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Probably both vision and dexterity, and the first mistake we make as roboticists/engineers might be to distinguish the two like they're separate problems to solve or that a solution exists where the two live a separate life.

https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dex...

>A humanoid robot takes roughly 5,000 steps per hour. Each step sends a shock of 2–3× body weight through the leg actuators—forces that would be fine occasionally, but become destructive when repeated thousands of times without pause.

As someone who comes from the world of running and knee problems, I feel this misses the issue. Normal walking should not produce these kinds of shocks unless your gait is really jumpy or otherwise screwed up. You only start to see these forces when running and that's where technique becomes important even for humans if you want to prevent damage to your joints over long distances. But at least for walking I suppose that a fully articulated humanoid with all the degrees of freedom of human gait should be mostly a control problem, not a mechanical engineering one.

I disagreed, then re-read your post, then re-read the OP, and now I've come full circle to apologize; I think you make a fair point.

I work at a biotech. We spent who knows how much time and money trying to develop a 'lab technician bot' to automate one of our critical assays. Turns out, a 6-figure machine still isn't as economical as my coworker Y, one of the veteran lab-technicians. Sure she takes the occasional sick day but even at our volume (and we do industrial-level, multiple clients batched into a single assay pass) it won't be economical to replace her for a very long time (if we even reach that scale).

But that does follow. The economics working is not some outside factor. If the robot “could do the task” but would cost more than paying a human to do the same task then the robot “does not work”. It is frequently because the robot would be too slow, or not reliable enough, or could only handle certain types of items. But ultimately all of these boil down to cost.

We have seen lab demoes of robotic manipulation for decades. The reason why they stay in the lab (when they do) and don’t become ubiquitous is because they are not good enough. In other words they don’t work. The economics and “does it work” is not two separate concerns but one and the same.

What is the point of humanoid “general” robots then? We already have pretty reliable ways to make and train humans. Humans are cheaper and better than robots. I could imagine robots for some specialised tasks where you don’t want to use a human for eg security reasons, but you don’t need general purpose robots for that

A friend who works at Amazon made the same point: "We don't really need robots in the FCs urgently [other than the Kivas], because it turns out you can just pay people $17/hour"

I'm describing all of them.

As for chicken nugget here's for example one (company) showing same capacity 4 years ago

https://youtu.be/6SbpfN5ed38?si=srtdZCdKOdPZ_wRn

They today have similar system that can quickly sort dumplings (more sensitive than chicken nuggets) ob conveyor belt.

No sim2real even needed. That haptics sensor is dirtcheap; camera based haptics sensor are today even available as open-source hardware that you can assemble for cheap.

If we don't limit to company demos we can dig up demos from I think almost a decade ago, and at least ~5 years ago for company demos.

If you like smoothies, I think I've got something for you!

> All I want is a machine that I can drop ingredients in it and it can give me a delicious meal

https://www.thermomix.com/

> In 1971, the original Thermomix VM 2000 was launched on the market – first in France, later in Spain and Italy.

I think he meant it can fall onto his toddler, causing injury.

Not that big of a problem, right? Just put a lot of power sockets throughout the workspace. Robot gets to its work station, can be tethered and recharge when it's operating there. Similarly in a household.

I got given a Huawei one for free which I found useful while I had a housemate with a cat since the place needed a vacuum almost twice a day. But after he moved out I just went back to vacuuming manually since it’s easier than having to scan the floor for every cable or throw rug it might get jammed on.

I don’t want to say home robotics will never happen since it seems likely eventually it will. But I think the deployment will be much much slower than entirely software based products like ChatGPT.

I fully expect to buy one within the next three years. Probably Optimus 4, depending on the price.

Well, except we have 5 decades of cautionary tales in film that show plausible ways this goes sideways when everything is connected to the internet.

what's the danger involved with ceiling fans (unless you are Korean)?

now that I think about it I can only remember videos of people doing really stupid things with them, then being surprised by really bad results, but never heard about any of them endangering anyone during normal operation

While I agree we'll see millions of bipedal robots, it won't be because they're doing our chores. People will buy them for the same reason I'd want one today: They're fun toys.

It's been 10 years since Boston Dynamics released this impressive video of Atlas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY

Even though today's robots are vastly more sophisticated, the progress of the last decade shows we shouldn't expect a sudden revolution in their abilities over the next ten years. As is often the case, solving those final few challenges that really make a difference always takes the longest.

