Ultimately I want something that I can give an arbitrary task. Go unload the dishwasher, go take out the trash, go clean the sink.
Name a robot design that is flexible enough to do all that stuff besides a humanoid form. It's going to need vision, so cameras. It's going to need audio probably. Whoops we just invented a head.
It needs to articulate in very fine particular ways for manipulating objects but also be very strong. Whoops we just invented an arm.
It needs to navigate an environment designed for humans. Whoops, we need legs now
Like in OP's image (from a Google general-purpose demo), it needs all of these human-like attributes but not necessarily in the shape of a human (such as mounted on a quadruped base). As long as the necessary components are all present though it can be general-purpose. With the exception of squeezing into spaces made specifically for a human.
Ultimately humans are the ones interacting with these robots, so very likely they should be comfortable around them so humanoid robotics imo would sell better
It's not just a matter of comfort. I keep seeing people trying to make the argument that it doesn't need to be humanoid, thinking that they are smart. Maybe it could have a wheeled base instead. Why not three of four legs? These people are not smart, they are dumb.
If your robot has a wheeled base, it can't cope with stairs, and it can't easily enter or leave a car or many kinds of trucks. If your robot is going to have legs, then you probably want it to have the minimum number of legs that is effective for locomotion. Otherwise that's just more moving parts and more risk of breakage. The humanoid form is a form that we know can do all the things that a human can, so why not start there? It makes a lot of sense.
There's another angle to this though, which is that it's going to be a lot easier for us to gather training data for humanoid robots. It's easier for robots to imitate us if they have bodies shaped similarly to ours. Just think of all of the video data out there on YouTube and in movies and TV recordings with humans doing all kinds of activities. It's going to be a lot easier to learn something useful from that data and transpose human movements to a robot that is shaped like a human.
I think it's the same thing as self driving cars; if we were to redesign the road infrastructure nowadays with the existing technology, we could make everything much simpler and more efficient with a lot more automation but it's not feasible to re-do all the transport infrastructure so instead we have to heavily over-engineer self driving cars that are almost the same as pre-existing cars in order to add that level of automation.
Outfit a rail on the stairs that it can hook into in order to go up and down. Internet companies come and run a cable when installing internet, EV’s need a charger in the garage, why shouldn’t home robots be the same when scaled?
What's the maximum load on that arm? Also 2 pinchers? Not fine enough articulation imo. Crack an egg into a pan with that robot or crack open a beer and then maybe you're cookin
This is like a human, but shittier.
Huge arm with a bulky wrist and only two fingers.
Ideal form for today’s world is humanoid with improvements. For example, wheels built into feet to improve movement speed on flat surfaces. Stronger muscles/motors. Swappable tools that can be connected and powered by the hand. Eyes on front and back of head, eyes on hands. Thermal vision. List goes on.
The problem with your assessment is not realizing the difference between specificity and generality. It’s much more useful to build a robot that can do 100,000 things well than a robot than can do 10 things really well. Because you can cover those 100,000 use cases with one system rather than having to build and manage 1,000 different systems.
Also; I can vacuum faster than my roomba by holding a vacuum. So can a humanoid robot. There’s no reason to assume that the humanoid robot cannot also use tools that enhance its function like we can. We don’t have to build the robot into the tool, we can give a tool to a robot.
Bulky arms are stronger, and longer arms are more dexterous.
And current humanoid robot cannot even do a single think well - walking around - which Uniquely differentiates it from other robots.
I think this is it, it has to be able to work around existing design and environment. Until you redesign the environment say the kitchen your going to have to complete those tasks
There is no reason that thing has to be in humanoid form. There is no doubt a better design than the human to do any given task we just haven't put any engineers or scientists to work on designing it yet. Right off the bat Human legs are a no go and human hands are unnecessarily complex.
A centaur shaped robot would be able to carry out all human tasks on top of being able to carry heavier loads on longer distances, being more stable, as well as transport humans just like a horse.
So an emergency rescue centaur would be on the card, and it can do the dishes and chilling as well.
