Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

electrek.co

171–180 of 416 posts

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#171

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…

I would like to see him run a hospital and maybe put a dent into the problem of the $200 aspirin.

The underlying cause of the problem of the "$200 asprin" isn't a fundamental problem of healthcare, it's a fundamental problem of the wacky health system of the USA which is—I assure you—the envy of no other first world country.

While it is true that the US health system excels along certain narrow metrics (it's particularly well optimised for providing cutting edge care to the affluent) it is poorly optimised for serving the needs of the median citizen. And it's a dumpster fire when it comes to distribution and affordability.

The solution exists, and that's to stop doing the broken thing.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#172

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…

We said the same thing about movement in robots -- and today we have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

Just ridiculous how far things have come, it seems fake it's so far along.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#173

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

This tops the Cybertruck introduction where they broke the bulletproof glass. It's hard to imagine this is not a jump-the-shark moment for Tesla.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had to make a bet on when it was possible, I'd say 25 years. Maybe 10 if Tesla goes all-in on robots and spends tens of billions on it, Manhattan project style. I have a decade of experience in robotics (including both humanoid robots and self-driving cars) and I think this is optimistic. Robotics is a wonderful field if you like to work on hard research problems. It is a terrible field if you're trying to inv…

I think industrial robotics is a well established and profitable field.

Industrial robotics focuses on single task, highly specialised machines that have few constraints on form, size etc. This is not that.

What tesla are conceptually pitching here (let's ignore that they'll deliver something that's pretty useless by comparison to what they're hoping you're assuming they mean) is a not-in-our-lifetimes leap in robotics in multiple ways

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#175
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.

Picking oranges off a tree.

Cleaning up trash in a parkland.

Folding clothes.

Searching a forest for survivors.

Unclogging a sewerage pipe.

For many menial tasks, a 1% failure rate (or indeed any failure rate higher than a human) is generally not a problem so long as the economics stack up and safety isn't a concern.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#176

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

Other aspirational goals he has set include a colony of a million people on Mars and a neural lace. I think a humanoid robot is less ambitious than either of these two.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#177
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t “no wireless, less space than a Nomad,” though. This is like RCA announcing an iPod in 1961, reasoning that because they already make magnetic tape and portable electronics, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be able to fit 1000 songs in your pocket.

Fair point, however, I look forward to coming back to this comment in 5 years (1966). Maybe I’ll be eating humble pie, however, my guess is that by then it will be out of prototype phase and in use.

In 40 years, 2001

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#178

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…

> Self-driving is one of those things that's relatively easy to get 95% of the way to, but that last 5% is nearly impossible.

But there are niches for which 95% is just fine. E.g. autonomous trucks driving through the Nevada desert with manual remote-control during the first and last mile. (Like handover from plane autopilot to ATC-driven landing, basically.)

> in any useful form

It doesn't have to be useful; it just has to be better than whatever Toyota is selling, to win long-term robotics development contracts. (That probably won't be contracts for humanoid robots, mind you. The humanoid robot is likely a halo product to sell e.g. robot arms.)

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#179
Just looking at one angle here, among other things, this puts other car companies on notice that if they don’t support full self driving, Tesla will supply bots that can do it. Not this year, not next year, maybe not even in five years, but eventually.

That puts the pressure on for the other auto companies to either spend R&D money to compete, or prepare a budget for licensing from someone (not necessarily Tesla) but either way it’s dragging the industry forward.

It also can be a valuable product in its own right which will only get more in demand as human drivers start to be forbidden or heavily taxed on some roads for safety reasons.

That’s not even mentioning the non driving applications. But just for driving there is a lot of legacy hardware that will still be in use for years, and a humanoid form is what they were designed for.

BTW before anyone thinks they will point out some irony, Elon has stated he’s not against the use of petroleum products in many cases. Anyway legacy vehicles are a reality. And they will need safe drivers.

I did say there are other uses. This post just focuses on one use case, I do realize.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#180

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…

Or, he likes press releases to distract from other ahem, issues that Tesla has. Like the current court cases about their "self driving" technology. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/14/tesla-autopilot-self-driving...

was my initial thought, from the comments in the video, it's clear they didn't think deep enough about Robot application. So I guess the main goal is to make politicians be busy thinking of universal income instead of BS like "naming of the autopilot". By the time government will decide something in this trials autopilot will be 4-5 generation different software they trying to evaluate. Aren't that first signs of singularity?
Post reply on HN