171–180 of 220 posts
Why don't they have 360 vision? Why does it need to turn its head or it's torso? Maybe just to make it more humanoid?
I am surprised by how much we have stuck to the human-shaped robot, seems like an octopus or something would be better.
Well at this rate the dishes will be done sometime next week.
Whereas my current "robot", aka my dishwasher, has them done in 20 mins (or 90 mins eco setting). Specialized automation is there, proven, efficient. It can be improved, sure (easier (un)loading?), but I doubt a generalized, humanoid robot is the best way towards these improvements.
I wouldn't really care if the robot was up all night doing dishes as long as they were done in the morning. And, you know, the robot did their work quietly.
Kind of shows just how far behind Telsa is with their "robot"
The BD demos are cool and I’ve been seeing them for probably a decade or more now, but what exactly do these robots do? Besides for cool demos, where are they actually used?
It's a nice piece of machinery. Looks like they finally went all-electric and got rid of the hydraulics. The new model is much less bulky. The task it is doing is undemanding. It's just moving things from one set of large slots to another. No need for precision placement, unstructured bin-picking, or object separation. If it could pick up engine covers from the messy pile seen atop one of the racks and slot them into…
- Adam Smith
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At first, humanoids will not be used for these inflexible, old-style mass manufacturing factories. Humanoids can automate where flexibility is needed. E.g. a baker baking 5000 breads a day for a local community cannot afford the capital expenditure to automate every step in his pipeline with these ABB machines. He could afford to automate with one of these new humanoids though, as the same machine first does step 1,…
> to automate every step in his pipeline with these ABB machines. That's still too much "inside the box" thinking. That baker doesn't need "automate everything", in fact, no-one does. What "that baker" needs, is to rank work on effort, cross sectioned with "costs to automate". And then automate the top item or items only. The baker needs a machine to knead the dough. Special tools to cut the dough of twenty cookies a…
An omnitasker that can emulate a significant chunk of "all the stuff you just give up and have a human spend an hour on" is precisely what the baker (and countless others) need after hitting that threshold.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When steam and coal engines gave way to gas and electric engines in factories, it took decades before factories were reconfigured to adjust to the smaller sized engines that didn't require one major axle running through the entire factory. As a consequence the first gas engines were huge - over time they shrunk. I bet the same will happen with robotics, where humanoid will be the primary form factor at first for gene…
These efficiënt forms are there. In use. Proven. Have been for decades. Cranes, carts, lorries, conveyor belts (with vision), my robot vacuum cleaner, my bread baking machine, a car wash, a dishwasher, the ticket gates at the underground, the coffee machine at our office and so on.
There is value to the human form, our versatility and adaptability.
A machine that replicated a human would have incredible economic value (though not for the people whose jobs it replaced). A machine that exceeded a human in versatility, e.g. by having more arms, even more so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whereas my current "robot", aka my dishwasher, has them done in 20 mins (or 90 mins eco setting). Specialized automation is there, proven, efficient. It can be improved, sure (easier (un)loading?), but I doubt a generalized, humanoid robot is the best way towards these improvements.
Pretty sure my dishwasher takes a couple hours (maybe always on eco?). I could hand-wash them in 15 minutes though — I would just rather not. I wouldn't really care if the robot was up all night doing dishes as long as they were done in the morning. And, you know, the robot did their work quietly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unitree is catching up to Boston Dynamics in locomotion, but has not surpassed them yet I think. Unitree's real advantage is the much lower cost of their hardware and their ability to mass produce their robots. But IMO manipulation is harder than locomotion, both in hardware and software, and neither company is convincingly ahead there. I think the uncut laundry demo from Physical Intelligence a few days ago is bette…
Why do robot companies insist on beating up their robots?
It's a nice piece of machinery. Looks like they finally went all-electric and got rid of the hydraulics. The new model is much less bulky. The task it is doing is undemanding. It's just moving things from one set of large slots to another. No need for precision placement, unstructured bin-picking, or object separation. If it could pick up engine covers from the messy pile seen atop one of the racks and slot them into…
Because of actuator density- a humanoid has a high number of actuators. Also power density, and they did a lot of work in molding the hydraulic actuators directly into the arms and legs to make them compact. The bulk is all in the backpack pumps, power pack, etc.
So this move to all-electric represents real growth in Boston Dynamics being able to make compact motors that meet their needs of performance.
I am betting this new robot is less capable of the explosive dynamics of the old one. I am not expecting dance performances and backflips from this one right away. But I am expecting them to work toward that kind of performance.
It's a nice piece of machinery. Looks like they finally went all-electric and got rid of the hydraulics. The new model is much less bulky. The task it is doing is undemanding. It's just moving things from one set of large slots to another. No need for precision placement, unstructured bin-picking, or object separation. If it could pick up engine covers from the messy pile seen atop one of the racks and slot them into…
> The task it is doing is undemanding. Have you noticed how in second 13 it rotates the lower body clockwise while the upper body rotates counter-clockwise in order to optimize the movements to archive the goal? All (bipedal/quadrupedal) robots I've seen behave either like an animal or a human, but this one is something else. Imagine the inverse kinematics required to perform such a movement, and how precise even the…
Could be a fancy optimization of course, but could as well be a side effect of a decoupled planning of the locomotion part and the upper body pick and place.
Algo could be: plan a path for a lower body motion from pose (4dof) A to pose B. And given pose B plan the upper body place of the tray in the target. If no constraints are broken plan both in parallel so it looks like one smooth behavior.
Obviously, I don’t know :)