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

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#101

Post by elihu » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #83

csmeder wrote: post #66

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 m…

Can you describe the manual labor field where 1% failure rate is acceptable? I am struggling to think of one. I suppose it depends on the magnitude of the failure.

Well, anything that if you do incorrectly someone (or some robot) will likely spot it before the failure gets to a customer. For instance, if you have a robot that picks fruit but 1% of the time the fruit is not ripe or is worm-eaten or something, then you can have a process where the picked fruit are inspected a second time and the bad ones thrown out.

Another case where 1% failure would be acceptable is weeding. Suppose you have a bunch of robots removing invasive English ivy from a forest. Maybe once in a while they'll pull up salal or a fern or something by mistake, but that's fine because those aren't endangered species and in the absence of ivy the ecosystem will quickly recover.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#102

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:36 AM UTC

spenczar5 wrote: post #83

csmeder wrote: post #66

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 m…

Can you describe the manual labor field where 1% failure rate is acceptable? I am struggling to think of one. I suppose it depends on the magnitude of the failure.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#103

Post by himaraya » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:37 AM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #28

paxys wrote: post #19

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

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

Jim Simons? Demis Hassabis? Satoshi also ranks up there in influence.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#104

Post by grecy » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #75

csmeder wrote: post #66

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 m…

If my robot folds my laundry correctly for 99 days and on the 100th day shreds my wardrobe, I don't think that will print money (at least not for very long).

Sure, that would be bad. So it only needs to be good enough to fold correctly for 99 days, and then on the 100th day just do nothing (i.e., detect a problem and hard STOP).

Then a hard reboot will kick it back into line and we're good to go again.

Obviously that's not good enough for driving a car, but it certainly is in all the manual labor jobs I've ever had.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#105

Post by jazzyjackson » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

gamegoblin wrote: post #90

iab wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General purpose field robots like this are further away than level 5 driving, by a long margin

I think they could see use in cities for delivery or patrol type jobs. The stakes are so much lower for a 50kg robot moving at walking pace compared to a car. Consider a pizza delivery operation. You could imagine having dozens of robots delivering pizzas, and even if you had to have one or two humans driving around town getting robots out of stuck edge cases when they happened, it could still be a net gain. Consider…

Do you know how little pizza delivery guys get paid? Not a chance they get replaced by a million dollar robot this century.

And lest we forget: “HitchBOT, the hitchhiking robot, gets beheaded in Philadelphia”

https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-ph...

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#106

Post by CommieBobDole » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

csmeder wrote: post #66

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 m…

I don't dismiss Tesla's successes at all, but they are primarily repackaging and improving technologies that already exist. They didn't need to invent the lithium-ion battery, or the electric motor, or the automobile; all of those things already existed and were available to be adapted to Tesla's desired use.

Humanoid robots, however, are a much harder problem than building a mass-market-ready electric car. In order for someone to bring to market a robot that can perform general household tasks, for instance picking up dirty laundry around the house, putting it the washing machine and dryer, then folding or hanging it up, then they first need to make multiple fundamental several-order-of-magnitude breakthroughs in the fields of machine vision, robotic locomotion, energy storage, artificial general intelligence, etc.

I'm not dismissive because I don't think Tesla is full of brilliant people who can do amazing things. I'm dismissive because building a useful, mass-market humanoid robot would be an achievement of incredible magnitude that's as far outside of the current envelope of technological achievement as the moon landing would have been to the Wright brothers.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#107

Post by tablespoon » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:40 AM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #2

Reveals it with a person in a suit dancing to dubstep: https://twitter.com/TESLAcharts/status/1428540624203128837?s...

> Reveals it with a person in a suit dancing to dubstep: https://twitter.com/TESLAcharts/status/1428540624203128837?s...

In five years, Tesla bot version 1.0 will be a Tesla-brand gig-work slave wearing that silly robot suit. In ten years, they'll still be working on the robotic version 2.0, which they will be perpetually promising to release "next year."

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#108

Post by wrnr » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #79

wrnr wrote: post #18

Can it drive?

More importantly can it give a good blowjob? Sex is going to be the predominant task of humanoid robots. There's no other reason for them to look human; other form factors would be more efficient for most tasks.

Stay away from me you fucking weirdo!

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#109

Post by jazzyjackson » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

askonomm wrote: post #59

handmodel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wouldn't say that dishwasher is _better_ at washing dishes than a human. More quantity? Sure. More quality? Not based on my experience. Lots of stains just don't come out in a dishwasher.

Dishwashers were invented because the maids kept chipping the China.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#110

Post by nemothekid » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

pyinstallwoes wrote: post #24

dartharva wrote: post #22

Why humanoid? That's such an inefficient and overcomplicated structure for a "menial job" home robot. This is either a PR stunt or a luxury product.

Really? How many businesses practices are codified using anything other than human-like movement? To expect anything else is the outlier. Any human doing any job in physical labor without specialized design for non-human machinery/robotics is on notice.

>To expect anything else is the outlier. Any human doing any job in physical labor without specialized design for non-human machinery/robotics is on notice.

In fields of high automation, like cars, production lines are almost entirely automated. Where you find areas that humans are needed isn't because our fingers are uniquely adapted to any sort of problem - it's because the problem the human solves would likely need AGI for a robot to do. I don't think anyone is anywhere close to tackling AGI.