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Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

understandingai.org

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Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#41

Post by marcosdumay »

tootie wrote: post #9

I have a few thoughts. Number one is that humanoid robots are probably a dead end. It's movie stuff. It makes me think of Henry Ford saying customers want "faster horses". It is the fault of evolution that we don't have wheels but we don't have to repeat that mistake. Secondly I think robot butlers are a bridge too far. The article explains pretty well why the spatial reasoning is problematic but so would things like…

> Number one is that humanoid robots are probably a dead end.

Our shape is very flexible.

It's probably not the end-all most flexible format out there, but whatever format we end up with will probably be more similar to a human than to a 6df robotic arm mounted on a car. (It will probably have legs, for a start, not wheels.)

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#42

Post by theamk »

relevant_stats wrote: post #27
seydor wrote: post #18

I dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again. Factories that have already heavily robotized their production, employ a minimal amount of humans to do niche work. It's going to be immensely difficult to replace that niche work with any kind of robot, let alone humanoids. These humanoid robots (or generally limbed robots) could be useful for the two sectors that…

> I dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again. Our entire world is heavily adjusted towards bipedal humanoid creatures. Having a moving humanoid tool who could replace some of our physical tasks without the need to build additional infrastructure in proximity around it is BIG. Noting your reservation about fragility, even the possibility of cheap construction…

Is it?

Bipedal is the easiest one: very few environments require 2 feet in particular. Sure, ability to cross uneven terrain is needed, but this can be done with 3, 4 or 8 feet. But in a lot of places, including most of the retail and a lot of factories, all one needs is an ability to move on flat surface and cross door thresholds (thanks to ADA, no stair climbing required). And than can work just fine with large wheels, or tracks. On the other hand with something like construction, you probably want many appendages with some sort of climbing attachments?

The "top" part of humanoid is more integrated into the world: our human infrastructure is really built for beings just under 2m high, and a many of actions need at least 2 human-like hands, with at least the same reach as humans (~3/8 body height long, attached at ~7/8 body height). But this is just a minimum - a lot of things would work better with 3 hands, or maybe with dissimilar hands - one "strong", one "fine manipulation" and one "misc"? I certainly wished to have a 3rd hand when building something...

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#43

Post by keeda »

Substantial displacement of human labor is still very far away, yes, but I'd say it's not due to the lack of dexterity and precision. GenAI is making such rapid advancements that the robotic control systems part may soon be "solved." The real blocker is supply chain constraints for physical parts -- specifically, rare earth elements.

Those are essential for the powerful yet accurate electromagnetic motors that make these robots feasible. Oh, and batteries too. However, their supply is severely limited, even without China flexing its strangehold on the market. Last I checked there are no real alternatives or solutions on the horizon for the raw material shortage. Some estimates suggest the global supply currently is a small fraction (like 2% or even lower?) of that needed for mass deployment of the type Elon hallucinates about to pump TSLA stock.

The company that solves this or otherwise figures out a way to mass produce dexterous robots is going to be the next trillion dollar company.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#44

Post by tamimio »

Humanoid robots are the new qugv (quadruple UGV aka dogs), they are pretty much useless in anything functional but the show off and wow factor. I remember around covid times we got one of these qugv and everyone in the team wanted to be the one working on it, except me, I kept my focus on UAVs and even told them that UAVs are and will be the only robots that has actual use cases (not to include cobotics). That being said, it’s probably a good thing that they only remain as a showoff only, I mean, look at drones, the moment they proved to be functional, humans immediately used it as killing machines rather than something useful. Before that, I remember it was really hard to get a million dollar budget for any UAV project, no one cared about drone delivery, drones that can deliver health equipment to save lives when seconds matters, but as soon as they are used for killing or surveillance you see billions pouring in! So yeah, let humanoid robots be only for shows and hopefully they never become functional or “catch up” any time soon.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#45

Post by Manglo »

seydor wrote: post #18

I dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again. Factories that have already heavily robotized their production, employ a minimal amount of humans to do niche work. It's going to be immensely difficult to replace that niche work with any kind of robot, let alone humanoids. These humanoid robots (or generally limbed robots) could be useful for the two sectors that…

A LOT of real humans still assemble machines across the globe. Probably also what you have at home.

There are plenty of YouTube videos available were you can see how many hands a rice cooker is going through.

And we talk about a real robot costing 5 figures being able to shown what it should do and then it just does it 24/7.

It will fill the gap of no automatisation to full automatisation.

Besides that, in theory it would also allow the remote-gig economy: A robot at home, a helper sitting somewere else.

Take some random problem: You want some automatistaion for painting a wall. What do you do? You buy the full automat from a special company which comes with its own support contract, and fllow up costs.