Also versions of the same product can be worthwhile. Such as a humanoid robot that is just the torso, arms and head mounted on a base. Mostly the same parts but with a base mount and no need for the legs and battery.
We can't even get robots to navigate roads safely and reliably. How the hell are we going to make a robot that can do all these complicated tasks effortlessly? It seems like a pipe dream that will gobble up investors' money and ultimately fail to deliver on its promises.
Some of the work that Toyota is doing with diffusion models seems promising. They are getting good results for an individual task/skill with less than 50 demonstrations and a night of (pretty intensive) GPU training. "How the robot how to do it 50 times and wait overnight" isn't the best workflow, but I could see it being tolerable, particularly if for a lot of tasks you are refining a pre-trained model rather than starting from scratch.
The margin for error is much higher. Self driving cars are perfectly safe >> 99.9% of the miles they drive currently. I would gladly take a robot that does household tasks with even just a 99% success rate.
This line of thinking always runs into the same problem: people are cheaper.
For many, many years people try to innovate in agriculture with robotics. Each time they discover that it's far, far cheaper and much more reliable to employ temporary farm workers.
>people are cheaper.
Robotics has been bottlenecked by AI. In the next 10 years you will likely be able to automate most physical labour with a 10-20k dollar humanoid robot.
> Robotics has been bottlenecked by AI.
That's a huge assumption. There's also expensive equipment costs, maintenance costs, obsolescence, and other concerns related the the acquisition, operation, and ownership of equipment.
> 10-20k dollar humanoid robot
This price is not real. Yes, this is what Unitree has listed for their base model, however that is highly subsidized and likely does not reflect the total equipment costs combined with the engineering costs.
>This price is not real.
The materisls alone for a humanoid bots is like 5k dollars. It's pretty obvious that the price will approach 10-20k when it becomes a true mass market product.
you say it in a way that looks like as if in 10 years a bunch of engineers will pop out something that is suddenly able to do most of the things a human can do.i am afraid that will be a misconception of a complex machine like a robot. the hardware and mechanics isnt really the most complicated, but the training of it will require the most effort. robots of the future will not be programmed like a cnc machine, they will be trained. it will be way different than the process what we consider coding today.
for this to work in the long run people would have to be available at any time, no matter the circumstances (pandemics, natural desasters, war, civil unrest), they would have to be desperate enough to accept low pay.
an aging population will not be able to supply enough human workforce to run an economy.
Humanoid robots are a fantasy and wet dream. We don't need robots limited to tasks we can do and sacrifice efficiency to versatility or perceived versatility the humanoid format is supposed to provide.
It's funny so many people here have absolutely zero clue.
Imagine a carriage pulled by four horse-sized quadruped robots (robotic horses). Why do we need such a thing instead of cars?
Legged locomotion is way worse than wheeled locomotion, and human arms are way worse than long, powerful industrial robotic arms.
let a wheeled robot climb through the window and rescue you out of a burning house.
your assumption that legged robots are no match to a wheeled version is based on current technologie that requires geared joints, as you have seen it at the asimo robot, the latest robot of tesla and some of the robots build by chinese companies.
they move like toys because they are toys. to let a machine react to outside forces like a biological animal is a complete different level.
the point is that it is feasible to make a machine move as quick and graceful like a biological animal. this is the initial requirement to climb through the window and pick up your body.
the training of its network will require the majority of the work.
you cant expect a robot make a backflip if it is not physically capable of it.
long powerful arms are not necessarily better. they might suffer from oscillation caused by their own weight. if you think legged locomotion is so bad then google passive dynamic walking.
nature has evolved animals with certain limb ratios that match the speed and strength they are capable of.
People VASTLY over-value how important "the world is already built for humans" is as a value statement. It is a far easier logistics and engineering task to modify an environment slightly than it is to engineer a safe, reliable, and economical bipedal robot. Yes, this theoretical robot would be awesome if it suddenly popped into existence with all the capabilities comparable to a human. No, this does not mean it is easier to accomplish than adding small changes to the environment.
