incrementally for accomplishments is common and good business sense risk-sharing and should happen in almost any industry.

The larger point is that Moderna was flush with cash for years before COVID, and the DARPA money wasn't that 'crazy' of an investment, or essential to Moderna's progress.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#134

Post by jcims »

sudosysgen wrote: post #127
accurrent wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I though motors aren't the main cost, rather the rest of the actuator? Also Unitree is going to make so much money selling these as well as get so much mass producing experience they'll probably be able to figure out the algorithms. Methinks the code is easier to figure out than reliable and cheap hardware.

The motor usually makes up about a third, the motor controller another third and the planetary gears and enclosure the final third.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#135

Post by echelon »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #131
nine_k wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal landscape in the U.S. may be harder to navigate, labor laws more strict, and salaries necessarily higher. This all makes it hard for U.S. manufacturing to compete on production of commodities. Like many of the EU industries, viable U.S. industries tends to produce and export unique things with relatively small physical volume: complex chips, complex chemical compounds (like medicines), precision mechanics,…

Not to mention land prices mean salaries need to be higher for the workers to afford rent/mortgages, facilities more expensive, higher property taxes, even ancillary purchases are more expensive.

What if we opened up immigration and built factories in middle America?

Provide path to citizenship and education opportunities for children of immigrants, but host all manufacturing domestically at rates comparable to overseas facilities. Beat them on opportunity and subsidize workplace safety and vacation.

Provide tax incentives or transferable/sellable credits. We could even federally purchase the land and provide no-cost ground lease.

Dollars to dollars, this would make way more sense than extending Amtrak. It'd also stop population decline and create a next generation of American consumer.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#136

Post by jrwoodruff »

newsclues wrote: post #52
nly wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google image search "car factory" and it's super obviously it's quite labour intensive. I'm not sure why an investment in robots has to be "new ground".

You are right, modern car manufacturers still use humans in assembly lines. But to see how much robots actually do nowadays, compare that to auto assembly from decades ago when robots were new, or further back when they did not exist

Yup! And really, the highly, highly automated processes in car manufacturing are in the stamping, body construction and painting phases. Almost no humans involved in those three major phases. Final Assembly is the most labor intensive, because it involves lots of fiddly little parts going into hard to reach places. Even then, it's usually robot-assisted tasks, so one person is installing a seat, where it would usually take two, or something like that.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#137

Post by ineedasername »

Judgmentality wrote: post #129
ineedasername wrote: post #123

For years they made the news with bots that seemed to have direct defense/militaristic use. Not too long ago, or at least the last time I remember them hitting my news streams, was when they demonstrated a bot capable of handling moderately complex warehouse tasks. If my reading of this sequence of events is correct, it is probably no coincidence that foreign investment came in after applications shifted from tactica…

That's not what happened. The military flat out rejected their robots for being too big, too loud, and too slow. So they pivoted to try to find a new customer.

I think my comment generally still holds: after their pivot they received more commercial interest.

But no, I wasn't aware that they had failed to keep military interest, thank you.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#138

Post by dotcommand »

jmcgough wrote: post #4

They've gone from Google -> Softbank -> Hyundai in a few years. Does anyone know where their revenue is coming from currently? For all the flashy videos they put out, you so rarely see them that I'm not sure if they're just doing well on the B2B side (warehouse automation? military contracts?), or if they've been in the red for the last decade.

Softbank has served as the intermediary of a few major tech asset transfers the past decade - Sprint->TMobile, ARM->Nvidia,BD->Hyundai. Pretty impressive stuff given the geopolitical/regulatory implications. Who knew Softbank had such clout? The more you read about Softbank, the "curiouser" it gets.

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#139

Post by prawn »

itsoktocry wrote: post #62
prawn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me think of something I hadn't considered before - whether we'll first see automated driving, but only when the vehicle is empty. e.g., you drive yourself somewhere, then the vehicle moves on to another job. If the vehicle is privately owned, it would park or drive home for your wife to use. If part of a fleet, it would just drive on to the next request. Cars in that mode could be constrained to a less dang…

> I don't want to drive to work at 20km/h, but once I'm out of the car, I don't really care how slowly it goes. The other people on the road trying to get to work probably do.

Yes, figured that went without saying. From my comment:

"Of course, it wouldn't necessarily work to combine too broadly differing speeds on the same roads."

Re: Hyundai acquires controlling stake in Boston Dynamics for $880M

#140

Post by darkerside »

smhost wrote: post #71
darkerside wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea has been a stalwart US ally for many years. While you're right that relations with NK and China have softened, and calling them challenging is probably an overestimation, the US is far from a bit player in the region. Like any democracy, you have continents of folks that want to cozy up to China, and others that trust the history of their relationships with the US and Japan.

South Korea has been less of an ally than it has been a client state of the U.S. "Ally" implies some degree of autonomy for both parties. South Korea has never really had the opportunity to act for itself, and when it has, it has received cold and rather tonedeaf responses from the U.S. (just look at the recent visit by Moon to the U.S.). That's not at all to say that the SK-US relation is inauthentic; there's defini…

Power imbalances are nothing new, and I don't see what about South Korea would make it a "client state". The presence of military bases? South Korea is absolutely an autonomous country with its own military. I don't understand your comment at all.
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