Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot” • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#61

Post by zippy5 » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

CommieBobDole wrote: post #53

Musk seems to have fallen for the idea that since he's had great success in one or two areas, he can easily repeat that success in other areas, even if the difficulty is much higher and entirely different skills are required. SpaceX and Tesla are great achievements, but they are primarily stories of successfully implementing and improving existing technologies with innovative engineering and business practices (like…

He replaced his marketing department with a R&D department. It really doesn’t have to work, just keep the believers believing.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#62

Post by googlryas » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

ArlenBales wrote: post #10

I look forward to this and Hyperloop in 2060.

That will be about the same time that the train line connecting Denver to Boulder will be finished. Started in 2003, connecting 25 miles or so.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#63

Post by stingrae » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

reilly3000 wrote: post #26

This won’t be vaporware forever. Seeing the latest from Boston Dynamics makes that abundantly clear. The utility for general purpose robots is immense in difficult environments like the surface of Mars, where O2 wouldn’t be needed. I anticipate a small number of companies making the hardware, and a large, diverse workforce training, supervising, and maintaining android fleets for a variety of tasks. The legal system…

what we also see from boston dynamics is that this kind of tech takes decades to develop. It is an immensely difficult problem that Elon seems to think is easy and doable in a year.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#64

Post by Geee » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

handmodel wrote: post #43

Geee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be compatible with all human spaces and human tools. It'll need to be general purpose to keep unit costs low. This is why the human form is the best. It's not a menial home robot. It's designed to replace humans in every kind of physical labor.

This reminds me of images from the 1900s depicting the future when there were humanoid robots with lots of arms cleaning lots of dishes at once. Of course, it turns out, we did invent a machine to wash dishes but its just called a dish washing machine and is way better at it than humans with arms. I can't imagine many tasks where a humanoid will be useful. I'm sure you could say that something like house construction…

I see it like computers. First there were special-purpose machines, which evolved into programmable general purpose computers. Probably many people said that there can't be so many computing tasks that programmability is needed. I think we'll find out how these will be used.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#65

Post by autoexec » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

handmodel wrote: post #46

autoexec wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industrial use will certainly happen. Personal use not so much though. By the time robots are feasible you'd be crazy to have one in your home. Like all new tech these days robots will be leveraged against you at every opportunity. They'll be constantly recording audio and video and reporting the events and contents of your household to companies and to the state. Maybe the legal changes will happen eventually to pre…

I'm still befuddled what the industrial applications are. At some point a car factory had people moving stuff around and screwing things in and out. Now we have arm robots and conveyor belts and other machines which do not resemble humans at all but are obviously way better. We still have humans involved but I think the best way to minimize how often they are on the floor is with better specialized tools. I feel this…

I don't think all robots need to be 1:1 replicas of humans but you might be underselling versatility. One robot for every specific task might be a good idea in some places where as in others it might be better to have robots capable of performing several types of tasks giving you the freedom to assign them to different roles as needed. It cuts down on the number of robots (and back up robots) you need to keep available.

A more human form would allow for that versatility and allow for easier interaction with the world and the items within it which we've built with accommodation of our own bodies in mind.

I am generally a fan of the 'do one thing and do it well' type of philosophy though and ideally we'll have a mix of specialized machines and general purpose ones.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#66

Post by csmeder » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

It is interesting that many of the top comments are as dismissive as: “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,”

When you look at Tesla’s talent in: AI + motors + batteries + manufacturing I can’t believe how negative and dismissive the comments are. Can we not have some appreciation for what Tesla HAS achieved vs only focusing on missed ship dates?

The part that I think is going over peoples head is that for so many jobs a robot can be as error prone as FSD is currently today and still be safe to replace a human. You wouldn’t want the robot to control a fork lift but it could replace many jobs in a factory with out creating major risk.

The flaw with full self driving right now is not that it doesn’t work sometimes. Rather it needs to work 99.999999% of the time. This isn’t true for many 5 mile an hour jobs. If they can get the robot to complete a job correctly 99% of the time, at the right price that robot will be printing money for the company that owns it.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#67

Post by chairhairair » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #36

reilly3000 wrote: post #26

This won’t be vaporware forever. Seeing the latest from Boston Dynamics makes that abundantly clear. The utility for general purpose robots is immense in difficult environments like the surface of Mars, where O2 wouldn’t be needed. I anticipate a small number of companies making the hardware, and a large, diverse workforce training, supervising, and maintaining android fleets for a variety of tasks. The legal system…

A future of actual autonomous robots, a la I, Robot , is probably further away that self-driving cars.

…probably?

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#68

Post by stingrae » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

googlryas wrote: post #60

paxys wrote: post #19

Add it to the long list of Elon projects permanently in a state of releasing "next year".

The good news is that he can personally fund 100 ridiculous projects with $100,000,000 each and it would barely make a dent in his net worth.

His net-worth is in stock not cash and this is a Tesla (which lately has unlimited cash, but this will not last) project.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#69

Post by sixQuarks » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:15 AM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #52

sixQuarks wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you can say that, but name another person with a more impressive track record of actual accomplishments.

I can think of so many people who are radically more accomplished in vastly more interesting and important ways, it feels absurd to start listing because of how many I'd be leaving out by doing so.

name one then. I'm genuinely curious

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#70

Post by qzw » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:16 AM UTC

googlryas wrote: post #60

paxys wrote: post #19

Add it to the long list of Elon projects permanently in a state of releasing "next year".

The good news is that he can personally fund 100 ridiculous projects with $100,000,000 each and it would barely make a dent in his net worth.

$100M will also barely make a dent in the creation of a real autonomous humanoid robot. Even $100B might not be enough. That's how hard of a problem this is.