Google owned Boston Dynamics at one point. I'm curious what made them flip flop back to robotics again.
X has done a lot of robotics projects. Boston dynamics wasn't Alphabet's only attempt.
Out of curiosity, what were the other ones?
Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
101–110 of 283 posts
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#102you are becoming evil
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#103Robotics is not a software problem and SV companies bias is towards software development (a little different with X but still apparent). I think most companies that try to throw data at existing problems in robotics using existing machines will have a hard time matching human efficiency. For example, in something as straightforward as the usb insertion task. Hardware and mechanical is like 95% of the problem so there…
But it is a software problem. Surprised that you mentioned robotic arm, which is basically just 3-5 servo/stepper motors connected to case and not super complicated to build with 3d printers. It's the software that powers it. Boston dynamics robots are not the top of the line in terms of hardware. It is the software that gives their robot the power to even stand up, which anyone who has coded the robot knows it only looks easy.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The few Mujin videos I watched look a lot like PCB assembly pick-n-place machines. A little bit of computer vision, a little sensing here and there, but overall fairly simple pre-programmed moves, on a pretty controlled environment.
If you check out the beginning of the video link (I had it fast forwarded towards the end) you can see that it is doing an awful lot more than that, and in 2013. A pick and place is 2-axis movement with a suction cup. This is controlling a robot arm with a ton of degrees of freedom and developing paths for moving through all those degrees of freedom without hitting anything and using internal models to do so. I suppo…
It is harder than x-y + down, however I don't think this video is impressive really, having slowed down the video it doesn't look special to me and I did work on robotics/machine vision around that time.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#105Robotics is not a software problem and SV companies bias is towards software development (a little different with X but still apparent). I think most companies that try to throw data at existing problems in robotics using existing machines will have a hard time matching human efficiency. For example, in something as straightforward as the usb insertion task. Hardware and mechanical is like 95% of the problem so there…
But it is a software problem. Surprised that you mentioned robotic arm, which is basically just 3-5 servo/stepper motors connected to case and not super complicated to build with 3d printers. It's the software that powers it. Boston dynamics robots are not the top of the line in terms of hardware. It is the software that gives their robot the power to even stand up, which anyone who has coded the robot knows it only…
Why does it have to be servos in the first place? A very narrow way to think of robotics. Boston Dynamics is more about the hw than the sw.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#106The x.company website is unusable on Firefox. One scroll wheel movement and I am lost on a completely different part of the document. There is one way to ensure an immediate bounce.
Does anyone actually like these homepages that move around a bunch as you scroll? I don't see the appeal of parallax effects and the like. To my eye, they are neither pretty nor useful.
NoScript improves another webpage. Scrolling's working just for me, you just have to prevent the site from working as intended.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#107> Back in the late 90s when I was just starting Moonfruit, the world’s first SAAS website builder, creating your own website was hard. From setting up your own server, to working with an ISP, to getting a content delivery network and integrating a middleware layer to communicate with your computer, to design and UX — creating a website was a lengthy multi-step process that was only accessible to a small group of technical experts or large companies. It wasn’t until websites were simple and easy to make that the full creative and business potential of the web really began to blossom.
It's not good that this introductory post doesn't start right off with a problem to be solved. Instead it presents the credentials of the current leader.
If I had to pick out the problem, it would be this sentence, contained in the fourth paragraph:
> Currently just 10 countries manufacture 70% of the world’s goods.
In the fifth paragraph, we get a more clear phrasing of the problem:
> The surprisingly manual and bespoke process of teaching robots how to do things, which hasn’t changed much over the last few decades, is currently a cap on their potential to help more businesses.
Ok, so this is going to be a company that solves the problem of poor usability of industrial robots through machine learning. The larger goal is to put manufacturing capacity closer to consumers for better sustainability.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
X has done a lot of robotics projects. Boston dynamics wasn't Alphabet's only attempt.
Out of curiosity, what were the other ones?
A bunch of their public projects incorporate robotics in some way, just from glancing at x.company/projects. Everyday robot, mineral, wing, loon, waymo, makani. I'm sure there is a lot more going on, like intrinsic.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#109> Back in the late 90s when I was just starting Moonfruit, the world’s first SAAS website builder, creating your own website was hard. From setting up your own server, to working with an ISP, to getting a content delivery network and integrating a middleware layer to communicate with your computer, to design and UX — creating a website was a lengthy multi-step process that was only accessible to a small group of tech…
The purpose of the first paragraph is not to present the credentials of the leader. The purpose is to make a parallel between the current state of the robotics industry and the creative & commercial expansion of the web once the technology became more accessible.
Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
#110But how can robots be used to harvest personal data? Maybe this is an end-use case.
The Roomba sure is good at (pardon me) sucking up personal data.