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RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

deepmind.com

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Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#21

Post by nomel »

aliljet wrote: post #7

I really really really want to play with robotics at home, but I've discovered it's super expensive to get things like robotic arms at home. Are there robotics platforms that are DIY ready? I really just want to teach a robotic arm to make my coffee in the morning. And I'll apply my life's effort to achieving this only if the cost of the robotics platform is stupid low. Yes. I know that's absurd. :)

The cheapest is to strap things onto a 3 axis 3d printer. They can be had for Beyond that, it's DIY, with a set of strong servos and a few budget microcontrollers/motor controllers, from Alibaba, and...a 3d printer to manufacture the rest, for something like an arm.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#22

Post by red75prime »

tomp wrote: post #9
itissid wrote: post #8

What more would it take for google to succeed at something like: "robot can plant, water and harvest food that only poor laborers from other countries did, replacing whole job categories in agro business along with other things like making blue collar immigration moot"?

Robots becoming 100x cheaper, or humans becoming 100x more expensive.

> Robots becoming 100x cheaper

That is DeepMind succeeding on building robots that can build robots.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#23

Post by wilg »

startupsfail wrote: post #18

* After observing 1000 human-controlled demonstrations, collected in just hours, RoboCat could direct this new arm dexterously enough to pick up gears successfully 86% of the time. * Interesting, but this doesn’t sound like something that can be useful. For practical industry applications, you need high success rates. Assume you are running operations where dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are…

This is research! The point is this is possible now, and can be improved upon.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#24

Post by digdugdirk »

nomel wrote: post #20
traverseda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assume you are running operations where dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are costly and not acceptable. Alright, let's assume we're not too though, just for completeness sake. Plenty of industrial applications where an 86% success rate is fine, especially if you can try more than once.

Do you have any obvious examples in mind?

Plenty of manufacturing environments that involve heavy items. Even with a lift assist, they'll still need 2-3 people to help lift or guide something to the next cell or next place in the line. Lift assists are still expensive, and if that could be replaced with a robotic arm and cut out 2-3 employees at the same time? There's going to be a big market for this. Certainly big enough to keep a company afloat while they continue to refine the product and reduce costs.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#25

Post by breakds »

loandbehold wrote: post #15
tomp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots becoming 100x cheaper, or humans becoming 100x more expensive.

Unitree sells robot similar to Boston Dynamics Spot for $2700. If you add robotic gripper to it can do things like picking strawberries cheaper than minimum wage worker. Say if robot costs $3500 and minimum wage is $10/hour then robot needs to only complete 43 8-hour shifts over it's lifetime to displace human worker.

That is the basic version. The EDU version which opens more API/interface to the user cost much more. Also training a whole-body (quadruped + robotic arm with gripper) to do something like picking strawberries remains challenging today.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#26

Post by loandbehold »

breakds wrote: post #25
loandbehold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unitree sells robot similar to Boston Dynamics Spot for $2700. If you add robotic gripper to it can do things like picking strawberries cheaper than minimum wage worker. Say if robot costs $3500 and minimum wage is $10/hour then robot needs to only complete 43 8-hour shifts over it's lifetime to displace human worker.

That is the basic version. The EDU version which opens more API/interface to the user cost much more. Also training a whole-body (quadruped + robotic arm with gripper) to do something like picking strawberries remains challenging today.

It's challenging but looks like Boston dynamics is able to do that kind of tasks. For instance they have a build in feature for spot with robotic hand that can open a door by turning door handle. And apparently it works with most doors.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#28

Post by jjk166 »

startupsfail wrote: post #18

* After observing 1000 human-controlled demonstrations, collected in just hours, RoboCat could direct this new arm dexterously enough to pick up gears successfully 86% of the time. * Interesting, but this doesn’t sound like something that can be useful. For practical industry applications, you need high success rates. Assume you are running operations where dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are…

> Assume you are running operations where dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are costly and not acceptable.

Such operations are rare and in those cases you're probably not picking them out of a bin to start with. For most items dropping or flipping the object a few times is perfectly acceptable, indeed that's probably how they got into their current position to start with.

Re: RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent

#30

Post by jjk166 »

nomel wrote: post #20
traverseda wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assume you are running operations where dropping/flips/damages to the items that a robot handles are costly and not acceptable. Alright, let's assume we're not too though, just for completeness sake. Plenty of industrial applications where an 86% success rate is fine, especially if you can try more than once.

Do you have any obvious examples in mind?

Fasteners (screws, rivets, etc)

Metal and plastic Stock

Castings and billets

Clothing

Bulk sacks of material

Lumber

Items to be recycled

Most consumer goods after packaging

Hand tools (wrenches, pliers, etc)

Most food items

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