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Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

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Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#81

Post by thelastgallon »

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…

I'm sure this can be done. Boss Baby already shows how to accomplish this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxkB20Tpvx0

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#82

Post by camillomiller »

shubb wrote: post #53
robotresearcher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think it needs a water gun. If the diaper was a spray on layered rubber, like a sponge then an impermeable layer, and then you sprayed a solvent to clear the old diaper and poop and then spray on a new one. You'd just need to slot them into styrups briefly or some socks on strings to move the legs into a good position. But can this be done with baby skin and lung safe chemicals at a reasonable temperature? Point be…

Yeah I also think we should just replace the baby with a spherical squishy lump of celluloid-wrapped fat with no limbs. Much more convenient.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#83

Post by thelastgallon »

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…

This should be achievable once hand job robots are widely deployed and proven to be safe. Men are usually sacrificed first and I'm sure there will be volunteers.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#84

Post by duck »

robobenjie wrote: post #63
iainmerrick wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is my favorite suggestion. All of them are super hard, but - Bronze: pillow in pillow case - Silver: Make a bed with fitted sheet, flat sheet and blanket - Gold: put a duvet in a duvet cover Feels like it would be a good option for a round 2...

Most humans would be hard pressed to get a gold medal in this one.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#85

Post by Onavo »

imtringued wrote: post #68
Onavo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The point is that the success rate needs to be 99% and safety needs to be 100%. You're not allowed to take shortcuts. That's what makes it difficult. Also VLMs/LAMs aren't going to cut it. You're going to need something like TDMPC.

TDMPC for one of the downstream networks perhaps, but the upstream will have to be some sort of reasoning model if you want it to be general purpose w.r.t. babies.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#86

Post by satonakamoto »

A wonderful article, truly insightful. But it feels more like a series of challenges than the Olympics. This is the Humanoid Robot Olympics held in China earlier this year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y-tElcmJVE Instead of focusing on individual technical, it requires completing comprehensive movement tasks. For example, long-distance running tests battery managment and durable of joint, while boxing tests flexibility and coordination. Many participating teams or manufacturers, after failing, return to tackle the specific issues they encountered. This process drives the progress of the entire industry. In my view, this is worthy of being called an Olympic Game—in both form and spirit.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#87

Post by eru »

trhway wrote: post #57
dylan604 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

real world treatment of babies is very different from the zero tolerance you've described. From pregnant mothers smoking/drinking to medical care unavailability to doctor errors to various toxin contaminated baby products and the environment (Flint leaded water comes to mind) to babies left in hot cars and other abuse to poor availability of daycare (even less availability of daycare good for mental development) to .…

> From pregnant mothers smoking/drinking to medical care unavailability to doctor errors to various toxin contaminated baby products and the environment [...]

You don't even need to go so extreme. Driving involves risk. And so does getting out of bed at all (or staying in bed..)

If the chance of the robot hurting your kid becomes orders of magnitude smaller than the chance of getting hit by a freak asteroid, you can probably call that save enough, even if it's not strictly speaking zero.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#88

Post by eru »

Retric wrote: post #60
robotresearcher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Zero failure rates not just 0.000…1 are a very different and unrealistic bar. Software must be treated as actively malicious from a hardware standpoint from multiple bit flip errors etc. So it comes down to designing hardware capable of the task that’s also incapable of causing harm even with hardware defects etc. Meanwhile it must also be strong enough to move and restrain a range of infants which is a level of forc…

You can't get to zero failures.

You might always get hit by a freak accident. Or an unlucky combination of cosmic rays replaces all your software (including all the redundant and fail safe systems) all at once.

This is all extremely unlikely, but not literally 0.

Note: I specifically mention an unlucky combination of cosmic rays. You can protect against a single or even a handful of cosmic rays just fine.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#89

Post by eru »

dmoy wrote: post #76
numpad0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never actually... I think the key for the machine is to secure the baby in such ways that the pelvis stays at the same position in space, without breaking bones or tearing muscles. That's normally not possible because a human hand isn't big enough and grippy enough to hold them that way, and that allows the baby to slip out or wiggle around. But if you could, and if the I-shaped types of diapers are tolerated, then t…

> washing the bottom What about washing all the other places where baby's poop can get? (Legs, feet, hands, arms with some difficulty, all the way up the back, etc)

Showerhead can still do that.

You can pretty much put water everywhere on a human body, as long as you make sure that they can still breath.

Legs and arms and the back etc are fairly trivial to clean with a showerhead. Skinfolds are where I would expect problems.

Btw, your system doesn't need to handle all corner cases of cleaning to be useful. It needs to not hurt anyone (in all cases); handle most common cases of cleaning; and ideally alert you when it can't clean some spots.

But even a system that can't alert you is still useful for a parent, because the parent can still look over the child afterwards.

Re: Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

#90

Post by eru »

temp_praneshp wrote: post #65
numpad0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why that would be so hard. This is potentially easier than reliably shooting guns at people. That machine will look like a bean bag couch in rough shape of a giant human hand, with few of cooperative work robotic arms. The couch part hugs and secures all limbs of the baby to into the party escort submission position, then the cobots move in to find the disassembly markers on the diaper to tear it open to…

> This is potentially easier than reliably shooting guns at people. I suspect the shooting guns robots will be used against populations the owner considers sub-human, and reliability (accuracy in this context) is not a concern as long as it doesn't turn around 180degs.

You know they are adding AI to drones fighting in Ukraine (on both sides). Mostly to deal with signalling scamming that prevents remote operators from controlling the drone.

Whether you consider your opponent in a war sub-human or not is completely irrelevant to all the engineering problems you have to solve here.

Reliability is absolutely important, because you want that opposing tank or helicopter or soldier etc to no longer be opposing you. (But, of course, reliability is only one aspect, and engineers make lots and lots of trade-offs.)

What context do you have in mind where you need a robot to shoot people?

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