Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

startupfortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 431 posts

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#191

Post by SecretDreams »

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.

Now how about a household robot that does all those things and is controlled by an Elon Musk company or by some other completely benevolent techno oligarch?

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#192

Post by glaslong »

dgellow wrote: post #139
giwook wrote: post #52

Back in December 2020, Hyundai purchased an 80% controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank for $880 million, part of a transaction that valued the robotics company at $1.1 billion. That agreement included a put option allowing SoftBank to sell its remaining stake to Hyundai at a later date. SoftBank has now exercised that option.

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

The problem is Boston Dynamics makes actual robots, which are much more limited than robots constructed from pure hype.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#193

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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.

> But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge.

Except they can't. I get it, merging advanced AI with robotics has made huge leaps in the past few years, but building a truly autonomous laundry robot is an incredibly difficult problem that still feels many years away. And I've seen all the "folding robots" over the past few years, and they are still miles away from being useful in your average home (they only "fold" if pieces are handed to them one-by-one, or the more advanced ones that can pick out clothes from a pile look like they were folded by a 3 year old).

Also, consider that all-in-one washer/dryer combos have existed for a while, but they are still a teeny percentage of washer sales because they're expensive and require more maintenance. There is a surprisingly low threshold on what people are willing to pay for labor saving devices.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#195

Post by SecretDreams »

ACCount37 wrote: post #37
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.

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…

So we want to replace a lot of cheap human labour with expensive robots?

Even if I think this has legs, where do the cheap humans go to work after? Where/what are the remaining jobs for all of this displaced labour in both white collar and blue collar worlds? It basically screams UBI. And in a UBI world, the economy looks pretty different and humanoid esque robots start to look either very altruistic or very dystopian depending on how hard the oligarchs don't want things to change.

Like, what's the end game for humans in this path we're embarking?

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#196

Post by midnightclubbed »

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…

This comment seems insane to me. Like at $50 an hour thats 30 hours a month, or 8 hoursish a week. How dirty or huge is the house? And $50 an hour is way over what most hourly degree edgucated workers earn so definitely not exploitation.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#197

Post by jbullock35 »

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.

This recent article has a few relevant notes about the uses (or lack thereof) of humanoid robots: https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2026/0612/ai-humanoid-rob....

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#198

Post by midnightclubbed »

RussianCow wrote: post #178
Forgeties79 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even in high cost of living coastal Southern California these numbers are insane unless you have a $10mil house with 10,000sqft

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#199

Post by SeriousM »

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.

At least a third arm would be helpful. I can't count how many times I've wished for a third arm!

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#200

Post by clayhacks »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #193
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.

> But a household robot that could clean, wash and fold the laundry, do the dishes, maybe even be a chauffeur... that would be huge. Except they can't. I get it, merging advanced AI with robotics has made huge leaps in the past few years, but building a truly autonomous laundry robot is an incredibly difficult problem that still feels many years away. And I've seen all the "folding robots" over the past few years, an…

Getting to a cheap household helper robot requires building the expensive one. I don’t think Boston dynamics believes any reasonable consumer would buy their atlas robot, but by building it and scaling its production in industrial use cases they will learn things that make building a cheaper one much easier. And they will have built some factories to mass produce them. It’s not something that will be in everyone’s home next year, but sooner or later the robot hardware and robot intelligence will both be cheap enough to be accessible by average people (at least in the developed world)
Post reply on HN