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Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

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Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#11

Post by toomuchtodo »

Onavo wrote: post #10
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skate to where the puck is going. By the time they're ready for prod (2-4 years), regime change might have occurred. Be ready with a solution to this environmental problem at that time. Lots of oil and gas infra over the next few decades that will require remediation after the world transitions to low carbon energy and electrification, while declining fertility rates globally will mean a shrinking pool of workers to…

Says somebody who has clearly never worked in oil and gas.

I haven't worked in the industry, but a family member does and owns several wells (ie the mineral rights) in Texas, passed down from their deceased parent who was a rig worker.

If you would be so kind as to suggest resources so that I can better educate myself in this domain for any missing nuance, I am open to any and all resources, including me traveling on my own dime to speak with a subject matter expert in person (who I am willing to compensate at a reasonable hourly rate).

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#12

Post by Onavo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11
Onavo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says somebody who has clearly never worked in oil and gas.

I haven't worked in the industry, but a family member does and owns several wells (ie the mineral rights) in Texas, passed down from their deceased parent who was a rig worker. If you would be so kind as to suggest resources so that I can better educate myself in this domain for any missing nuance, I am open to any and all resources, including me traveling on my own dime to speak with a subject matter expert in perso…

Talk to people working in oil and gas at the executive level, or even better, try selling stuff to them. Oil and gas operates on a very different mindset than the nibbling-at-margins product-led-growth models that are so prevalent on HN.

The only metric that matters at the end of the day is how to print more money i.e. drill more oil. Literally nothing else matters, and compliance goes to the lowest bidder to make the problem go away. Right now that means playing nice with the whitehouse and hopefully bypassing the rest of the pesky EPA. I assure you not a single person in oil and gas likes the EPA, nor the infamous Subpart W.

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#13

Post by westurner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Would you be able to replicate this with the heavy equipment and movements needed to plug orphaned oil wells? In Texas alone, it's a TAM of ~$38B, and ~$150B for the entire US. The Looming Disaster Under America's Biggest Oil Field [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45361022 - September 2025 Texas has thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Who is responsible for cleaning them up? - https://www.texastri…

Could a mini tunnel boring machine plug a well, from the side?

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#14

Post by seabrookmx »

> The joysticks are connected to a pilot hydraulic circuit, which proportionally moves the cylinders in the main hydraulic circuit which ultimately moves the excavator joints

I've actually spent a decent amount of time running an excavator, as my Dad owns a construction / road building company. It was a great summer job!

An important note about the pilot hydraulics is that they _provide feedback to the operator_. I would encourage any system that moves these controls on behalf of a remote human operator or AI to add strain gauges or some other way to measure this force feedback so that this data isn't lost.

The handful of "drive by wire" pieces of equipment that my Dad or other skilled operators in my family have ran were universally panned, because the operators are isolated from this feedback and have a harder time telling when the machine is struggling or when their inputs are not sufficiently smooth. In the automotive world, skilled drivers have similar complaints about fully electronic steering or braking systems, as opposed to traditional vacuum or hydraulic boosting approaches where your foot still has a direct hydraulic connection to the brake pads.

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#15

Post by ceejayoz »

westurner wrote: post #13
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Would you be able to replicate this with the heavy equipment and movements needed to plug orphaned oil wells? In Texas alone, it's a TAM of ~$38B, and ~$150B for the entire US. The Looming Disaster Under America's Biggest Oil Field [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45361022 - September 2025 Texas has thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Who is responsible for cleaning them up? - https://www.texastri…

Could a mini tunnel boring machine plug a well, from the side?

That's definitely a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_well

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#17

Post by jeffbee »

seabrookmx wrote: post #14

> The joysticks are connected to a pilot hydraulic circuit, which proportionally moves the cylinders in the main hydraulic circuit which ultimately moves the excavator joints I've actually spent a decent amount of time running an excavator, as my Dad owns a construction / road building company. It was a great summer job! An important note about the pilot hydraulics is that they _provide feedback to the operator_. I w…

My car with its drive-by-wire brakes has a brake feedback simulator that gives the driver the kind of feeling associated with power-boosted hydraulic brakes. This is by far the most expensive single component in the car. Arguably these are just expensive accommodations for human flaws. A self-driving car wouldn't need them. Can't the self-driving system act directly on data like pressure, flow, and displacement?

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#18

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

jeffbee wrote: post #17
seabrookmx wrote: post #14

> The joysticks are connected to a pilot hydraulic circuit, which proportionally moves the cylinders in the main hydraulic circuit which ultimately moves the excavator joints I've actually spent a decent amount of time running an excavator, as my Dad owns a construction / road building company. It was a great summer job! An important note about the pilot hydraulics is that they _provide feedback to the operator_. I w…

My car with its drive-by-wire brakes has a brake feedback simulator that gives the driver the kind of feeling associated with power-boosted hydraulic brakes. This is by far the most expensive single component in the car. Arguably these are just expensive accommodations for human flaws. A self-driving car wouldn't need them. Can't the self-driving system act directly on data like pressure, flow, and displacement?

Maybe it doesn't matter for a car because feeling the car's motion tells you most of what you need to know. A car is not meant to touch anything but the road, in normal conditions. I think steering is the only case where force feedback is very important for a car - In the winters up here, I can feel the steering go loose when I hit a patch of ice.

I imagine an excavator, meant to touch and dig through things, and lift things, benefits from force feedback for the same reason VR would.

Have you played those VR sword games? BeatSaber works great because you're cutting through abstract blobs that offer no resistance. But the medieval sword-slashing games feel weird because your sword can't impact your opponent.

I saw a video recently of a quadcopter lifting heavy objects. When it's overloaded, it can't maneuver because all its spare power is spent generating lift to maintain altitude. If the controls had force feedback, the copter's computer could tell you "I'm overloaded, I can't move" by putting maximum resistance on the sticks.

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#19

Post by beachy »

What a fantastic business. I've watched lots of digger (as we call them here) drivers in action and I'm in awe of what these machines can do and how incredibly skilled their operators are. We have several large rock walls on our property and watching these guys delicately picking and placing huge rocks to key them in just blows my mind.

There was a YouTube video recently of an AI-assisted digger making a wall out of the concrete rubble from a demolition.

I believe the applications for really smart excavators must be huge. Sounds like this might be a step on that voyage.

Re: Launch HN: Flywheel (YC S25) – Waymo for Excavators

#20

Post by jashmota »

shepardrtc wrote: post #16

How much safety training have you done with the models? i.e. does it know to stop if it's about to drive over a human?

We have some autonomous safety layers (comprised of object/human detection like you mentioned and others) even for remote teleop. But we haven't deployed autonomy on real sites yet. We still have some work to do before we can reliably deploy/test it out on the actual sites!
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