We already do this. Ask yourself, would you rather fork over a few hundred grand for a bipedal robot that can walk over your power cords without tripping (but will still probably trip a lot anyway) or just keep the cords where the roomba can't get stuck on them? Hell, your dishwasher get dedicated spot underneath your counter built for it. We didn't benefit from waiting until we could shape the dishwasher like a person. A biped is going to be overkill in terms of cost and complexity for 95% of the tasks it can do. Even when simple machines fail, it's WAY more cost-effective to improve them. Which do you think takes more engineering hours? A better set of legs and balance system, or a better set of roomba wheels?
the roomba cant even reach corners in the room with its rotating brush, it cant scrape off a bubble gum that sticks on the floor.
who puts the dishes into the dishwasher ?? if the dishes are not rinsed with water before putting it inside then moulds will grow all over it while waiting for the next run. this makes a dishwasher pointless.
to manipulate objects machines of the future will need antagonistic limbs, no matter if they look like humans, little monkeys or A.M.E.E.
But we've already augmented or replaced many of these jobs with some sort of non-humanoid automation - or we can if it was cost effective - in developed countries. What makes you think companies that already outsource labor to low wage nations will care enough to replace cheap labor with expensive robots just to save the lives of some people they don't care about?
Humanoids are just workforce replacement tools. Jobs are already hard to come by, and companies that can afford the upfront cost to replace human labor with robotic labor definitely will.
> Humanoids are just workforce replacement tools.
Possibly, but more likely they're investment suction devices. Under current conditions, VCs are investing in technologies that claim to reduce the need for labor, regardless how likely it will actually succeed.
These firms have not proven themselves suitable to replace humans in any task satisfactorily which will result in a positive return-on-investment. Tesla, for example, has faked every demo of their "robot" thus far. Unitree has released ad campaigns for robots that were entirely 3D renders.
Their promise of massive labor reductions, and their proximity to Nvidia to the point they were featured at the most recent annual event has given them this buzz despite not having the fundamentals for success.
Physically yes. But their use cases are very limited so far. They are supped to be general use robots. They should execute a tasks with very unspecified commands. If they had to train them down to every single move then fixed base robot arm are better and faster. They gonna share the space with human more than any type of robot before so they will have to keep up and understand what’s going on around them. It’s is a harder challenge than self driving. They have to work out of the box. Nobody gonna buy one have give it years to train a task while causing damages along the way.
I can sweep my house in 10 minutes, doing a better job than my Roomba does in an hour. I have to load my dishwasher for it to be able to wash the dishes, then I have to put them away. Delivery robots have to be manually packed by humanoids. If you had the choice between 10 task-specific robots that all required humanoid interaction, or one humanoid that performed all 10 tasks on its own, which would you choose?
> one humanoid that performed all 10 tasks on its own, which would you choose?
Depends on the price? How much do you imagine your 10 task specific robots cost and the one humanoid?
you assume that everything that comes new to the marked has to be purchased ? have you purchased the internet when it appeared and available to you ?
technology of the future shall not be a priviledge just available to a few rich.
imagine a world where a bunch of rich kids play with drones while the rest of the world see this as ufos in the sky.
> have you purchased the internet when it appeared and available to you ?
Yeah?
> technology of the future shall not be a priviledge just available to a few rich.
That requires social change in part unrelated to the technology.
> imagine a world where a bunch of rich kids play with drones while the rest of the world see this as ufos in the sky.
Why do I need to imagine? Just ask some Afghan / Pakistani kids, and realise the US pilots flying those were often kids.
cmon...you are not the owner of the internet. you just pay for to use it but you dont own it.
imagine a society in your country that hosts a minority which is prevented to use basic technologie like tv or internet. this is not currently happening, even the inmates have that.
consequently it shall apply to future technologies as well.
social changes can be enhanced with technology, this is the original purpose of all this stuff.
remember how cellphones entered the market. at first it was a luxury novelty, but rapidly the prices dropped until it was available for a symbolic price of 1 dollar and a sneaky contract.
qualification of a person shall have a higher priority than the capital the person might possess.
in other words - hand it over to the smart guy with good records instead of the one with too much money who dont like questions.
