Reasons robotics is hard • Hacker News Board

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#61

Post by dekervin » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 10:51 AM UTC

_carbyau_ wrote: post #34

People think robots in terms of humanoid or number-5 style robots. I think it'll be more capable appliances at first. Like a lawn mowing device that also spots weeds and can spray them. Next iteration has arms to rip weeds out of the garden. Next has attachments so you can direct it to do pruning. Next it can figure out the pruning itself and move the outcome into the woodchipper. And so on and so on. It's not going…

Ooh. I see. so that's how it aaall got started: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YVMoLvMrC8E

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#62

Post by snewman » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 10:54 AM UTC

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #44

> I am confused at how Waymo engineering can be so robust as to yield an astonishingly good safety record, and yet so slapdash as to happily drive into deep water. I feel this is actually somewhat straightforward. I assume deep water on roadways is not commonly in the training set, because frankly it isn't common in real life, and when it is common people do not drive and do not gather that training data. As a result…

(I'm the author of the blog post)

My thinking here is that Waymo has logged hundreds of millions of miles at this point (and even more in sim), and there are a lot of nines in their safety record. So even the rare edge cases should have come up. You make a good point that the deep water scenario may be not only rare, but also under-represented in the training data. On the other hand, you'd think they would have thought to explicitly train for it; it's not that obscure of a possibility.

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#63

Post by euroderf » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 10:54 AM UTC

_carbyau_ wrote: post #34

People think robots in terms of humanoid or number-5 style robots. I think it'll be more capable appliances at first. Like a lawn mowing device that also spots weeds and can spray them. Next iteration has arms to rip weeds out of the garden. Next has attachments so you can direct it to do pruning. Next it can figure out the pruning itself and move the outcome into the woodchipper. And so on and so on. It's not going…

The Jetsons' Rosey was never seen cleaning the bathroom, was she/it ? Some things are too implausible even for childrens' science fiction.

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#64

Post by philot » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 11:23 AM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #45

This is why im not worried about "AI" taking over the world. Robotics still has a LONG way to go. A human can balance a plate on their arm with food while holding a glass of milk in that hand and a donut in the other and still manage to open a door, step over potential floor obstacles, maneuver tight spaces, get bumped by a child or dog, and still set it all down without spilling it 99% of the time. Just the hardware…

This is true, but it’s also assuming the robot has to be human shaped. A robot with 4 extendable arms and a gyroscopically balanced cabinet in its chest wouldn’t have too much trouble with that task.

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#65

Post by yen223 » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

cik wrote: post #50

Animats wrote: post #17

A marker of progress will be when Amazon converts to automated picking. They've been trying hard for almost a decade now. They had an annual competition for years. They have a decent picking robot developed in house.[1] It's not being deployed in quantity yet. Nor does it have anything like a humanoid hand. Just a two-surface gripper. Amazon's production robots are mostly automatic guided vehicles, not manipulators.…

Why do we have the assumption that industrial robots need to have legs? The largest grocery store chain uses picker robots already - for building my orders, including fruit / vegetables (from boxes). They currently have humans filter the veggies and fruit prior to box setup, but a friend is working on the models to eliminate even that. Their robots do movement using sliding scale in 3D spaces (think poles that are le…

It would be nice to have a thing that can carry a bucket of paint up a flight of stairs

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#66

Post by i_am_a_peasant » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 12:23 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #65

cik wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have the assumption that industrial robots need to have legs? The largest grocery store chain uses picker robots already - for building my orders, including fruit / vegetables (from boxes). They currently have humans filter the veggies and fruit prior to box setup, but a friend is working on the models to eliminate even that. Their robots do movement using sliding scale in 3D spaces (think poles that are le…

It would be nice to have a thing that can carry a bucket of paint up a flight of stairs

you don't need legs to climb stairs, you can have a rotating mechanism with different rows of wheels that have good enough grip, maybe an extruding stick to lift the whole robot up and the wheels move forward... would take a lot fewer joints than pair of legs probably.

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#67

Post by mapt » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 12:39 PM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #65

cik wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have the assumption that industrial robots need to have legs? The largest grocery store chain uses picker robots already - for building my orders, including fruit / vegetables (from boxes). They currently have humans filter the veggies and fruit prior to box setup, but a friend is working on the models to eliminate even that. Their robots do movement using sliding scale in 3D spaces (think poles that are le…

It would be nice to have a thing that can carry a bucket of paint up a flight of stairs

There's a bunch of options for this task, but combining the three wheel stair-climbing dolly with the self-balancing hoverboard/segway seems like the easiest.

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#68

Post by amelius » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #59

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #3

Roboticist here. All of this, and he didn’t mention compliance or online adaptation to otherwise un-sensable dynamics. Or massively complex miniature mechanisms. Current generation tactile sensors cost a couple thousand $ PER FINGER, and have a real world MTBF of hours. The cost can be solved with economy of scale. The fragility is harder.

I don't think that's true. AI could work around all the physical imperfections. Just imagine yourself controlling an imperfect robot with some joysticks or maybe a sensor suit. You'd certainly do much better than current robots. The limit is the robot's brain, not the physical actuators/sensors.

(I'm not saying there couldn't be improvements in the area of the actuators)

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#69

Post by lifestyleguru » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 1:33 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #17

A marker of progress will be when Amazon converts to automated picking. They've been trying hard for almost a decade now. They had an annual competition for years. They have a decent picking robot developed in house.[1] It's not being deployed in quantity yet. Nor does it have anything like a humanoid hand. Just a two-surface gripper. Amazon's production robots are mostly automatic guided vehicles, not manipulators.…

> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WStK9HNn8c8&

This video is so incorrect on so many levels. Thomas only releases the robots and at the end there is Bridget.

Re: Reasons robotics is hard

#70

Post by fatbird » Thu, Sep 03, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

I've yet to see anyone address the more immediate problem for (humaniform) robotics, which is that it runs counter to the economic benefits of specialization at industrial scales.

A robotic warehouse that's just like a human warehouse but with robots walking the aisles will always be more expensive (and likely far less efficient) than a warehouse purpose built for automated picking using standard containers and graspers, conveyer belts or path constrained wheeled platforms--something I've seen in operation 20 years ago.

A factory of general purpose robots sewing t-shirts will always be more expensive than a factory a low wage humans sitting there doing the same.

The Fourdrinier process for making flat-sheet goods (i.e., paper, thin plastic, in massive rolls) is more than two centuries old. The idea that robots, returning to dipping a mould into the furnish to create individual sheets, could even come close to the economics of modern papermaking is insane.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_machine