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Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#171

Post by dh2022 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #160
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> robot maid that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, etc. would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that. Once you take maintenance of a machine with price-parity to a new car into consideration, it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things. The price needs to fall drastically below new-car territory before it’s competitive with m…

If you're paying cash/under the table, then maybe. But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. If you're not under the table, you're paying payroll taxes, probably paying for a payroll service, etc. so you're talking $2000+. At best you can maybe stay under $20k a year. When you really look at the economics of it, a robot tha…

Who spends new-car money to clean their homes? Maybe ultra high net worth individuals? I know people with 8 figures net worth who spend a fraction of that money for cleaning their homes.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#172

Post by NewJazz »

void-star wrote: post #165
criddell wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.

This was just ~10% of boston dynamics at that price. HN pro-tip: before commenting, read the articles not just the headlines.

Still only 3b valuation, or 20x less than Cursor.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#173

Post by Reason077 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #143
Animats wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. It's Softbank exiting humanoid robotics at Softbank's discretion. That's a lot different than " Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics". Hyundai bought them years ago. This is just the last 8%.

Seems like a mistake. AI in its current form has limited usefulness for most people. Not something I would pay for to use outside of work. But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that.

> ”maybe even be a chauffeur”

Cars will be able to safely drive themselves autonomously well before there is a humanoid robot capable of safely driving non-autonomous cars.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#174

Post by onraglanroad »

thegrim33 wrote: post #162
SoftTalker wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a mistake. AI in its current form has limited usefulness for most people. Not something I would pay for to use outside of work. But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that.

Well, that assumes that if you just keep throwing more data and compute at large language models you'll end up with something akin to AGI to control those robots. Which is far from guaranteed.

No, you're assuming that you need AGI to control a robot, when LLMs have already shown you don't need anything close to hold a conversation.

So why do you suddenly think you need it for controlling a body when animals do it with far less?

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#175

Post by bobthepanda »

serf wrote: post #98
fooker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long ago was your robotics experience? An Amazon warehouse or Tesla factory tour would likely change your mind. I had to do both of these in the last year and not a lot of humans around…

automotive workers unions started around 1918 and became major political players in the 30s -- a fact that i'm sure is wholly unrelated to why there are so many un-automated tasks in that industry.

It’s not really a secret that most new auto factories serving the US tend to open in places where those unions are not active, like the South or Mexico

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#176

Post by jonas21 »

criddell wrote: post #145
dgellow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels so low of a price when compared to the insane valuation people attribute to Tesla robots

Yesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.

$325M for 9.65% implies a valuation of around $3.4 billion, so it's more like 18x.

Regardless, Boston Dynamics has been burning cash for 35 years and all they have to show for it are some fancy demos and trial deployments. Eventually you have to wonder what their future prospects are.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#177

Post by ian-g »

fragmede wrote: post #168
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> robot maid that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, etc. would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that. Once you take maintenance of a machine with price-parity to a new car into consideration, it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things. The price needs to fall drastically below new-car territory before it’s competitive with m…

Humans are messy to deal with. Say you're rich enough to afford a personal chef. Unless you're an inhuman monster, their problems become your problems as well. So if your chef is out because their mother is sick and needs someone to take care of her, you pay for a nurse for your chef's mom, so that you have your chef. A robot servant is still gonna need maintenance, sure, but it's a bit easier to be callous to a robo…

I think that’s a feature. Not a bug.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#178

Post by RussianCow »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #160
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> robot maid that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, etc. would be huge. I think a lot of people would pay new-car money for something like that. Once you take maintenance of a machine with price-parity to a new car into consideration, it’s surely cost competitive to just hire a human to do all those things. The price needs to fall drastically below new-car territory before it’s competitive with m…

If you're paying cash/under the table, then maybe. But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative. If you're not under the table, you're paying payroll taxes, probably paying for a payroll service, etc. so you're talking $2000+. At best you can maybe stay under $20k a year. When you really look at the economics of it, a robot tha…

> But even then a twice a week household cleaning hire is going to cost upwards of $1500/mo unless you're being particularly exploitative.

Sorry, what? Unless you're doing a deep clean of your house twice a week or you live in a particularly HCOL area, those numbers don't add up. You shouldn't be spending more than $1k/month on household chores, and even that seems high.

Source: A client of ours runs a "personal help" service (mostly focused on household tasks like laundry, tidying, organizing, etc as opposed to deep cleaning) so I have a lot of data on this. And they're a relatively premium service compared to some of the cheap labor you can actually buy. But they also don't operate in SF or NYC, so maybe prices are drastically different there.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#179

Post by FireBeyond »

kulahan wrote: post #138
cpgxiii wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How long ago was your robotics experience? This is over the last decade at one of the largest automakers in the world. Naturally there is significant variation between individual lines and plants; some are newer and more automated, some are older and much less automated. Are some cars being built on more automated lines? Yes. But a great many, probably the vast majority, are being built with fairly low assembly* au…

“One of the largest automakers in the world” makes me think of very low-tech companies like Ford or whatever. I can’t imagine this would bring much actual experience with this new generation of robotics.

This gives me vibes of "... but they're dinosaurs" that pervades Tesla-type discussions. I've watched several extensive discussions here with some Tesla fans breathlessly announce "really cool", "futuristic" "new thinking" functionality or features for their cars that "the dinosaurs just aren't even considering"... except to their initial skepticism, disbelief, actually, the dinosaurs often do have those things (examples including "adaptive blind spot", where triggering of those alerts is highly dependent on speed differentials, so if the vehicle is more rapidly approaching you, the alert fires earlier, dynamic traffic sign recognition - my car doesn't just recognize school zones, but can see when they are active if they have flashing lights, and, based on equipment installation, will actually count down to when my intersection light will turn green, or road mapping radar, where it actually scans the road surface ahead, avoiding potholes when safe, and adjusting ride height dynamically, not just 'press a button or choose a mode to raise or lower').

Indeed, Ford. Leaving aside the "old school" six axis robots that have been around for decades, Ford absolutely uses UR10s collaborating with humans to sand the entire car body in about 30 seconds, and to fit shock absorbers. They're also used at the engine plants. They also use the Symbio platform for transmission assembly, and fully autonomous forklift robots throughout their Tennessee plant.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#180

Post by monocasa »

dehugger wrote: post #157
criddell wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I read about Cursor being sold for $60bn. Cursor being worth more than 50x Boston Dynamics seems insane.

I was trying to think about the why with Cursor, and the only thing that makes sense to me is they wanted experts in making harnesses so that they can pivot that expertise towards building harnesses intended for autonomous agents to use instead of humans. There's no world where a 60 billion IDE makes sense.

I think it's more that Space X's valuation is ridiculous, and they need acquisitions that are ridiculous to pretend that the emperor is still wearing clothes.

When cursor is selling for $60B, then grok has to really be worth several times that, right?

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