Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design • Hacker News Board

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#231

Post by jake86868587373 » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #223

Contrarian point of view -- (edit) this clever device overall takes too much capital and solves no real problem, meanwhile pressing and urgent problems needing tech, remain unaddressed, year after year. For centuries, real, physical actions in home life were improved with (mainly mechanical) devices subject to patent. The industrial revolution provides vast flows of consumer goods. Finance prospered (mainly) with loa…

As feedback, this comment took forever to get to the point. It would really benefit readers if you just started with: ‘Contrarian point of view - we don’t need these devices in society because we have an abundance of human labour for that and there are far bigger problems in society to be solved.’ It’s best to get your conclusion out there early rather than relying on the reader to find it.

You don’t really provide much of an argument for not using or developing a device like this other than there’s an abundance of human labour. What about if this device became much cheaper than human labour?

To your other point about other problems to be solved, if we only ever worked on the problems pivotal to humankind (e.g. global warming) then a lot of things that are useful but not pivotal to human existence would never have been invented.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#232

Post by leetcrew » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

Tenobrus wrote: post #212

espadrine wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first point has an obvious response and the last is speculative. I find interesting to address the middle one statistically. A given machine has a number of random events that can kill it. Each possible event type i can be modeled as a Poisson process Xᵢ with, in a given year, probability λᵢ. The machine survives in a given year if no occurrence of event i happens, with probability Pr(Xᵢ = 0) = exp(-λᵢ). For inst…

Why does your argument not show that cars would have a similar lifetime?

stuff goes wrong with cars all the time. most of it isn't critical to the core function of the machine. cars also undergo routine maintenance where parts are (hopefully) replaced before they fail entirely.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#233

Post by Noos » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #214

espadrine wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares? A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year. Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost mu…

a human cleaner isn't really a perfect substitute for a robot. people might feel uncomfortable with having a human worker in their house for a variety of reasons. most people I know actually clean their whole house before the cleaning service shows up. you don't have to feel guilt/embarrassment at the state of your house when the robot starts working. I could imagine a lot of people might be willing to pay a premium…

There's something darkly funny about people so embarrassed to have a cleaning person in their house, that they create a solution that would put most cleaning people out of a job.

The knowledge workers automate jobs away, leading pundits to say the future for low-skilled workers is to provide boutique services for the upper class. The end being that the upper class is too ashamed to actually consume those services if it means looking at a person...well, that's sort of a delicious irony, isn't it?

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#234

Post by shiftpgdn » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

sbierwagen wrote: post #118

gojomo wrote: post #23

I'm looking forward to the day a small home robot can do the dishes, in the sink – replacing a dishwasher machine. This looks like a small step in that direction.

I just checked homedepot.com, and a search for "dishwasher" brings up options from $400 to $550. It would be.... optimistic... to expect any household robot for anywhere near the same price to do that job as well and as durably as a conventional dishwasher. Which, I should point out, can wash dishes for years with no maintenance at all! In fact, you can write news stories about the idea that dishwashers require any k…

I can't toss a plate covered in food (or even really food residue) into the dishwasher. When I can do that I'll be happy with the under sink contraptions we have now.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#235

Post by ColanR » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

bawana wrote: post #198

deepaksurti wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Personally, though, I would bet on dedicated, single-purpose robots, working together through wireless communication. Robonix Philosophy at play here, inspired from Unix philosophy [1] - Make each robot do one thing well - Expect the output of every robot to become the input to another - Design and build robots to be tried early, ideally within weeks - Use robots in preference to unskilled help to lighten a chore…

Difference is : robots take up a lot more space. Having multiple simple robots leads to traffic in the real world and taking away space that humans could use. If robots could be like bosons that would be better

I'm not actually sure that's a difference. On the old systems where that philosophy was developed, disk space was at a premium. In fact, IIRC, the lack of space precipitated the need for a modular system of the sort described by the Unix philosophy.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#236

Post by smolder » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #42

lnsru wrote: post #38

Robots have a big problem - price tag. Research robot for $18k, Spot for $75k, single robot arm moving stuff from A to B - $50k+. How many organizations can afford that? No wonder, that robot adoption is extremely slow.

If something like this succeeds to the point of mass production, I could easily see the retail price been cut by 75% or more. That might be a big "if", though. I imagine a bit of the current price tag is "we want serious purchasers who will be partners in the development of this device"; they don't want to build them for people who will just dick around with it for a bit and then relegate it to the corner of the room…

Yeah I don't think the world needs household robots that are disposable. I'd expect them to be a similar investment to a high end car in the interest of a lower total cost of ownership over long timeframes. It would ultimately be very expensive to make wave upon wave of "cheap" high tech landfill fodder.

What I'd like to see is standardized interchangeable parts and configurable software so we can spec robots to their tasks and benefit from reuse of parts and code as much as possible.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#237

Post by altcognito » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #131

spyckie2 wrote: post #26

Things it can't do: - go up stairs - get up after a fall / reset itself - pick up heavy objects - precise motion (so no cooking) - interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard) The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clea…

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares? A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year. Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost mu…

I can tell you there is a huge market for something that works well in the 40-50k range. You are vastly, vastly underestimating this market.

Hotels have a variety of tasks they would love to replace a host of low cost labor with robots with.

Someone in a higher income bracket wouldn’t think twice about that cost if it did significant work. On the other hand, the bar is high (cleaning, folding, picking up -- all are still fairly challenging AI problems, to say nothing of the "business" logic that would go into it).

Then you've got that quality servos are expensive. Some of that can resolved with volume, but not all of it.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#238

Post by bananamerica » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #131

spyckie2 wrote: post #26

Things it can't do: - go up stairs - get up after a fall / reset itself - pick up heavy objects - precise motion (so no cooking) - interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard) The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clea…

> I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the house The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human fares? A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year. Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its price over 4 years, its initial cost mu…

That’s obviously not just about cost. Human beings have schedules and lives of their own. They must eat, drink, shit, fuck, and watch Netflix. I cannot keep a human being in my closet to serve me anytime I want. I’d be willing to pay a premium for a mindless servant that’s available nearly 100% of time.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#239

Post by leetcrew » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

Noos wrote: post #233

leetcrew wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a human cleaner isn't really a perfect substitute for a robot. people might feel uncomfortable with having a human worker in their house for a variety of reasons. most people I know actually clean their whole house before the cleaning service shows up. you don't have to feel guilt/embarrassment at the state of your house when the robot starts working. I could imagine a lot of people might be willing to pay a premium…

There's something darkly funny about people so embarrassed to have a cleaning person in their house, that they create a solution that would put most cleaning people out of a job. The knowledge workers automate jobs away, leading pundits to say the future for low-skilled workers is to provide boutique services for the upper class. The end being that the upper class is too ashamed to actually consume those services if…

there's definitely some irony to it. I do think a significant motivation for automating stuff is to avoid firsthand confrontation with the reality of capitalism. some people don't necessarily feel uncomfortable with the power dynamic though; they're just embarrassed that another human sees how unclean their living space is. someone might also worry about theft, or they might not like having to be in their house at a certain time each week to let the workers in. it can also just feel like a general loss of privacy in your home.

Re: Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

#240

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

semi_good wrote: post #68

> ex googler Does this mean we get lots of hype and an inferior product that is eventually phased out an replaced by an acquisition built by non-google engineers?

When I read "ex googler", my first thought was that so many people have gone through Google by now that it's no longer a big distinction.