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Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

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Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#301
post #218

I've kind of given up on humanoid robotics, because of how bad the actuators are. There has been no innovation in robotic actuators since Honda's Asimo. There's just no way that someone wants a 80kg wobbling tin can in their home or workplace. My bet is that the final robotic revolution will use genetically modified human/animal bodies with replaced brains. You'll have to stretch your ethics a bit, but if you grow a…

I could not disagree more with the claim about no improvement in robotic actuators.

The torque density and price of actuators has fallen dramatically since Ben Katz's MIT work on mini cheetah. The actuators on the Unitree G1 based on that work are powerful for their size and near quasi-direct-drive. The motors on the BD E-Atlas are completely passively cooled and appear to have really good torque density. Actuators have never been improving faster than they are now.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#302
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've had one for ~7 years and it's still going strong Interested. Which one?

Not OP, but I have a litter robot 3 that is still going strong after 10 years, and a litter robot 4 that is around four years old. The only problem I've run into is occasionally the pinch sensor will get bits of litter stuck in it and I have to take the globe off and tap/push on the sensor housing, then it will allow cycling again. Great machines! https://www.litter-robot.com/

Do you use it with multiple cats? I know they advertise it that way but I'm curious where the rubber meets the pavement.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#303

I'm a researcher at Deepmind that contributed to these models. (And the opinions here are my own) Just want to say, Deepmind is a great place to work and the only (Edit: one the few unique labs!) lab where you can move from large frontier models (Gemini), frontier open models (Gemma), robotics (what you see here), science (weather, biology, more) and basically any other topic related to intelligence. It's really an i…

Would you mind expanding on the difference between frontier model development and open model development? I was under the impression that they were nearly the same thing and would thus be handled by the same team. My impression is that open models tend to go through more safety testing and are generally smaller, but are otherwise the same thing. Shouldn't most of what is commonly referred to as 'AI research' be applicable to both?

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#304
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have emotions. Best avoided.

It's been said that people who do not have a high EQ gravitate towards tech, because machines are easier to understand than people.

I feel like people who have high EQ should actually grasp the infinite depth and complexity of even the median human.

Just imagine, there’s a woman Alice who cleans your home once a month. On this particular day, she had a fight with her husband this morning on (something completely unrelated to you).

Do you expect her to check her emotions at the door when she enters your space? Or is she going to give really bad vibes while she is moving around your house?

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#305
post #218

I've kind of given up on humanoid robotics, because of how bad the actuators are. There has been no innovation in robotic actuators since Honda's Asimo. There's just no way that someone wants a 80kg wobbling tin can in their home or workplace. My bet is that the final robotic revolution will use genetically modified human/animal bodies with replaced brains. You'll have to stretch your ethics a bit, but if you grow a…

The world can't support the number of bodies on it already, and you're proposing adding mindless meatbags that still need feeding and their waste managed? Are you going to accept an amazon package that's had giraffe poop sprayed on it while picking, or change your meat-robot's diaper? I didn't think so.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#308

These robots look slow and not very fluid in their motions, but LLMs like ChatGPT also looked very dumb initially. If progress is as fast as LLMs , this could have massive applications in a few years.

This is the first press videos I’ve seen of 1x speed that seems reasonable, imho. Though I see elsewhere they report only 50-75% success rate- not clear if that's first attempt, or total?

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#309
post #133

While Anthropic and Open AI get 80% of the attention here, it's impressive to see how much Google is doing: near frontier model, fast models, open weight models, image generation, video generation, music generation, robotics, etc.

It's certainly an odd situation where Google is on the forefront of all these emerging technologies while the latest chatbots from OpenAI and Anthropic are getting breathless press releases and wildly hyperbolic coverage ("rogue AIs" "too dangerous, must be banned" etc...) Google acting like a normal but competent company that's just chugging away, meanwhile the hype cycle is propping up its upstart competitors to tr…

Google wins on infrastructure and creativity (NotebookLM, etc) but entirely lacks product coherence. The ecosystem is a mess, just like Microsoft's offering, and I don't think this is a coincidence but rather a symptom of the type of company in which these two companies have evolved.

Furthermore, Gemini is just all around a less trustworthy and mature model, for many reasons. Very smart but lacking the precision and holistically exhibited in the more recent models from OpenAI and Anthropic. On the flip side, Google's work on Gemma is unmatched.

Re: Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> giraffes for warehouses. I’m not even sure if you are joking there or haven’t thought your proposal through. Sure giraffes are tall, but they can barelly lift any weight. What use would a robotically controlled giraffe be in a warehouse? > There has been no innovation in robotic actuators since Honda's Asimo. I very much doubt this. If nothing else the MIT Cheetah’s actuators are a whole different ballgame compared…

this is a tangent but you should revisit your assumptions about giraffe anatomy. their necks actually weigh a tremendous amount and are kept upright by an interesting system whereby they actually stretch this giant tendon to bend down and the tendon's tension lifts it back up. super cool to learn about - they dissect one in a documentary series I can't think of just now.

It was Richard Dawkins dissecting it IIRC in front of a lecture hall where he makes a point that if there were a God designing animals, he wouldn’t have made this insane thing.
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