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Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

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Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#41

Post by robobenjie »

dylan604 wrote: post #28
robobenjie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great one. The manipulation is hard, but we're probably on a trajectory to be able to do it in 1-3 years if you were tolerant of some risk to the baby, but, of course, your tolerance for injuring babies is basically zero. I think 'risk & reliability' is a good potential category: there is the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that we got a video' and the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough…

> your tolerance for injuring babies is basically zero. Um, no it's not. Is absolutely zero tolerance. There is not weasel words out of this. If a robot was to cause any pain to the baby, there would be no remorse. There would be no front of mind thoughts to not repeat the same thing the next time. There would be no guilt for causing pain to the baby. Why you would "basically" this the way you have is disturbing.

Sorry, this is me communicating like an engineer. In a technical sense risk of anything can only approach zero: never actually get there. I meant that there should be essentially zero chance, similar to holding a baby in your arms or putting it in a high chair, and probably less chance of injury than driving in a car with a baby in a car-seat. Basically zero.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#42

Post by ubj »

Platinum Medal: Complete a gold medal task in the presence of multiple children between the ages of 3 and 8. The children must remain safe throughout (and after) the entire process.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#43

Post by inasio »

calepayson wrote: post #34
nancyminusone wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go for something in the manipulation of ropes or wires. State of the art seems to be that they can untangle a loosely knotted cord. Untying a short rope with a tightly pulled overhand knot in the middle seems like it's decades away. You have to be able to grip it well enough, then twist the rope and push (even though every physicist says pushing a rope is impossible).

Belaying a climber would be a hilarious (and fraught) gold medal challenge.

There are already robots that do that (autobelayers)...

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#44

Post by fgbarben »

trhway wrote: post #30
bnjmn wrote: post #18

Here's a use case that seems more science fictional to me (as the parent of a 2yo) than warp drive: a robot that can gently restrain an uncooperative human baby while changing its diaper, with everything that entails: identifying and eliminating all traces of waste from all crevices, applying diaper cream as necessary, unfolding and positioning the new diaper correctly and quickly, always using enough but never too m…

> a baby some robot neglects to prevent from falling off the changing table that is when we think about 2 handed robots. 6 handed robot can easily have 2-3 hands assigned to tightly keeping the baby. Humanoid robots are handicapped by their similarity to humans which is really an artificial constraint. After all we aren't building airplanes using birds as the blueprint. On the similar note - while not about baby, was…

won't the baby feel dis-abled by only having two arms?

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#45

Post by tintor »

Onavo wrote: post #38
bnjmn wrote: post #18

Here's a use case that seems more science fictional to me (as the parent of a 2yo) than warp drive: a robot that can gently restrain an uncooperative human baby while changing its diaper, with everything that entails: identifying and eliminating all traces of waste from all crevices, applying diaper cream as necessary, unfolding and positioning the new diaper correctly and quickly, always using enough but never too m…

Why? There's nothing particularly special about this problem. I would bet a year for an alpha version, and production version in 5 years. We are not exactly limited by mechanical engineering here, there's nothing particularly unique about the human hand that can't be replicated. Tele operated surgical robotics have been a thing for decades. Give it a few months for the multimodal robotic VLM/LAMs to catch up. In many…

> there's nothing particularly unique about the human hand that can't be replicated

Humanity is far from replicating / matching performance of human hand.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#46

Post by trhway »

fgbarben wrote: post #44
trhway wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a baby some robot neglects to prevent from falling off the changing table that is when we think about 2 handed robots. 6 handed robot can easily have 2-3 hands assigned to tightly keeping the baby. Humanoid robots are handicapped by their similarity to humans which is really an artificial constraint. After all we aren't building airplanes using birds as the blueprint. On the similar note - while not about baby, was…

won't the baby feel dis-abled by only having two arms?

On the other hand - the baby will from the beginning develop an instinct to keep track of 6 hands flying around instead of just 2. Will help in future street fights :)

In general, looking at the AI coding agents i think we all either already feel or soon will feel disabled. And honestly i think human race with its perception of itself as the "top of the Creation" is due for a modesty lesson to help speed up the evolution. We're spending tremendous resources unproductively, be it wars or just ineffective economies, etc. We don't feel the urge to develop our civilization and to evolve ourselves in all aspects - from mental and biological to cyber-integration. The Mother Nature doesn't like such relaxed species.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#47

Post by nerdsniper »

robotresearcher wrote: post #25
bnjmn wrote: post #18

Here's a use case that seems more science fictional to me (as the parent of a 2yo) than warp drive: a robot that can gently restrain an uncooperative human baby while changing its diaper, with everything that entails: identifying and eliminating all traces of waste from all crevices, applying diaper cream as necessary, unfolding and positioning the new diaper correctly and quickly, always using enough but never too m…

> It would require an entirely different kind of robotics. I was 100% with you until suddenly this technical claim pops out. You might feel this way, and might be right, but why ? Changing a diaper is crazy hard, I absolutely agree, but you seem to be just declaring from vibes that we 'require an entirely different kind of robotics'. Can you put your finger on why this is true? Not nitpicking for the fun of it - I'm…

The main limitation right now is that robotics are very limited in their sense of touch.

After that, they are limited in their understanding of physics. After that, perhaps understanding of physics and physiology would come into play - but perhaps superhuman perception and reaction time could reduce the need for intuitive understanding physics and physiology.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#48

Post by numpad0 »

Can I say something: could you all please stop inserting contaminated tool back into a jar of food? You use a clean tool to take out the amount you eat, and that's it.

You can put it back if the tool had touched nothing but: air, the food in the jar, and your hand at the operating end. Otherwise, that butter knife stays on your dish for the rest of the meal. The exception would be if you cleaned the tool, like bare minimum by wiping with a brand new piece of tissue paper(but that's kind of wasteful).

Is that an outrageous ask? I know it's probably not a huge deal, like free water and such, and my techniques are that of total amateur being never professionally involved in medical and/or bio science fields, but just, how can you stand possible breadcrumbs IN THE JAR!?

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#49

Post by iainmerrick »

robobenjie wrote: post #2

Hey Hacker News. Curious if folks feel like I'm missing categories of challenge.

Making a bed.

You need to manipulate a large sheet, and you probably need to move around, bend down and lean over to reach all the corners. Bonus points for neat hospital corners on a flat sheet.

Putting pillows in pillowcases is another fun one. Usually pretty easy, probably a bronze medal.

Gold medal: put a UK super king size duvet inside a duvet cover. It's huge and awkward, there are buttons, and it's almost but not quite square (why??) so there's a good chance you'll get it round the wrong way and have to rotate it 90 degrees.

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