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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

figure.ai

331–340 of 417 posts

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were plenty of digital circuit engineers back in the 90s that said microprocessors were general and inefficient solutions to problems. And if you needed it programmable, well an FPGA was still almost as general and far more efficient than a microprocessor. Guess what won.

As a hardware engineer I hear this a lot from software/electrical folks. It's Moore's law that largely drove what you describe. Moore's law only applies to semiconductors. Gears, motors and copper wire are not going to get 10x faster/cheaper every 18 months or whatever. 10 years from now gears will cost more, they will cost what they cost now plus inflation. I've literally heard super smart YC founders say they just…

Think about cars. Their manufacturers work really hard on efficient (cost and performance). And what people do with them is a very different story. It could see the same happening with robots.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#332
post #144
post #135

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 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…

Three mistakes in an hour isn’t terrible, especially if that’s the last generation. As another commenter put it, this is the worst it’s ever going to be.

> this is the worst it’s ever going to be.

People keep parroting this line, but it's not a given, especially for such an ill-defined metric as "better". If I ask an LLM how its day was, there's no one right answer. (Users anthropomorphizing the LLM is a given these days, no matter how you may feel about that.)

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human form robots are a case of Jake of all trades and master of none. Sure I have a dishwasher thats more efficient at doing the job than me but I still end up doing dishes because the cast iron frying pan can't going in there without ruining the polymerised layer of oils that have been baked into it and i would have to repeatedly oil and reheat it and stink up the house with smoke reseasoning it afterwards, and I h…

The real question, is whether the humanoid robot will ever be cheaper than hiring immigrant labour. Because that's a pretty damn low threshold

There isn't enough migrant to do all labor east asia will need as its population gets quickly older. Plus the societal aspiration of culture dissemination isn't there.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#334

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.

> within a couple iterations, be able to perform most of your household tasks without issue. There goes all those plumbing jobs that we, the white collar, were told we should be doing after LLMs take our jobs. edit: typo

Do you honestly believe most people would let one of these in to their house ?

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#335

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.

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Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#336
post #115
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now the question is if this is GPT-2 and we’re a decade away from autonomous androids given some scaling and tweaks, or if autonomous androids is just an extremely hard problem.

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…

Time will tell if that's true. We don't have the same corpus of data, that's true, but what we do have is the ability to make a digital twin, where the robot practices in a virtual world, what would happen. It can do 10,000 jumping jacks every hour, parallelized across a whole GPU supercomputer, and that data can be fed in as training data.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#337

Even if its just a demo its really slick. Tech has come a long way. Can't say I want to talk to a droid to check-in at a hotel or bump into one at home all the time but I'm sure there are some obvious civilian use cases around.

Yotel and others have already transitioned to an app/kiosk-based hotel check in system.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im willing to bet 95% of American homes have a pile of laundry they would very much like a robot to wash, dry, fold, and put away while they go to their jobs during the week so they can have more free time on the weekends

The robot doesnt even have to do laundry in a smart, efficient, or speedy way, it can be much slower than a human as long as it gets it done before the next week has arrived it is helping countless people

Assuming it's quiet. If it takes six hours to fold clothes in the middle of the night but it makes a racket while doing so, I could see that being a barrier to adoption.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#339
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…

A bit on the nose, and entirely serious: I moved to CA a decade ago to join a robotics company. I've since acquired a wife, house and dog. Wife loves to cook, and would love a 2nd dog that didn't choose me. I am a sucker for DIY. If I were in an apartment still, with no pets... i.e. lots less chores to do (hooray hybrid work!)... I'd be seriously considering roles at Figure, which is 100% in-office instead. (their of…

Ask retirees how they like being retired. Some of them love it, but others can't stand it and go back and find something to do.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#340

Cameras in the hands is a pretty killer idea, why do things on hard-mode when you can throw extra data at the problem?

I won't be alive for the era when we're able to bio engineer beings that have eyes in their hands, but you just gave me a new idea to sit down with ChatGPT and have a nice chat about.

Also, now that I've typed that out, "sit down with ChatGPT and have a nice chat about." is a helluva thing to say.

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