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Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

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81–90 of 98 posts

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#81

How do you plan on competing with existing Chinese manufacturers. Unitree for instance sells there robots at a reasonable price and already has walking working.

Well, I believe the competition up until now has mostly been on hardware, but moving forward it will mostly be in software. I don't think we will be outcompeted by Unitree on software. And I hope to capitalize on our engagement with the open source community in a way that Unitree has not.

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#82
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the basic robot is just a robot, albeit with open-source software and hardware For compute - we're exploring a few boards right now, but the base model will be something from Amlogic and the higher end model will be something from Nvidia

nice! For manipulation taskes, is kscale planning to train in sim mostly and transferring to real, or is some imitation learning used, like with gloves and such? maybe both? Appreciate it

I think we will just focus on making really great, low-cost hardware and a nice SDK, and let other people experiment with different approaches on the intelligence layer.

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#84
post #74

Is there any doc on the hand? It looks surprisingly cheap.

We try to sell it for a fair price while still making money. Actually I think there will be comparably priced humanoids coming out from other companies soon

Sorry maybe I should have been more specific. I had Unitree in mind, last time I checked the humanoid with no hands was $20k and each hand was an extra $20k. Yours seems to ship with 2 hands for extra $1k (surprisingly cheap, which is great of course!). I was curious to read more about what the hands are capable of doing.

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#85

I give you a lot of credit for your communication and openness. I am afraid full-autonomy is a fairy tale to rationalize the ungodly expense of LLMs, I personally would find taking money on spec for something like fully autonomous robotics to be a little shaky, ethically speaking. But then, I don't believe this is an unsolved problem, I believe this is an unsolvable problem, so more of a philosophical difference than…

I think it's a very hard problem, but I would like to align our company's incentives towards solving it

Great. Another problem for us to solve, how defend ourselves from your robots.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#86
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We try to sell it for a fair price while still making money. Actually I think there will be comparably priced humanoids coming out from other companies soon

Sorry maybe I should have been more specific. I had Unitree in mind, last time I checked the humanoid with no hands was $20k and each hand was an extra $20k. Yours seems to ship with 2 hands for extra $1k (surprisingly cheap, which is great of course!). I was curious to read more about what the hands are capable of doing.

Oh I see. Yes, we're currently exploring a few different five finger hand options - we will choose whichever option provides the best value. I actually quite like the Inspire hands and we might be able to get a volume discount

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#87
Cool.

But this looks like an expensive toy.

The stuff of nightmares is this being adapted by the DoD. I can almost imagine your website as a scene in the prologue of a terminator like movie.

Nightmare 2 is this becomes a companion of some sort. Detroit Become Human goes into this. You have a theme of the robots basically wanting freedom. Which throws out a moral conundrum, if someone buys an AGI enabled bot just to be mean to it, have they done anything wrong.

I like technology , but this feels like step one to a whole lot of weird stuff.

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#88

Cool. But this looks like an expensive toy. The stuff of nightmares is this being adapted by the DoD. I can almost imagine your website as a scene in the prologue of a terminator like movie. Nightmare 2 is this becomes a companion of some sort. Detroit Become Human goes into this. You have a theme of the robots basically wanting freedom. Which throws out a moral conundrum, if someone buys an AGI enabled bot just to b…

I suspect that these kinds of things will happen with or without my involvement. Assuming that they do, I would rather that a good open source option exists

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#89

Cool. But this looks like an expensive toy. The stuff of nightmares is this being adapted by the DoD. I can almost imagine your website as a scene in the prologue of a terminator like movie. Nightmare 2 is this becomes a companion of some sort. Detroit Become Human goes into this. You have a theme of the robots basically wanting freedom. Which throws out a moral conundrum, if someone buys an AGI enabled bot just to b…

I suspect that these kinds of things will happen with or without my involvement. Assuming that they do, I would rather that a good open source option exists

Aren't there ways to legally forbid reusing anything you made for war like purposes?

Re: Launch HN: K-Scale Labs (YC W24) – Open-Source Humanoid Robots

#90

Cool. But this looks like an expensive toy. The stuff of nightmares is this being adapted by the DoD. I can almost imagine your website as a scene in the prologue of a terminator like movie. Nightmare 2 is this becomes a companion of some sort. Detroit Become Human goes into this. You have a theme of the robots basically wanting freedom. Which throws out a moral conundrum, if someone buys an AGI enabled bot just to b…

DoD has Boston Dynamics? I think this is like the Llama. Give everyone else a play.
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