Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

figure.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 417 posts

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#241

Post by IshKebab »

consumer451 wrote: post #136
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #128

Folks are very critical. Consider: this is the worst they will ever be. You improve one robot at one task, they all can share that training. It will only get better from here.

I know that a video can be faked, cherry-picked, etc. Even knowing all that, I find this to be significant advancement, scary, and very cool. People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to me.

It's HN. One of the most negative places on the internet in my experience.

I guess it's kind of natural because when you agree with stuff there's not much value saying "yes this is right" but if you disagree then you generally have a lot to say about why.

But also I think there are a lot of curmudgeons here. Back in my day we didn't need no stinkin robots and AI and toktik. And anyway I could make a way better robot, this is no big deal.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#243

Post by jppope »

xdennis wrote: post #224
jppope wrote: post #105

Correct me if I'm wrong here but humanoid consumer robots are basically smoke and mirrors right now because the unit economics are so bad. Even the baxter robot was targeting small business because the lowest price point you could get was $40,000 for something that would have to work 24 hours to do something a human would do in an hour or two. Having a robot do chores at home is an even worse financial position. Anyo…

I'm surprised people are so negative here. Compared with generative AI (which steals work, and replaces the part people like about their jobs: creativity), the promise of humanoid robots is that they'll do the my chores, while I focus on the important stuff. What surprises me is that people can't see this for what it is: early steps. As an aside, the first steam engine was created by the Greeks 2000 years ago, but th…

So my take is actually the opposite from the callout here- I think vaporware/demos being sold as real products are hurtful to actual technology being developed. When someone creates a vaporware product with well developed marketing that doesn't work out, actual consumers lose enthusiasm/interest for real development in the area. Investment in the area will slow down.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#244

Post by blackguardx »

93po wrote: post #236
aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure that task needs a humanoid robot An industrial robot arm with air powered suction cups would do the trick... https://bostondynamics.com/products/stretch/ ... ... So the task they work best at is the task there is already cheaper better robots specialized for.

I think the use case here is smaller to medium size businesses that don't need a $150k suction robot arm 24/7, but do need 24/7 help with warehousing, packaging, restocking, taking inventory, sorting mailing, applying shipping labes, etc. With a single humanoid robot you can do all that for, at some point, possibly as low as $20k for a one-time robot purchase.

Why do you think a humanoid robot will be cheaper than a robot arm?

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#245

Post by eulgro »

tyre wrote: post #145
kibwen wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For LLMs, the input is text, and the output is text. By the time of GPT-2, the internet contained enough training data to make training an interesting LLM feasible (as judged by its ability to output convincing text). We are nowhere near the same for autonomous robots, and it's not even funny. To continue to use the internet as an analogy for LLMs, we are pre-DARPANET, pre-ASCII, pre-transistor. We don't even have th…

I would guess Amazon has a ridiculous amount of access to training data in its warehouses. Video, package sizes, weights, sorting. I’m sure they could pretty easily spin up a site with 200 of these processing packages of most sizes (they have a limited number of standardized package sizes) nonstop. Remove ones that it gets right 99.99% of the time and keep training on the more difficult ones, the move to individual i…

A more efficient way might be to train them in simulation. If you simulate a warehouse environment and use that to pre-train a million robots in parallel at 100x real time learning would go much faster. Then you can fine tune on reality for details missed by the simulation environment.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#246

Post by numpad0 »

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…

Ridiculous, but ironically I think walking robots as self-relocating computers might be the most readily viable.

Small servers with console, PA speakers, field metrology or data acquisition machines, those things could have the lower torso or two for this and relocated as needed. The PhD guys can just park the truck and let those deploy wherever AI thinks >65% suitable for human use on their own, instead of users burning 15% of brain juice thinking and executing that. That would be immensely useful.

(also re: hotels that others are commenting, there were never technical reasons the door keycard readers couldn't ever had doubled as credit card readers - I think the reason why clerks are required is for sanity check, that the guests aren't in need of immediate safety/health assistance and ok to proceed to beds)

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#247

Post by Animats »

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…

That's the problem.

An obvious application, if this robot could do it, is retail store shelf restocking. That's a reasonably constrained pick and place task, some mobility is necessary, and the humanoid form is appropriate working in aisles and shelves spaced for humans. How close is that?

It's been tried before. In 2020.[1] And again in 2022.[2] That one runs on a track, is closer to an traditional industrial robot, and is used by 7-11 Japan.

Robots that just cruise around stores and inspect the shelves visually are in moderately wide use. They just compare the shelf images with the planogram; they don't handle the merchandise. So there are already systems to help plan the restocking task.

Technical University Delft says their group should be able to do this in five years.[3] (From when? No date on press release.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHgdW1HYLbM

[2] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/telexistence-convenience-store...

[3] https://www.tudelft.nl/en/stories/articles/shelf-stocking-ro...

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#248

Post by consumer451 »

IshKebab wrote: post #241
consumer451 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that a video can be faked, cherry-picked, etc. Even knowing all that, I find this to be significant advancement, scary, and very cool. People being super negative about this is a bit surprising to me.

It's HN. One of the most negative places on the internet in my experience. I guess it's kind of natural because when you agree with stuff there's not much value saying "yes this is right" but if you disagree then you generally have a lot to say about why. But also I think there are a lot of curmudgeons here. Back in my day we didn't need no stinkin robots and AI and toktik . And anyway I could make a way better robot…

> there's not much value saying "yes this is right"

This is a major flaw in social media/forums that distorts public opinion so very much.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#249

Post by ChadNauseam »

dylan604 wrote: post #181
foxglacier wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exaggerating. The images were from paid staff who had the vacuums in their homes to collect data, including images. They knew that was happening. iRobot said the devices were labeled with a bright green sticker that read “video recording in progress,”

I'm exaggerating? I provided receipts. If you have an exaggeration issue, it's not with me, and you'd do well to improve your aim

What you said is an exaggeration of the information you linked.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#250

Post by jayd16 »

Can we just slap some arms on a washer/dryer combo unit if we think that'll work? We skip having to design bi-pedal balance, increase the power envelope, and greatly reduce scope and cost.

Surely there's a market for an appliance that can load, wash, dry, fold where the only human interaction is dumping the clothes and soap within arm's reach.

Post reply on HN