I'm still waiting for my android powered android.
Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#12In other words: software will replace robots when there's no need to have an actual robot, just software. Erm, yes. When your iPhone can assemble a car, do the dishes, or actually explore Mars, let me know.
It's not necessarily just software that has killed robots. For instance why have a robot to wash the dishes the same way as a human, when you can just pile them into a dishwasher and be done with it?
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#13Software is incredibly powerful, but it the robotic revolution is still coming. Obviously software cannot explicitly deal with physical objects as easily as a robot can. I mean, you can have software that will find you the cheapest maid service out there and send them to your door while your at work, but the software can't clean your house.
Robots are taking much longer then we first thought because the problems are much harder then we first thought (pg talks about this is one of his essays on AI).
As of right now, humanoid-consumer viable robots are too weird, slow and clumsy to be of real value. Look up some willow garage (google-backed) on youtube for what I mean. But certainly within my lifetime, we will have something that will be able to fold your clothes, do the dishes and cook you breakfast, all before you get out of bed.
It may be nothing like what the writer was thinking of back in the 80's. I could see a set of robotic arms mounted on the ceiling in the kitchen, which could cook, clean, and then get out of the way, resulting in no awkward robot-human interactions. I don't know what the technology will be, but it will be coming.
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#14In other words: software will replace robots when there's no need to have an actual robot, just software. Erm, yes. When your iPhone can assemble a car, do the dishes, or actually explore Mars, let me know.
It's not necessarily just software that has killed robots. For instance why have a robot to wash the dishes the same way as a human, when you can just pile them into a dishwasher and be done with it?
I'm guessing you don't have four kids. Sometimes, when the dishes have piled up on the counter above the dishwasher, I think a domestic robot would be amazing.
But then I teach my kids "character" by making them wash the dishes they couldn't bother to put in the dishwater.
Really, there are still any places robots can be helpful that software isn't appropriate for. I do think the human-looking robot is DOA, with task-specific robots taking the place they were given by scifi authors.
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#15Is there a sense in which software is what is holding back robots? We have all watched pretty cool robots in videos rolling around, walk on two legs, etc. What we need is awesome AI to put in the existing hardware. Any experts want to chime in?
I don't claim to be an expert, but from what I've seen there's a typically a huge gulf between the software and hardware. Until recently, it's been difficult to put a lot of CPU on a mobile robot, so the software developer really has to be a programmer with an embedded systems mindset. For instance, the Arduino is a relatively recent phenomenon, and that's seriously under-powered if you're interested in high-level pl…
> Until recently, it's been difficult to put a lot of CPU on a mobile robot
Define "mobile"?
Household and other single-site robotics applications should not be severely constrained by the advancement of embedded computational hardware. Wireless transceivers can provide the bridge between the limited embedded systems in the physical-actor hardware in the living space, and the heavy computational hardware in a big box in the closet.
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#16for someone that thinks they are creating the future of toys, this is incredibly shortsighted. This post shows a lack of vision. Why would I even want to go to hipmunk, when a robot will get the ticket, pack my bags, make sure they are at the airport where they need to be, and all I'll have to do is board a plane. Aisle50, i don't want just deals, I want someone to either pick them up or deliver them, put them away, and automate this process for me every week.
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#17[deleted]
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#18so maybe it is so. but humans will get API and will act like machine. (until maybe they are replaced by better machine, or parts that make them human are removed.). DNA is machine anyway.
Re: Y Combinator Shattered My Robot Loving Dreams
#19for someone that thinks they are creating the future of toys, this is incredibly shortsighted. This post shows a lack of vision. Why would I even want to go to hipmunk, when a robot will get the ticket, pack my bags, make sure they are at the airport where they need to be, and all I'll have to do is board a plane. Aisle50, i don't want just deals, I want someone to either pick them up or deliver them, put them away,…
Agreed, and there are many cases where a robot will remember to do such things for me before I will even think about it (artificial intelligence) whereas I may forget to book my ticket, or I may look in my refrigerator at dinner time just to see it is empty.