Now you buy one 5 figure robot, explain to them that they should paint the room and they will do it. Not today, but do you think this will take 50 years and is a non solvable problem? I don't.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#46

Post by runtime_terror »

Manglo wrote: post #45
seydor wrote: post #18

I dont get the investment in humanoids beyond trying to create some kind of stock market bubble again. Factories that have already heavily robotized their production, employ a minimal amount of humans to do niche work. It's going to be immensely difficult to replace that niche work with any kind of robot, let alone humanoids. These humanoid robots (or generally limbed robots) could be useful for the two sectors that…

A LOT of real humans still assemble machines across the globe. Probably also what you have at home. There are plenty of YouTube videos available were you can see how many hands a rice cooker is going through. And we talk about a real robot costing 5 figures being able to shown what it should do and then it just does it 24/7. It will fill the gap of no automatisation to full automatisation. Besides that, in theory it…

It works 24/7 till it breaks down or gets stuck in a situation it was trained for then the company that purchased it will likely have to wait at least days if not weeks for a repair tech to come down and fix it or adjust its training data.

I feel so many people bullish on these robots has never worked on physical things so they have this rosy picture of the smooth sailing once they get their humanoid robots delivered that it's going to just work forever without effort or input.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#47

Post by hobofan »

I think the article takes a completely wrong lense for viewing the Humanoid Robotic Games, and general progress that is being made right now (though admittedly, many robot companies make it challenging with their marketing as well). Most of the advances being demonstrated right now are about establishing a robotic _platform_. They don't necessarily individually have to be able to complete all tasks end to end, but pushing the boundary forward on one of them at a time as a step of progress.

The different challenges presented in the article are almost all orthogonal to each other. Some of them are hardware engineering challenges, some of them are software / AI challenges, and most of them ultimately economic challenges. They can all be solved in a mostly independent manner, meaning that they won't be decades away to be resolved, but more likely years.

I think robotics is in a space that very much falls into the "people overestimate the progress in one year but underestimate the progress over 5 years" category.

A lot of the problems to solve regarding effectiveness (not efficiency) of humanoid robots even as outlined in the article (manipulation = short term spatial planning; long term task planning) greatly benefit from the current advances in AI, and in my estimation are already solvable with better harnesses with the current generation of models.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#48

Post by vessenes »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #17
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have made the same point without starting with the insult.

The original commentator works at a private equity fund, admits he has lost $1B twice, and yet any blue-collar laborer has a better grasp of the material world. The insult is earned.

If you tour SpaceX’s hawthorn factory they will tell you: “raw materials come in, rockets go out.” Spacex manufacturing had a mix of robots and humans manufacturing together on the floor the last time I was there, like six years ago. But it was definitely deeply vertically integrated manufacturing.

Similarly BYD in china has plants over an acre in size that run lights out with one human worker. My understanding is these are also vertically integrated, taking inspiration from Tesla and SpaceX.

I’m happy to learn more about the material world from people at any walk of life; right now we have humans building robots out of raw materials and robots building robots out of raw materials already in the world. My prediction is that humanoid robots building robots will scale rapidly in the next two years; please give me the bear case though, I’m genuinely interested.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#49

Post by vessenes »

DennisP wrote: post #15
vessenes wrote: post #3

This is a recent essay on robotic workers that does not mention Figure’s 24+ hour livestream of a robot doing package management on a live assembly line. The real reason it’s hard to assess where we’re at with industrial robots is that some of the people who’ve gone hardest at it are secretive, and also believe in power law scaling. So, the first 1,000 robots will only be used to build the next robot factory, which a…

It was a team of robots. One has battery for three or four hours. I don't think it really addresses the article's concerns about long-horizon tasks or complex object manipulation. The objects were just bags and boxes, the manipulations were very simple, and each task was a few seconds long.

I guess the VLA proposal is that frontier models will keep extending the planning and action horizon and that the action models will keep improving simultaneously leading to a moment when they suddenly get useful.

This seems likely to me, but I’m not a robot guy. We have certainly seen this 10x in value with 2-5x increase in context and horizon dynamic play out at least three times since 2019 with llms, and with self driving cars; having watched it I’m inclined to believe it can occur again.

Re: Why humanoid robots won't catch up to human workers any time soon

#50

Post by vessenes »

tokai wrote: post #20
throwitaway222 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There still seems to be questions around if that was faked. (scorch me if I'm wrong I last looked at this a month ago)

Questions? It's clear it was faked. The robot kept pushing its non-existent vr googles back up.

Ooh interesting. Got a link? I guess you’d want to find out f that’s a weird motion tic falling out of rl training or the much simpler explanation. I thought figure was publicly clear the robots were operating autonomously.
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