Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company • Hacker News Board

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#161

Post by yunohn » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #157

yunohn wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as Alphabet apparently thinks everyone is still doing. The obliviousness of suggesting that using ML models for robotic control is some unique new idea is really off-putting. Intrinsic/Alphabet are not suggesting they are somehow unaware of easily-Google-able state of the art in ML robotics. They literally used to own Boston Dynamics. From the post, the second demo of their tech (“Two robots use perception, force c…

> FAANG has access to the leading factories in Shenzhen, and heavily utilize robot tech in their HW supply chains. Do you know what the N stands for in FAANG?

This is really boring pedantry, that does not further the conversation. Do you have anything to reply to from the rest of my comment?

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#162

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #145

If you can't program it by directly showing it what to do, throw it in the bin. They probably intend for it to be SaaS too, effectively having you pay a workers wage for a truly terrible worker. You're competing with general intelligence robots that cost $12 - $15/hr. That's 10 years of full time labor for $300,000. No shot. This looks like something designed to attract ignorant investors/talent who think small time…

When you are working on domestic manufacturing, what automation you have? How much of that is programmed by human (in house and from vendor?)

This is definitely far from mass adoption. But somewhere certain expensive product might benefit from this. Guess: mechanical watch assembly, given the amount of manual labor, and the claimed learning ability, it seems possible for a robot to assemble a 1milions worth of Swiss watch.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#163

Post by danield9tqh » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #145

If you can't program it by directly showing it what to do, throw it in the bin. They probably intend for it to be SaaS too, effectively having you pay a workers wage for a truly terrible worker. You're competing with general intelligence robots that cost $12 - $15/hr. That's 10 years of full time labor for $300,000. No shot. This looks like something designed to attract ignorant investors/talent who think small time…

Assuming 8hr work days and a 250 day working year for humans. No such constraints for robots. That's 2,000 hrs/yr for a human vs 8,760 (assuming 24/7) hours for a robot. Obviously there will be other costs for robots (downtime, electricity, repair etc) so no telling whether it will be worth it in the long run but the hour calculation there does seem a little off.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#164

Post by yunohn » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #126

I really dislike this writing structure of "before I get to the point, let me tell you a story about my life" Edit: I'm not alone, https://style.mla.org/dont-bury-the-lede/

There is literally just one short paragraph of personal intro by the CEO, before getting the “plot”.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#165

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #122

csours wrote: post #50

Billion dollar question: do you get more bang for the buck (return on investment, ROI) out of improving robot control schemes, or out of designing the product with automated assembly in mind? Bonus: the ROI changes as you invest in either bucket.

That's a very interesting question. Apple was once into design for assembly. The Macintosh IIci was Apple's peak at design for assembly. It was designed for vertical assembly. Everything clicks into place with a straight-down insertion move. No wiring harnesses. The power supply plugs into the motherboard. An automated plant in Fremont CA did the assembly. Then Apple gave up on design for assembly and went to offshor…

Apple case is not exactly abandoning design for assembly. The advancement of electronic and metal machining allows smaller and more integrated parts, which allows cheap labor to beat the machine. If the electronics and metal machining did not advance, I am guessing the resultant production cost would not be this low.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#166

Post by ignoramous » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #126

I really dislike this writing structure of "before I get to the point, let me tell you a story about my life" Edit: I'm not alone, https://style.mla.org/dont-bury-the-lede/

Can we blame that on the-most-important-job-of-a-leader-is-to-tell-an-inspiring-story narrative prevalent in the tech world? https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/nh3ubp0nRaw

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#167

Post by theptip » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #115

Nice. Here's much the same job, being done almost 50 years ago, by a robot at the Stanford AI lab.[1] This robot has both vision and force feedback, and uses them to assemble an automotive water pump. It does the coarse alignment visually, and the fine alignment by feel. [1] https://archive.org/details/sailfilm_pump

It's hard for me to compare precisely, especially since the Intrinsic videos are sped up, but the one you linked looks very shaky and hesitant, and also the "Ikea challenge" seems like it requires more fine-tuned force-feedback than putting metal pieces together. If I anthropomorphize, the Stanford robot looks like an inept/hungover employee, whereas the Intrinsic robot seems convincing that it's actually accurately aware of what's going on.

Another possible difference -- how much programming time did it take to teach the Stanford robot to assemble the water pump? Sounds like Intrinsic trained the robots to do this with little supervision.

It seems to me that this might represent pretty solid progress, although not exponential/paradigm-shift scale like we've seen in some other industries in that period, and nothing in the Intrinsic videos seemed like it was above par for other automation companies I've seen recently. But since you seem to be in the industry, what's your take on whether they seem to be ahead of the game, or even just realistic, with claims like:

> In one instance, we trained a robot in two hours to complete a USB connection task that would take hundreds of hours to program. In other tests, we orchestrated multiple robot arms to assemble an architectural installation and a simple piece of furniture. None of this is realistic or affordable to automate today — and there are millions of other examples like this in businesses around the world.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#168

Post by justicezyx » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

rexreed wrote: post #13

Vivtek wrote: post #3

Weird. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27861201

The list of Robot company failures and the robotic industry dead pool runs very deep. Just in the past few years: * Rethink Robotics https://www.zdnet.com/article/sudden-unexpected-demise-of-re... * Anki https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/con... * Jibo https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/jib... * Blue Workforce https://www.therobotreport.com/blue-workforce-robot-files-ba...…

Looks rather small number of investment

There were hundreds of copycats startups in China following the trendy business ideas at the moments.

The Groupon era Streaming Short video Gif sharing Etc...

It just looks like not enough money in robotics, not that robotics are wasting them

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#169

Post by varjag » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #122

csours wrote: post #50

Billion dollar question: do you get more bang for the buck (return on investment, ROI) out of improving robot control schemes, or out of designing the product with automated assembly in mind? Bonus: the ROI changes as you invest in either bucket.

That's a very interesting question. Apple was once into design for assembly. The Macintosh IIci was Apple's peak at design for assembly. It was designed for vertical assembly. Everything clicks into place with a straight-down insertion move. No wiring harnesses. The power supply plugs into the motherboard. An automated plant in Fremont CA did the assembly. Then Apple gave up on design for assembly and went to offshor…

Yes, in the 1980s people were told they'd lose their manufacturing jobs to Japanese robots but the robots turned out to be Chinese workers.

Re: Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company

#170

Post by varjag » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

justicezyx wrote: post #165

Animats wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very interesting question. Apple was once into design for assembly. The Macintosh IIci was Apple's peak at design for assembly. It was designed for vertical assembly. Everything clicks into place with a straight-down insertion move. No wiring harnesses. The power supply plugs into the motherboard. An automated plant in Fremont CA did the assembly. Then Apple gave up on design for assembly and went to offshor…

Apple case is not exactly abandoning design for assembly. The advancement of electronic and metal machining allows smaller and more integrated parts, which allows cheap labor to beat the machine. If the electronics and metal machining did not advance, I am guessing the resultant production cost would not be this low.

Machining is more or less in the same spot it's been since late 1970s.