161–170 of 417 posts
The frog boils quickly.
It's going to be wild when these things cost 30 grand, and we all start having them in our houses. Along with fusion, I think robots in the home will be the defining technology of our generation. It's been talked about and fictionalized forever, and within my lifetime I expect the economics on it to finally break through. Equal parts terror, awe, fear, when it comes to having a robot in my home.
I think they need to be inexpensive enough before they're embraced, given the relatively low value-added in the average home. Running a dishwasher and laundry machine is not something I'd pay 30k for. The tech affluent rich will get them for it's own sake. From the comments though it seems that some are enthusiastic about being rid of chores for a premium. In the 2010s everyone purchased those rumba vacuums, because…
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A few years ago, I was in Vegas for an event. All factors of "it was Vegas" aside, one of the things that stood out to me was that the hotels have moved rapidly to rapid checkin/checkout systems where you punch in your confirmation code or name/dob and present a photo ID of some kind (passports can just be slapped against the reader) and it asks a few questions ("do you need late checkout", etc), directs you to the e…
>All told, four of these stations had roughly 90% the throughput of the four real humans Probably about 1% of the cost of the humans though... >Kiosk based stuff is great until it fails. Spend an hour in the checkin area of a major airport and you'll see any number of interesting failure modes. A robot would be less reliable than a kiosk, so if you're going to have some kind of machine replace the human, you might as…
So one more app to install that I'm sure would be a privacy nightmare.
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How does this square with the video where they showed it running continuously for an hour doing an actual Amazon package sorting job? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkc2y0yb89U
Is it really sorting? All I see is the humanoid robot moving similarly shaped / sized packages from one conveyor belt to a platform to another conveyor belt. A little industrial automation design would be much more effective, cheaper, and faster compared to the task it is performing.
Crazy to me how negative the comments are here. None of this was even remotely possible less than 5 years ago. Now, we're demoing consumer-facing robotics that will soon, within a couple iterations, be able to perform most of your household tasks without issue. The frog boils quickly.
Turns out they're either insanely expensive or they just can't actually learn on the fly and do tasks. This is the Nth time I've seen a robot folding a shirt but never in a cluttered room or taken from a pile of laundry.
I figured the first AI robots would be pets, but apparently they're aren't even that good yet. Furby level isn't going to cut it.
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Now the question is if this is GPT-2 and we’re a decade away from autonomous androids given some scaling and tweaks, or if autonomous androids is just an extremely hard problem.
I don't know if I caught your comment in my peripheral vision or what but GPT-2 is exactly where I conceptually placed this. Neural networks for motion control is very clearly resulting in some incredible capability in a relatively short amount of time vs. the more traditional control hierarchies used in something like Boston Dynamics. Look at Unitree's G1 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mP3Exb1YC8o https://www.youtub…
It’s crazy to me that Apple hasn’t acquired them. Apple is looking for a way to get into AI, and I think this space is much more natural fit than some foundation model lab. The big hurdles to getting these into people’s homes is manufacturing scale, trust and privacy, and customer support, all things Apple is really good at.
Why would Apple acquire a company with a 39 billion dollar valuation that has no revenue whatsoever?
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I think they need to be inexpensive enough before they're embraced, given the relatively low value-added in the average home. Running a dishwasher and laundry machine is not something I'd pay 30k for. The tech affluent rich will get them for it's own sake. From the comments though it seems that some are enthusiastic about being rid of chores for a premium. In the 2010s everyone purchased those rumba vacuums, because…
If people will pay $30k for a car, I think the default assumption should be that they will readily pay that much for a 24/7 housekeeper. Our family would get way more utility out of a housekeeper than a car, but human housekeepers are very expensive, so we don't have one. Merely having our house cleaned once/week would be more expensive than our minivan payment.
I think that's a massive leap. Suburban families get more utility out of a vehicle; they drive everywhere. Housekeeping is effectively just quasi-automated washing (dishwasher/laundry), occasional vacuum and clean, and food prep that is already available as a service for those who don't want to do it (for a relatively affordable subscription), and otherwise it's possible to prepare something in little time. I just don't see how average people would jump at spending 30k for that. The key reason people feel time-poor is juggling work and parenting. Unlike a nanny, you won't offload parenting to a housekeeping robot. For our part, we involve the kids in routine chore activity. At an early age they often learn by mimicking actions and are enthusiastic about helping.
Since you have to sit around watching them anyway, might as well be productive time.
It’s crazy to me that Apple hasn’t acquired them. Apple is looking for a way to get into AI, and I think this space is much more natural fit than some foundation model lab. The big hurdles to getting these into people’s homes is manufacturing scale, trust and privacy, and customer support, all things Apple is really good at.
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Really? I don't even think a cheap robo-vac is a good purchase.
I have one (a Roborocks), and thinking of getting a second one for the second level of the house. Great value.