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

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#131

Post by smabie » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

nacs wrote: post #84

loceng wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the Boston Dynanics videos? If Tesla can do even minor improvement, say with how they do the joints or packaging it better - deciding different constraints to use as guidelines - then it doesn't seem too far fetched; price point will be another factor.

Except Boston Dynamics is a large well-funded, dedicated operation with probably the best robotics people money can buy. Also, they've been it for years and even then their top end humanoid stuff is still super bulky compared to what Elon showed today in their concept. Also considering Tesla use all 3rd-party assembly-arms in their factories to build their cars, I'm having trouble seeing Tesla shipping anything this…

Boston robotics is valued at 1.1bn. That's nothing. Musk could easily buy them from Hyundai without even thinking about it.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#132

Post by bmitc » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

camjohnson26 wrote: post #2

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

I said this in another comment, but how do they get away with it? People are in this very thread making serious comments like Tesla has even a thread of a chance of actually doing this…

I’d love it if Boston Dynamics recreates this dance with Atlas.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#133

Post by sagondis » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:01 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…

Tesla is not without problems. Poor drive quality. After spending 40K+ for the car, I was cited for not having front number plate. I had to figure out how to tape the frame, spend more time appearing in court. I prefer not doing such things than having automatic s/w update for fine tuning fart noise.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#134

Post by Clewza313 » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

chairhairair wrote: post #67

judge2020 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

…probably?

Both are technologies we've expected to have for quite a while, yet here were are, still waiting for anything that's not just a tech demo.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#135

Post by lazysheepherd » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:01 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…

Have you even watched the announcement? Has anyone commenting here did?

He clearly said the bot v1 won't do more than carrying simple things and will be super slow and weak. It will only have very basic grasping hands, even likely with 3 fingers.

It will be what grasshopper was to Falcon 9.

And about autonomous driving, Tesla autopilot seems to be almost as good as Waymo, except with pure vision. And I'd bet a great sum Tesla will move faster forward.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#136

Post by systemvoltage » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

CommieBobDole wrote: post #106

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…

You've left out manufacturing. Building a car factory + supply chain is quite the challenge.

Tesla had the best and the brightest - I've worked with them before they were acquired by Tesla on a daily basis: https://teslagrohmannautomation.de/en/

and still had trouble scaling. Manufacturing is considered to be one of the hardest things about building cars - electric or not.

Edit: What's with the downvotes? Disagree? Comment below then.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#137

Post by bmitc » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:02 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.

It’s hard to take this comment seriously. There are oodles of tech companies with actual novel technology that actually works.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#138

Post by runawaybottle » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

CommieBobDole wrote: post #116

rococode wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel people said the same thing about him for SpaceX and Tesla back when he was just the wacky PayPal guy. Remember SpaceX's first launch was in 2006 (before the iPhone existed!) and it's only started getting really serious traction in the past 5 years. Elon's no stranger to things that don't have any "useful form" for well over a decade. I'm quite certain he's aware of the realistic timelines, and he sells a diffe…

That is a good point; Musk does sometimes announce things that essentially serve as a placeholder for "we're going to do this thing once the technology improves enough to make it feasible", and this is likely more of the same. But "useful humanoid robot" is way more forward-looking than anything else he's done this with; the closest thing would be the whole "full self-driving without LIDAR" thing, which keeps getting…

But "useful humanoid robot" is way more forward-looking than anything else he's done this with

I think flipping a giant rocket on its way back down to have it land upright sounded just as nutty as this awhile back, let alone a startup competing (successfully) against the military industrial complex.

The entire car industry is also adopting electric. No, I think Musk has enough notable wins to get a pass here.

It seems as though a lot of people (not the GP) really want to be apart of the narrative change on Musk, whatever humanity’s obsession is with building up and then destroying someone, followed with the redemption story.

He really doesn’t have to prove anything anymore in my book.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#139

Post by handmodel » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #117

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…

How much would you be willing to pay for a machine that folds laundry? At least as much as the machine that washes them, I imagine. So far the only machines that have come even remotely close to being able to fold laundry (and they aren't very good) have humanoid arms.

I could be wrong but I dont think it is reasonable that a humanoid would ever track in price with a washing machine. A washing machine only has a few moving parts while a humanoid is going to be more similar to a car in terms of complexity (though less on parts)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C76osXtpLeM

There are some machines that fold laundry. They don't seem that impressive now. But I imagine if they haven't already - laundry pick-up/delivery services will roll these out.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#140

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Aug 20, 2021, 5:03 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…

No no-no

This type of reasoning simply does not understand the market competition. Once there is a market, the goal is to win the competition, not to hit some technical bar.

Is there a better player in the industry in building humanoid robot? I rarely see any that is better than Tesla. Modern cars are essentially a robot, or the closest thing in tech stack.

Is Musk stretching himself? Of cuz, that's how new things are created...