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Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

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Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#71

Post by elcritch »

michaelt wrote: post #42
didip wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those problems can be solved with further research in material science, no? Combined that with very responsive but low torque servos, I think this is a solvable problem.

It's a simple matter of the number of motors you have. [1] Assume every motor has a 1% failure rate per year. A boring wheeled roomba has 3 motors. That's a 2.9% failure rate per year, and 8.6% failures over 3 years. Assume a humanoid robot has 43 motors. That gives you a 35% failure rate per year, and 73% over 3 years. That ain't good. And not only is the humanoid robot less reliable, it's also 14.3x the price - bec…

With more motors and joints also comes some degree of redundancy however. Having multiple fingers means one finger dying won't be as big of an impedement. It'd require feedback and the ability for the motion planner / AI to account for it.

Plus they'll likely be modular and able to be replaced.

IMHO, the bigger design issue for humanistic is lowering the need for mechanical precision which requires lots more metals and instead using adaptive feedback and sensors to obtain accuracy similar to how humans and animals do it. AIs should be really good at that, eventually. I think the compute will need to be about 10x what it is now though.

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#72

Post by jacobaul »

ta988 wrote: post #68
fragmede wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exciting part comes when two robots are able to do repairs on each other.

But this still has a massive cost. Replacing or repairing an actuator isn't cheap, in material and in time of unavailability.

To maybe get a little carried away with the sci-fi for a minute, why does the Actuator need to cost anything?

When the tree of costs that make up a product are traced, surely all the leaf nodes are human labour? As in, to make the actuator, I had to pay someone to assemble it and I had to buy the parts. Each part had a materials cost and a labour cost. So it goes for the factory that made the fasteners, the foundry that made the steel, the mine that extracted the ore.

Shudder to think of how to regulate resource extraction in a future where AI humanoid robots are strip mining and logging for free.

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#73

Post by ragebol »

gene-h wrote: post #59
baron816 wrote: post #18

I’m optimistic about humanoid robotics, but I’m curious about the reliability issue. Biological limbs and hands are quite miraculous when you consider that they are able to constantly interact with the world, which entails some natural wear and tear, but then constantly heal themselves.

Industrial robots at least are very reliable, MTBF is often upwards of 100,000 hours[0]. Industrial robots are optimized to be as reliable as possible because the longer they last and less often they need to be fixed, the more profitable they are. In fact, German and Japanese companies came to dominate the industrial robotics market because they focused on reliability. They developed rotary electric actuators that we…

If you E-stop an industrial robot, it stops immediately, all OK. If a humanoid were to freeze like that, it would fall over and hurt you and your stuff on the way down, when it'll damage itself.

Mechanical reliability is not the main concern IMO

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#74

Post by michaelt »

bamboozled wrote: post #58
michaelt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent, yes. For example, an industrial robot arm with 6 motors achieves much higher reliability than a consumer roomba with 3 motors. They do this with more metal parts, more precision machining, much more generous design tolerances, and suchlike. Which they can afford by charging 100x as much per unit.

Also factory robots arms are probably operating in highly sterile, dry environments? How would working in a muddy / dusty / wet environment change this?

Some are, some aren't.

For example, MIG welding robots tend to life a hard life. And if you look at photos of industrial painting robots, you'll find they're often fitted with plastic smocks.

If you look up photos online you'll only get marketing images from robot makers, where everything is shiny and brand new - I can assure you, it's not like that after they've been operating for a decade or two :)

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#75

Post by m00x »

jagger27 wrote: post #35

These are going to be war machines, make absolutely no mistake about it. On-device autonomy is the perfect foil to escape centralized authority and accountability. There’s no human behind the drone to charge for war crimes. It’s what they’ve always dreamed of. Who’s going to stop them? Who’s going to say no? The military contracts are too big to say no to, and they might not have a choice. The elimination of toil wil…

Good!

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#76

Post by m00x »

jagger27 wrote: post #43
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are going to be war machines, make absolutely no mistake about it Of course they will. Practically everything useful has a military application. I'm not sure why this is considered a hot take.

The difference between this machine and the ones that came before is that there won’t have to be a human in the loop to execute mass murder.

There's a clear task being given to the robot. If anything this will save lives. There are plenty of soldiers that love to kill for the hell of it, at least this will be easy to track down to who gave the order.

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#77

Post by david-gpu »

jacobaul wrote: post #72
ta988 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this still has a massive cost. Replacing or repairing an actuator isn't cheap, in material and in time of unavailability.

To maybe get a little carried away with the sci-fi for a minute, why does the Actuator need to cost anything? When the tree of costs that make up a product are traced, surely all the leaf nodes are human labour? As in, to make the actuator, I had to pay someone to assemble it and I had to buy the parts. Each part had a materials cost and a labour cost. So it goes for the factory that made the fasteners, the foundry t…

> When the tree of costs that make up a product are traced, surely all the leaf nodes are human labour?

What about energy, real estate and taxes?

Even at the extreme end of automation, if you want iron ore, you need to buy a mine from somebody, pay taxes on it, and power the machines to extract the minerals and transport them elsewhere for processing.

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#78

Post by MidoriGlow »

Elon Musk said in last week’s Starship Update: the very first Mars missions are planned to be flown by Optimus humanoid robots to scout and build basic infrastructure before humans arrive (full transcript + audio: https://transpocket.com/share/oUKhep6cUl3s/). If Gemini Robotics On-Device can truly adapt to new tasks with ~50–100 demos, pairing that with mass-produced Optimus bodies and Starship’s lift capacity could be powerful—offline autonomy, zero-latency control, and the ability to ship dozens of robots per launch.

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#79

Post by KoolKat23 »

quantumHazer wrote: post #56
KoolKat23 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually very close to one I'd say. It's a "visual language action" VLA model "built on the foundations of Gemini 2.0". As Gemini 2.0 has native language, audio and video support, I suspect it has been adapted to include native "action" data too, perhaps only on output fine-tuning rather than input/output at training stage (given its Gemini 2.0 foundation). Natively multimodal LLM's are basically brains.

> Natively multimodal LLM's are basically brains. Absolutely not.

Lol keep telling yourself that. It's not a human brain nor is it necessarily a very intelligent brain, but it is a brain nonetheless.

Re: Gemini Robotics On-Device brings AI to local robotic devices

#80

Post by KoolKat23 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #48
KoolKat23 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually very close to one I'd say. It's a "visual language action" VLA model "built on the foundations of Gemini 2.0". As Gemini 2.0 has native language, audio and video support, I suspect it has been adapted to include native "action" data too, perhaps only on output fine-tuning rather than input/output at training stage (given its Gemini 2.0 foundation). Natively multimodal LLM's are basically brains.

OpenVLA is basically a slightly modified, fine-tuned llama2. I found the launch/intro talk by lead author to be quite accessible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0s0v3q7mBk

In the paper at the bottom of googles page, this VLA says it is built on the foundations of Gemini 2.0 (hence my quotations). They'd be using Gemini 2.0 rather than llama.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.20020

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