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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

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Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#381

Post by letmevoteplease »

ActionHank wrote: post #369
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #161

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.

I think the point is that we all want a robot to do the laundry and pack the dishwasher, but basically no one wants to be greeted by a robot when they arrive at a hotel. They are selling it the way AI has been sold. This will replace everyone's jobs. Thing is everyone is tired now, so many pointless layoffs, massive bubble, "AI-First"-desperate-ass companies. Who will buy the robots if we are all unemployed?

I'd love to be greeted by a robot when arriving at a hotel. Of course there's the novelty factor, but even without that, self-checkouts show that many people prefer interacting with a machine over a human for service.

More importantly, who wants to stand behind a desk 8 hours a day and handle fussy customers? Probably some people, but the main motivation for the average hotel clerk is receiving money. Can we reorganize the economy so robots perform this kind of mundane work, while humans still receive money but can spend their time on more meaningful activities than standing behind a desk? I think a future like that is possible although it remains to be seen whether we will get it.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#382

Post by batch12 »

jkestner wrote: post #380
seanhunter wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t even remotely follow. Human work is designed for humans so if you want human work done you need a human to do it. If you want to replace the human the best bet is to redesign the work so that it can be done with machine assistance, which is what we’ve been doing since the industrial revolution. There’s a reason the motor car (which is the successful mass market personal transportation machine) doesn’t lo…

Technically, the motor car replaced the coach. A more accurate and enjoyable analogy would that car engines don’t look like horses.

hence horseless CARriage

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#383

Post by batch12 »

seanhunter wrote: post #352
jjaksic wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because human work is designed for humans. If you want a drop-in replacement for human workers, humanoid robots are your best bet.

That doesn’t even remotely follow. Human work is designed for humans so if you want human work done you need a human to do it. If you want to replace the human the best bet is to redesign the work so that it can be done with machine assistance, which is what we’ve been doing since the industrial revolution. There’s a reason the motor car (which is the successful mass market personal transportation machine) doesn’t lo…

I don't think that it's human work this would target, but instead work in shared human spaces.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#384

Post by [deleted] »

rishabhaiover wrote: post #231
Judgmentality wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk's approach is that if you have an infinite supply of fresh grads who really believe in you and are willing to work crazy hours, giving them a "next year" deadline is more likely to give you what you want than telling them "here's your slow-paced project you're gonna be working on for the next decade". And I guess he thinks to himself that some of them are going to burn out, but it's a sacrifice he's willing to…

I’d rather put my faith in his grand illusions than in your sanctimonious high priest pose.

[deleted]

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#385

Post by tiborsaas »

NewUser76312 wrote: post #140

People comparing this to GPT-2 is very interesting. While it sounds like a nice analogy or even a good story to investors, the fundamentals are very different. To train GPT, all of the training data (the internet of text, scanned books, etc) had already existed, even before the GPT project began. Arguably, the compute required (for GPT-3) also already existed, even before GPT-2. The GPT project really just came down…

> There's no analogy here to humanoid robotics.

We don't really need an analogy here as we just have to look at ourselves, we are the analogy. New training data comes from experiencing the world and learning from failed tasks.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#386

Post by MisterTea »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #161

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.

> Crazy to me how negative the comments are here.

The truth hurts. Humanoid robots are getting better designs and currently do have extraordinary capabilities. Thing is, they're all cherry picked demos from carefully crafted test scenarios.

Until these things are thoroughly proven IRL with random tasks thrown at them then we can talk about negative comments. Until then its all marketing BS.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#387

Post by ActionHank »

letmevoteplease wrote: post #381
ActionHank wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that we all want a robot to do the laundry and pack the dishwasher, but basically no one wants to be greeted by a robot when they arrive at a hotel. They are selling it the way AI has been sold. This will replace everyone's jobs. Thing is everyone is tired now, so many pointless layoffs, massive bubble, "AI-First"-desperate-ass companies. Who will buy the robots if we are all unemployed?

I'd love to be greeted by a robot when arriving at a hotel. Of course there's the novelty factor, but even without that, self-checkouts show that many people prefer interacting with a machine over a human for service. More importantly, who wants to stand behind a desk 8 hours a day and handle fussy customers? Probably some people, but the main motivation for the average hotel clerk is receiving money. Can we reorgani…

Maybe we live in different worlds, but I don’t know anyone who is especially happy when they get AI support rather than a human.

Services roles that are high contact / human interaction should have a human to deal with.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#388

Post by bchasknga »

timschmidt wrote: post #319
serf wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy. it's like positing about the future of robotics by looking at a sumo bot. what it IS , however, is a remarkable achievement of commoditization; getting a toy like that with those kind of motors would have been prohibitively expensive anywhere else in the world; but much like the Chinese 20k EV, it's not really a reliable marker for the actual future; in fact bottomed out p…

> the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy Only because it's not yet attached to a reasonable AI, which is my point. It's not going to do any heavy lifting, but it could easily do basic house chores like cleaning up, folding laundry, etc if it were. The actuators and body platform are there, and economies of scale already at work. I guess some folks just can't or won't put 2 and 2 together to predict the near futu…

Your reasonable AI cannot resolve the fact that its arm can only lift 2KG.

I am impressed by Unitree, but the problem that needs to be solved here is not just better software. Better hardware needs to come down in cost and weight to make the generalized robot argument more convincing.

There is still a long way to go for a humanoid to be a reasonable product, and that's not just a software issue.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#389

Post by iancmceachern »

542354234235 wrote: post #347
iancmceachern wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is not the gears, motors and copper wire that are bottlenecking robots. It is the software and computing. We can already build a robot hand that is faster, stronger, more dexterous, etc. than a human hand. What we can't do right now is make the software to perceive the world around it and utilize the hand to interact with it at human levels. That is something that needs computing power and effective software. Thos…

Yes, but the two (software and hardware) scale very differently.

Once software is "done" (we all know software is never done) you can just copy it and distribute it. It is negligiblehow much it costs to do so.

Once hardware is done you have to manufacture each and every piece of hardware with the same care, detail and reliability as the first one. You can't just click copy.

Often times you have to completely redesign the product to go from low volume high cost manufacturing to high volume low cost. A hand made McLaren is very different than an F-150.

The two simply scale differently, by nature of their beasts.

Re: Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

#390

Post by iancmceachern »

tim333 wrote: post #346
iancmceachern wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The nuts and bolts won't change much but the software/compute controlling the thing likely will.

But the nuts and Bolts need to be paid for and manufactured for each robot. The software needs to be done once and then they can just click copy.
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