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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

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Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#201

Post by xdennis »

paxys wrote: post #179
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #161

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.

> None of this was even remotely possible less than 5 years ago. Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a single one has graduated to any mass market real world use case. I'm not saying one shouldn't be hopeful, but it's also not hard to see why people here are generally more conservative about the near future.

> Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots

Boston Dynamics hasn't released any actual products. They seem to be focused on flashy demos of robots dancing instead of end user products.

As a counterpoint, Unitree right now sells humanoids you can actually buy. They're no where near as good, but you can actually use them.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#202

Post by Razengan »

dust42 wrote: post #135
pizzathyme wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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 The video shows several of glitches. From the comments: 14:18 the Fall 28:40 the Fall 2 41:23 the Fall 3 Also many of the packages on the left are there throughout the video. But then I think lots of this can be solved in software and havin…

> But then I think lots of this can be solved in software and having seen how LLMs have advanced in the last few years, I'd not be surprised to see these robots useful in 5 years.

Would asking the robot for a seahorse emoji leave you in a puddle of blood?

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#204

Post by causal »

renewiltord wrote: post #120
causal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah tech companies have a weird fixation on using dystopian literature as their entire branding playbook

It's just that sci fi authors try to see into the future and have to write things interesting. There's two ways: - novel idea or technology - counterintuitive effect of technology I think the second is easier written as "what if Good Thing was actually Bad". So that's what you get. The former style is perhaps still available in books like Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. But the latter style is much more readi…

I mean, you're definitely assuming positive outcomes here too. Far too early to tell how most tech will end up being used.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#205

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

modeless wrote: post #48
austy69 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This raises a very interesting philosophical question - what do our lives look like if every single inconvenience disappears? Something tells me we would be just as miserable (or happy) as when we had those inconveniences. On the other hand, would the removal of these inconveniences allow for the highest calling of humanity - I argue creativity - to flourish to the fullest? My gut reaction is once again that inconven…

We will never run out of small inconveniences. Today's world would look impossibly convenient and easy to anyone from 100 years ago, let alone 1000 or 10,000. Yet we still perceive hardships. Humanoid robot servants won't change human nature. Besides, servants are nothing new. They're rare in the US but common in some other countries, and the people who grow up with them are maybe somewhat different but not radically…

> Besides, servants are nothing new. They're rare in the US but common in some other countries

Right, although "servants" conjures up rich people with full time staff.

A better comparison to the humanoid robot some people here are dreaming of to do their household chores is a country like India where it's common for middle class people to hire multiple different people to come do chores, daily or weekly, such as cooking, laundry, cleaning, yardwork, etc. These are cheap services.

In the US, probably most people here on YC News (higher paid tech workers?) could afford to have lawn mowing service, weekly maid service, laundry pick-up/drop-off service (or bring to laundry yourself), and either eat out all the time, or UberEats etc. It's not clear that having a robot to do these tasks would be cheaper or preferable.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#206

Post by hadlock »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #188
paxys wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this was even remotely possible less than 5 years ago. Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a single one has graduated to any mass market real world use case. I'm not saying one shouldn't be hopeful, but it's also not hard to see why people here are generally more conservative about the near future.

>Boston Dynamics has been releasing actual product demos of such robots (not cherry-picked ads) for ~20 years now. Not a single one has graduated to any mass market real world use case. Good point, which is why Boston Dynamics didn't really excite me. It was very cool to see the bot balance itself while being pushed with a hockey stick, but LiDAR-based pathfinding on hydraulic actuators has never truly felt like the…

One of the really big things that nobody talks about is the invention of the "mit cheetah actuator" which was invented in (well, the paper was published) in 2017, and commercial copies became freely availble in ~2020 online for about $350-400. Xaiomi and other companies now manufacture improved, updated actuators. They are roughly shaped like a hockey puck 1.5-2.5x upscaled. These are 1) very high torque for their size and weight and 2) offer "springback" similar to human joints. Not very useful for industrial welding machines putting cars together, but for walking robots, it reduces instantaneous strain and literally puts a "spring" in their step. This allowed robots to go from being stepper motor driven (which are huge, heavy), to much more compact, which greatly improves performance, battery life, and they can actually fit in human homes etc etc

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#207

Post by jayd16 »

HAL3000 wrote: post #78

All of the examples in videos are cherry picked. Go ask anyone working on humanoid robots today, almost everything you see here, if repeated 10 times, will enter failure mode because the happy path is so narrow. There should really be benchmarks where you invite robots from different companies, ask them beforehand about their capabilities, and then create an environment that is within those capabilities but was not u…

I'd watch that game show.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#208

Post by mft_ »

sksksk wrote: post #26

The use cases in their videos are interesting, I suppose the world we live in is build for humans, so it makes sense to build a robot that is human shaped. So we don't need to buy new washing machines and redesign our house to get a robot maid. The hotel reception use case seems ridiculous though, if you get rid of a human receptionist, you lose the human element of the check in process, which people like. If you're…

So I’ve ranting for years that hotels and car rental places should automate check-in - it should take only seconds to get your key with pre-filled data and a QR code.

This week, I had my first experience with exactly this at a car hire company. It was… not smooth.

It took multiple attempts (with requests for help to the employees in between) to get the system to recognise our code, whereupon we learned (by way of an unhelpful generic error message) that the system had somehow given someone else ‘our’ car. After another round of asking for human help, we had to wait while someone came outside, unlocked the machine, and put the keys for our new car inside. We then went through the code process again, and were finally given the keys.

The vision is somewhere there, but the execution isn’t exactly the future we’re hoping for!

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#209

Post by jayd16 »

poisonborz wrote: post #153
proee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the battery life. If the robot lasts all day, then charging at night via standing on a charging pad makes a lot of sense. Creating a removable battery pack adds extra weight and gives the designers less freedom to place the battery pack exactly where it needs to be in the robot frame, or distribute the cells across the frame in strategic locations. Also, the charge rate matters. If robot can charge to 8…

Yeah so in 2-4 years you can throw out your whole expensive robot because battery wears out? I hate this argument that just to be a bit thinner, the whole device has to be be made throwaway.

Talking about the thinness of a humanoid, maid robot is pretty hilarious.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#210

Post by app13 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #180
HAL3000 wrote: post #78

All of the examples in videos are cherry picked. Go ask anyone working on humanoid robots today, almost everything you see here, if repeated 10 times, will enter failure mode because the happy path is so narrow. There should really be benchmarks where you invite robots from different companies, ask them beforehand about their capabilities, and then create an environment that is within those capabilities but was not u…

Rodney Brooks (of iRobot fame) wrote an essay recently about why humanoids are likely decades and not years away from fulfilling their promise. It is quite long, but even a gpt summary will be quite valuable. https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex... In short, he makes the case that unlike text and images, human dexterity is based on sensory inputs that we barely understand, that these robots do…

Most companies are using world model simulations for training nowadays, like Issac Gym or Mujoco, not just video data.
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