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Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#71

Post by IncreasePosts »

looperhacks wrote: post #46
ACCount37 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how many times this has to be restated. It's car manufacturing. Everything that could be done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor is already done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor. What remains unautomated, then? The long tail of tasks that are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity to be offloaded onto traditi…

But if these tasks are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity for a purpose-built robot, how can a general purpose robot perform them better? If anything, they should be doing worse. The only thing I can think of are tasks that are so rarely done, it's not economical to build a robot for. But I then I also don't see how another robot solves this problem.

It's not a "general purpose" robot, it is a "human replacement" robot, with similar skills and shortcomings to a human. Humans are not general purpose.

All you need to do is look at a recent video of car manufacturing process, and watch what the humans are doing.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#72

Post by ASalazarMX »

ranger_danger wrote: post #57
ACCount37 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how many times this has to be restated. It's car manufacturing. Everything that could be done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor is already done by a purpose specific robot arm bolted down to the factory floor. What remains unautomated, then? The long tail of tasks that are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity to be offloaded onto traditi…

They're just one of today's lucky ten thousand. https://xkcd.com/1053/

According to this widely cited comic strip, if you are over 30 and didn't know it, you should be ashamed.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#73

Post by ACCount37 »

j-pb wrote: post #65
looperhacks wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if these tasks are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity for a purpose-built robot, how can a general purpose robot perform them better? If anything, they should be doing worse. The only thing I can think of are tasks that are so rarely done, it's not economical to build a robot for. But I then I also don't see how another robot solves this problem.

These robots operate on completely different principles. One can lift insane weights, has insane torque, and absurd precision, and can do the same movement millions of times with virtually no deviation. You program these with an exact movement plan, just like you would programm a CnC with a tool path. They are basically cnc machines. The other one is a inacurate, unstable, dynamic system controlled by neural networks…

Pretty much. It's a total paradigm shift from how industrial robots normally work. A pre-planned motion executed carefully and precisely vs open-ended "do this thing" powered by a very large bag of opaque neural network heuristics.

A robot that has to be carefully adapted and set up for the task vs a robot that you can point at a task and have it figure out how to do it. A robot that doesn't deviate vs a robot that absorbs all kinds of deviations.

It's a bet that The Bitter Lesson will win over Moravec's Paradox, in the end.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#74

Post by sampton »

Hugsbox wrote: post #31

I don't understand why they would implement humanoid robots instead of purpose-built robots. The human form is not the most optimal way to do most tasks, especially as it relates to manufacturing. Robots don't need to look like humans, they need to be useful . Seems like putting in an awful lot of extra unnecessary work to end up with a worse result.

Why do you need software when FPGA can solve everything.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#76

Post by sottol »

I don't think this is solely tied to car manufacturing automation. Even though Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring them, I would imagine they'd be well-positioned to commercialize general-purpose robotics and not just for car manufacturing, if Tesla is anything to go by.

I do think this might be tied to South Korea's demographics, by 2040 the working-age population is projected to decline 25% from 2020 and keep declining almost linearly until leveling out around 17M around 2065, a 50% drop total in < 50 years. I would think HMG / Hyundai sees a huge business opportunity or this might be a national-level political priority but I don't know the specifics.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#77

Post by Gud »

vlovich123 wrote: post #60
looperhacks wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if these tasks are too minor, too finicky, too open-ended or too reliant on manual dexterity for a purpose-built robot, how can a general purpose robot perform them better? If anything, they should be doing worse. The only thing I can think of are tasks that are so rarely done, it's not economical to build a robot for. But I then I also don't see how another robot solves this problem.

A) the idea is that these robots do have dexterity capabilities a lot closer to human hands B) there’s a long tail of individual tasks it’s uneconomical to build purpose-built robots for each individual task. But it’s economical to have 1 robot that can do all of them.

These industrial robots have much better dexterity than any human alive.

The point is, human shape plus general purpose intelligence is an amazing combination to resolve the “long tail”.

Without the intelligence part, the body is useless.

Perhaps Boston Dynamics has that part resolved now too.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#78

Post by calf »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #41
mlmonkey wrote: post #19

I still think dumping BD was one of the biggest mistakes of Sundar's career. And that's saying something.

There's got to be something wrong at the core of BD. They've been pawned off a bunch of times, and they still don't have products out the factory line like they should. I think the tech community has been impressed by their videos, but the fact that their most sold thing is a toy dog at a luxury car price point says a lot about the company. My personal take is that one of the reasons is their posture against ML. They…

What is Gofct and does robotics industry generally just have had a slower adoption of ML because of the realtime domain requirements, I'm just curious and wondering aloud here.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#79

Post by RajT88 »

Hugsbox wrote: post #31

I don't understand why they would implement humanoid robots instead of purpose-built robots. The human form is not the most optimal way to do most tasks, especially as it relates to manufacturing. Robots don't need to look like humans, they need to be useful . Seems like putting in an awful lot of extra unnecessary work to end up with a worse result.

Robot Chicken had a fairly cynical take on this. I won't link it here.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#80

Post by jeffbee »

jansan wrote: post #14

This is a bit disappointing, isn't it? Boston Dynamics had the coolest robots and everybody was marveling how they would take over the world eventually. Turns out the market isn't gigantic and the use cases are limited, at least for now. However, let's hope they will keep on doing cool stuff under their new owner.

If it's disappointing then it's been disappointing for over 5 years, since Hyundai has owned the company for 5 years.
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