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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

figure.ai

31–40 of 417 posts

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#31

What does your life around your house look like when you can shamelessly leave a mess everywhere? It almost makes the uncomfortable with the amount of laziness it enables. At least with a human maid you still feel shame leaving a mess, but a robot?

This raises a very interesting philosophical question - what do our lives look like if every single inconvenience disappears? Something tells me we would be just as miserable (or happy) as when we had those inconveniences.

On the other hand, would the removal of these inconveniences allow for the highest calling of humanity - I argue creativity - to flourish to the fullest? My gut reaction is once again that inconveniences are actually a very important resistance to creativity, like how you need gritty sand paper to create smooth wood.

You can buy an expensive robot, or maybe you can meditate and be mindful that inconveniences play an important role in the meaning of your life. I am of course speaking of the household use here - I think the debate is likely different for a business setting.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#33
post #18

Building the robot itself is hard enough - but it was never the hardest part. The thing to watch out for is: deployments. How many units are they pushing and to who. What kind of tasks can those robots accomplish well enough to warrant actually using them. How hard is it to adapt those robots to deployments. How that changes over time. The hardest problem of creating a universal robot is, and always has been, AI. If…

I think the glossy 7min trailer has it about right: The first realistic deployments will be champagne holders at parties and robots at hotel receptions. Novelty toys for the wealthy. Commoditization and Walmart-level deployments at scale are still a few gens off.

I'm willing to believe that. But we could do those "novelty deployments" with 80s tech - and we did. See: tech expos back then.

The key difference between now and then isn't smaller actuators, cheaper sensors or denser power electronics. It's the AI breakthroughs.

Doesn't need to be "at scale". Scale is a useful proxy though. But if you see two robots deployed to your average Walmart, and doing a good enough job there to cut the staff in half?

Doesn't matter that it's just two robots at a few Walmarts. Making more robots isn't that hard. The scale would inevitably follow.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#34

It's going to be wild when these things cost 30 grand, and we all start having them in our houses. Along with fusion, I think robots in the home will be the defining technology of our generation. It's been talked about and fictionalized forever, and within my lifetime I expect the economics on it to finally break through. Equal parts terror, awe, fear, when it comes to having a robot in my home.

I've skipped all the other past smart home trends, I think I'll skip this one too. I'll just do the dishes and laundry myself like I always have no biggie.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#35
post #26

The use cases in their videos are interesting, I suppose the world we live in is build for humans, so it makes sense to build a robot that is human shaped. So we don't need to buy new washing machines and redesign our house to get a robot maid. The hotel reception use case seems ridiculous though, if you get rid of a human receptionist, you lose the human element of the check in process, which people like. If you're…

Human touch for reception?

I mean standing there for 10 minutes and giving them my passport to give me a plastic card with a digital code has very little to do with human touch.

I want that human touch at a bar perhaps but not at a reception.

If your critisism is only about the reception part: There has to be a transition part and a 'let a human do it for a bit' or 'here is a complicated case please robot move aside i'm here'.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#36

What does your life around your house look like when you can shamelessly leave a mess everywhere? It almost makes the uncomfortable with the amount of laziness it enables. At least with a human maid you still feel shame leaving a mess, but a robot?

Yeah. I have a person that comes once every 2 weeks and does a cleaning. But even though this is that person's job, the house never looks so good. I don't want someone to have to clean up my mess. Vacuuming the floors is fine. But not having to carry my socks to the laundry and put my cups in the dishwasher.

If my cleaner was a robot, I'm sure I'd eventually lose that sense of embarrassment. I'm usually polite with ChatGPT but I think that's also passing...

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#37
post #32

The site uses the word Helix so frequently that I began to feel stupid for having no idea what it means. Helix is used in so many different linguistic settings that it's not clear what it is.

‘Helix, our AI system, is a generalist humanoid Vision-Language-Action model that learns and improves over time as it acquires new skills.’

Aha, now its clear ;)

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#38
post #30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swapping requires a lot more moving parts and an additional enclosure to house the battery, and the batteries need to be much more rugged, and now you need two of them. But a cable is a fair question.. you'd think it could plug itself in... Maybe that's a hint at the robots actual capabilities at this point... or, they didn't want to bet on the unpredictability of environments: what if there's something in the way of…

I believe Elon has said before re:Tesla factory that plugging in cords is one of the hardest things to automate.

I'd appreciate a link. But "we don't trust our robot to be able to locate a power outlet and plug its own charging cord in there" sure is a low confidence play.

There are practical advantages to being able to charge wirelessly, sure. But if they're doing that because of AI limitations? Bad sign.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#40

What does your life around your house look like when you can shamelessly leave a mess everywhere? It almost makes the uncomfortable with the amount of laziness it enables. At least with a human maid you still feel shame leaving a mess, but a robot?

If you believe that thankless, pointless busywork is a virtue, then surely, Sisyphus must be the most virtuous man of them all.

Funny enough, i'm 38 now and often enough thankless and 'pointless' busywork sometimes feels like a virtue.

But only for me because I have the feeling i lived out my normal environment and i'm not rich enough yet to expand so I can become busy again in a more meaningful way. Specifically having a big house/workshop to do things in my future workshop.

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