361–370 of 398 posts
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Curious why you feel they won’t get the tech down? I think these products are all data plays right now.
Latency, unless we get instantaneous comms working there will always be lag. Annoying when you play games, likely expensive when the robot keeps breaking things.
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Given how incapable my robotic vacuums and lawnmowers have proven to be, even after several years of iterations, I’d almost prefer if it was all teleoperation and it would hopefully unlock a huge amount of additional tasks it could preform. This would essentially let me hire a human housekeeper at a global vs local wage which is very appealing.
It's not a bad business idea, but has dystopian vibes. The human doesn't have to travel to the job site, they don't need to be paid a wage that allows them to exist in an expensive city, and they can watch N screens simultaneously, intervening only when needed. Maybe 1 OOM greater throughput per human-hour. The human teleoperator is also valuable non-public training data, which is part of the learning flywheel. That…
My in-laws have a full time live in housekeeper that costs $500 per month. And where she’s from, this is a huge opportunity that she went to “maid school” for and many consider excellent compensation. She’s able to send this money home and provides for many family members and has amassed a bit of a real estate empire back home. But, she is absentee. She lives away and rarely gets to visit only about 2-3 weeks a year. So I feel that’s quite sad. They obviously don’t live in the US, because this employment would cost many times more here and probably impossible to even get the proper visas.
Now if this maid was able to live in her village, with her family, and make the same income but perform her tasks through a robot then I think she’d see immediate value in that. So would consumers in America who would love to have housekeepers but can’t afford the local labor rates. Even if you can afford some here, you could get much more for the same budget. A lot of Americans pay this rate for 1-2 cleanings per month, that’s dumb money if you could spend it on something that would sweep up every crumb the day it hit the ground.
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Look, I mean, would you really object to a human cleaner showing up every day and putting away your laundry? If the answer is "no" then what's the difference if the human cleaner is not physically present but instead teleoperating a robot? I mean at least the robot won't ever need to use the loo. I'm a bit fastidious like that but I don't like it when strangers sit on my loo. (Friends too. Why can't we have a robotic…
Generally when people have a house cleaner they know who it is and have some form of relationship with them that establishes a baseline of trust. That would not exist here.
And if robot companies were prepared to drop the pretense of robotic autonomy and sell you a by-default teleoperated robot service instead, you could always directly communicate with your robot's teleoperator while they're doing their job. Just talk to the robot, and the teleoperator replies, yes?
"Is Isaac 1 teleoperated? Isaac 1 is autonomous for Laundry Flow and Daily Reset by default, with teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee we complete tasks." Offline and autonomous or never in my house.
Look, I mean, would you really object to a human cleaner showing up every day and putting away your laundry? If the answer is "no" then what's the difference if the human cleaner is not physically present but instead teleoperating a robot? I mean at least the robot won't ever need to use the loo. I'm a bit fastidious like that but I don't like it when strangers sit on my loo. (Friends too. Why can't we have a robotic…
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Tele-operation through a video feed(?) inside my home. Yeah that sounds pretty creepy
It'll be about a week before the first reported incident of some operator sending it into bathroom/bedroom while occupied to watch.
> The company says the robot completes Laundry Flow and Daily Reset tasks autonomously by default, but uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion. Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
Given how incapable my robotic vacuums and lawnmowers have proven to be, even after several years of iterations, I’d almost prefer if it was all teleoperation and it would hopefully unlock a huge amount of additional tasks it could preform. This would essentially let me hire a human housekeeper at a global vs local wage which is very appealing.
The key is when the robot can use all the same tools you can, the generalist robot has a value high enough to pay for this technology.
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Do I care? The job gets done and I don’t have to bother with letting someone physically into my home. As a parent this seems godsent if it works as advertised just for its overnight reset. Now if they can’t make the autonomy work to maintain the economics then I’d need an exit clause but other than that, have at it boss.
The risk is that this does not scale, they run out of money, the robot won't work any more, and you payed a lot for nothing.
> The company says the robot completes Laundry Flow and Daily Reset tasks autonomously by default, but uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion. Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
If I'm gonna be an early adopter and give them such valuable training data, they should at least give me stock options
While I find robots cool they just don't literally "fit" in an average flat or house I lived in majority of my life. In order to squeeze one more member into your average household the lil thing needs to justify refurbishing the entire place so it can actually operate there without being a nuisance. Reminds of how my relative spent quite a bit of time making sure an old house being renovated was flat enough so automa…
It doesn't need to have a sleeping surface or stay sprawled out when it isn't in use. It could bunch up into a little ball and fit in the corner of your ceiling. And it doesn't need to be the size of an adult to do most household stuff, some of the unitree ones are really short in stature, a foldable step stool for reaching upper cabinets or changing lightbulbs is probably enough. A bigger issue is whether it can rea…
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It'll be about a week before the first reported incident of some operator sending it into bathroom/bedroom while occupied to watch.
I am sure one of these companies will fuck up and do that. But for the most part, that kind of problem is pretty easy to avoid. Any company using computer vision knows that now, and has high standards of operation (usually by contracting with companies that then have that incentive) to stop that from happening.
Therefore the responsibility is always 5 steps removed