I'd consider hands to be more important than bipedal mobility.

I work in R&D, supporting a high-tech factory. The factory has already been laid out so that the entire place is accessible for materials being moved around on carts. The worker could be replaced by a cart with hands. If we could solve the hands problem right now, we'd be buying robots by the dozens.

Also, lots of things could be done right now by stationary robots. But at the present level of technology, what we really lack are programmers. Naturally what I'm saying could be overturned tomorrow by AI, so I'm talking in terms of how things work today. I'm actually one of the few people at the site with experience at industrial automation, but it's not part of my job at present.

In a sense, the hands we lack are hands on keyboards.

That’s an incredibly optimistic timeline.

The bipedal robot thing is interesting, but there's only two places their cost makes sense: industry and war. After war makes them cheap to mass-produce (because an army of robots needs to be sustainable), then they'll be affordable. But they'll still be highly regulated, mostly as a political reaction to "losing jobs". It will probably take 30+ years for us to get to that point, because wars big enough to invest that much expense and manpower aren't common.

I remember a certain public personality who is very big on bipedal humanoid robots these days also promising us that we'd have truly autonomous self driving cars from his company by 2022, or 2023. It's now 2026.

Why bipedal?

As someone in the robotics, I can tell you that’s never gonna happen, even if you see a fully functional demo of a robot (not just the typical money grab 3D renders), assume the real life performance are 10x worse.. there’s so much monkey business in robotics, plenty of over promising, so much empty hypes, that been going on for years, the only successful breeds are cobotics (like roomba and industrial manipulators) or recently drones, although still very limited due to endurance.

I think the idea is that before they sell it to the public they should trust it with their own loved ones.

Isn't it? The whole promise if humanoid robots is replacing humans in a human-centered environment. Instead of specialized hardware or modifying the existing process, just drop a robot in place of a human, bam, done. Otherwise, what's the point?

What was eye-opening, or rather, sobering for me was when I read an interview with an engineer who explained how incredible difficult it is for a robot to orient itself when it is lying on the floor and wants to stand up.

Yes, it can do the required motions just fine, that’s not the point. But think about yourself when you are lying on the floor: it’s really easy to determine if this is safe, if you are lying underneath something and so on. You just feel that.

A robot cannot do that; all they can do is look around as good as possible and visually determine their situation.

I obsessively avoid any kind of "technology is going thataway" content. So I haven't seen anything that looks like humanoid progress in quite some time. About the only thing that has snuck around my barrier is Musk apparently claiming he'll have it by the end of the year, which is pretty conclusive evidence that they won't have it by the end of the year.

So if you're seeing anything that actually seems to merit attention, I'd love a few pointers. I could use some good news.

Well, as someone who has tried to build at least a couple small robot arms, I think we are probably closer to 20-50 years away. Both the power and dexterity are not there.

Right now, only a human can both push over a boulder and pick up a tiny speck from the floor using the same actuator.

Beware generalising from a carefully curated and presented set of demos to real life.

And the associated grinding noises were kinda scary but damn if the thing didn't hold up.

Can you expand on what was RC? Was the compute off device?

Is the person behind archive.today the same operator as archive.is?

Just run in the console window=null and you are good. It is valuable service until the websites get their shit together and finally fix their payments model.

> archive.is is malicious -- as in, uses your browser to launch DDoS attacks, and other things.

I think the attack was itself a response to a doxxing attempt. Also, archive.is being a free service doesn't quite fit with claiming they are malicious. The overall picture seems still positive.

Is there an alternative?

He "might" be but not any of his kids going into the business. The home maintenance bots will invade slowly, then all at once.

Unfortunately, the only robots available will be connected to the cloud, paid by subscription, and will gather a continuous feed of audio-video data from you and your home. And sometimes it will be teleoperated, and you might not know when.

I'd rather do my own cleanup, personally.

Haha! Instead, you’ll get a robot that will make you art, music, and tell you stories and you get to toil away cleaning the house.

“Sure I’ll clean up the house, Mr. J. While I’m doing, so have you seen the new shoes from crocs? They’re sponsored by the Jenners and have great new designs with all of your favorite movie characters on them! Would you like me to order you a pair?”

I am not sure how to say it exactly, but right now we are in situation in which we are complaining that a magical technology is not magical enough.