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Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

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Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#371

Post by mrweasel »

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.

There's a lot of insanity in the stock market. SpaceX is apparently worth more than the entire aviation industry[1] and Tesla is worth more than all other cars makers combined, or just about[2].

1) https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1u7aiwg/oc...

2) https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1hro33r/global...

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#372

Post by mrweasel »

monocasa wrote: post #180
dehugger wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's probably a bit of both. Space X is overvalued, and so is Cursor. It's easier for Space X to justify buying Cursor for $60B than it would be for other, because it's a rounding error compared to Space X's valuation.

I haven't tried Cursor, and I'm sure it's a perfectly good IDE, but given that JetBrains was valued at $7B in 2021 [1] $60B seems rather high.

1) https://servreality.com/news/jetbrains-startup-valued-at-7-b...,

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#373

Post by heisenbit »

quickthrowman wrote: post #245
jonas21 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

> Eventually you have to wonder what their future prospects are. Boston Dynamics is a defense contractor, their future prospects are designing and manufacturing war machines, the same thing they’ve always done. The dog robots are meant to carry stuff/support combat troops. The humanoid robots are designed to rescue injured soldiers and possibly other risky tasks. They may have plans to commercialize these robots, but…

Looking at actual combat robots in Ukraine Boston Dynamics robots are conceptually different and not necessarily in a convincing manner.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#374

Post by dmix »

moomoo11 wrote: post #364
theptip wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money! Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they…

now imagine atlas with depleted uranium armor plates, 120 5.56 rounds (99.7% accuracy), and whatever specific equipment for an individual operator role spot as a ground recon unit that works with drones in the air that create 3d plan of attack instead of sending elite human and dog operators in first, a squad of 4 atlas, 2 spots, and 4 drones is deployed the human teams move in second, close behind also do people rea…

Boston dynamics already tried selling to the military but it never really panned out as a big market because their robots were very loud. Which is why they focused on enterprise niches

> also do people really want humanoid robots at home?

Yes, they will be everywhere IMO

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#375

Post by dingdongditchme »

theptip wrote: post #206
glaslong wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money! Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they…

https://bostondynamics.com/solutions/warehouse-automation/tr... they have a few hundred of these in operation.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#376

Post by XorNot »

moomoo11 wrote: post #364
theptip wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money! Being less cynical, I do think it’s fair to say that they…

now imagine atlas with depleted uranium armor plates, 120 5.56 rounds (99.7% accuracy), and whatever specific equipment for an individual operator role spot as a ground recon unit that works with drones in the air that create 3d plan of attack instead of sending elite human and dog operators in first, a squad of 4 atlas, 2 spots, and 4 drones is deployed the human teams move in second, close behind also do people rea…

> also do people really want humanoid robots at home?

The other day I was reflecting on how currently the notion of supervising AI agents sounds like my idea of hell and I'm glad I can mostly do my job without doing it.

But conversely, I'd absolutely love having even 1 humanoid robot which could follow simple verbal directions like "hold this tape measure" or "raise your end a little higher" while working as a collaborative team around the house.

There is an absolute ton of practical jobs where another human form is needed, but one person is pretty obviously leading the activity and just needs "another pair of hands".

A pair of bots which can carry sheet rock over uneven ground around a house? Absolute game changer.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#377

Post by alkonaut »

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 wonder what the reason is to not go humanoid but super-human? Lack of training data?

For example, having 3 arms would help a lot of tasks. Or having fingers with twice the length of human fingers and 4 joints on each finger could enable them to switch a headlight bulb on a French car.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#378

Post by fooker »

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.

SoftBank’s investment plays have largely been comically wrong.

This is a good hint that robots are really about to take off.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#379

Post by XorNot »

jollyllama wrote: post #110
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…

>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? Stuff that can be done by purpose specific robot arms on wheeled platforms, which is very difficult, but will be much more feasible than a humanoid robot doing anything.

No one ever considers the physics of this situation.

You can't put a robot arm on a wheeled platform without making the platform very heavy otherwise the whole thing will topple over. This gives your entire assembly a mandatory floor space requirement that may be quite large, and severely constrains how much reach you have (see the Handle robot from BD itself).

A platform like the Segway with a self-balancing system can help with this, but since it doesn't have legs it has very little ability to keep the top of the platform steady - all it can do is accelerate around to try and accommodate wobbles, whereas a bipedal robot can simply shuffle it's legs around and keep the top of it's body stable.

It is difficult to build a control system which can do this, but once it's done it's done.

Re: Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

#380

Post by XorNot »

alkonaut wrote: post #377
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 wonder what the reason is to not go humanoid but super-human? Lack of training data? For example, having 3 arms would help a lot of tasks. Or having fingers with twice the length of human fingers and 4 joints on each finger could enable them to switch a headlight bulb on a French car.

The third arm would put a load in one direction of the robot. You can no longer balance by swinging 1 arm back, you have to swing both of them, or involve a leg motion you might not want to because the third arm has a more limited range of motion.

Hands are just hard: no one is building good hands yet because the materials science and motors isn't there to do it (see the production Atlas's with the 3 finger grippers).

And of course training data: we have a wealth of examples of how to move a bipedal platform around, but there are no 4-armed humans so you'd be figuring out the balancing from scratch (but it also has the same problem: 4 arms in physics terms is still basically 2: if you lose your balance you'll need to involve both arms to correct it).

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