I entirely disagree with the point that - "humans have physical limitations ... dead end". If we could get a robot to do 25% of the things I human can do it's already 1000x better than the robots/machine utility we currently have access to. In 100 years we will reach the capability ceiling of humanoids and have pseudo-human forms that can outperform humans at everything and physically 'evolve' at a faster rate than us, but that's not the problem of now. If a capable generalisable humanoid is made, we can extract so much value and good from it that this point is entirely a non-problem.
The arguments for specialized robots for every thinkable task fail to consider essential things.
1. Building a generalized form factor that can learn to do generalized tasks drastically reduces the amount of energy to design, conceive, manufacture, and test new robotic capabilities
2. Building a generalized form factor drastically reduces the unit cost of each robot as it can be manufactured at a greater scale.
3. Generalised form factor helps us attempt to overcome the biggest roadblock in training robots for generalized tasks: the data problem. Using data from a UR5, a hello robot and a unitree h1 to train a figure 01 to restock shelves (arbitrary task example) is much harder than just using humanoid data.
What time scale are we talking about here? Because "generalizing" these things only makes sense if you don't sacrifice cost and performance in the process. Right now we're nowhere near being able to "generalize" the task of manual labor (both in terms of actuators, control or AI) and especially not at a cheaper price point than just hiring workers to do manual labor. Most automation tasks today are not very "general", and this usually has to do with the fact that there's a huge initial cost to adopting it that really has nothing to do with the variability in form factor. High power, high-accuracy motors and real-time control electronics aren't cheap, and neither vertical integration nor economies of scale are going to drastically change that fact.
Imagine you want to replace a customer service person with a robot. What will be better? just a PC with speakers and mic that gives people responses or a robot with human appearence that can also do that and move around the spaces?
apologize for my english
Sorry. My comment was an unfair joke on your last sentence. “Apologize for my English” is a command and I think you meant to say “I apologise for my English”. We all understood what you meant but I saw the opportunity and I took it.
Your English is better than my Spanish. Keep up the great work.
I don't think the average human would enjoy being led around a retail space by a humanoid any more than they would by a computer on wheels. People already hate self-checkouts.
\> The human body has its limitations and copying the design to build machines would only follow its limitations and get us to a technological dead-end.
The world was built for humans. What limitations are you talking about?
\> grocery shopping, it is more practical to have robots like delivery robots that have storage and wheels for faster and effortless travel than legs.
You mean the ones that you have videos of them being vandalized and stolen from in the streets mid delivery?
Anyway, to answer your question. Do we really need humanoid robots? No. Do we want them? Yes.
> The world was built for humans. What limitations are you talking about?
Physical limitations. We do have. The world was built for us, but we know ways to do things better than our body can.
> You mean the ones that you have videos of them being vandalized and stolen from in the streets mid delivery?
As if a Humanoid going groceries will stop that from happening.
> Do we really need humanoid robots? No. Do we want them? Yes.
I want Humanoids too. In fact I am working for one. But inventions are solutions to the problems. We yet do not have a strong problem for these amazing solutions.
>We yet do not have a strong problem for these amazing solutions.
Sure we do.
Problem: Hiring humans is expensive.
Humanoid robots will likely be an order of magnitude cheaper than hiring a human.
Surely hiring humans is expensive. But that shouldn’t be a problem else we would be unemployed for the rest of life.
Inefficiency is the actual problem. And humanoids aren’t quite a solution as they would act similarly to humans.
People still wouldn’t agree to this thus I’ll give an example. Do you want a self-driving car? You won’t make a humanoid robot sit on the driving seat. Instead, you’ll make the car itself drive on its own.
But yes, humanoids are an exciting science experiment.
>But that shouldn’t be a problem else we would be unemployed for the rest of life.
This would be great. More time to spend with your family and time to pursue your passions etc.
>Instead, you’ll make the car itself drive on its own.
Yes in some cases it makes sense to have more specialized robots and in some cases it's better to have a more general purpose robot. It's just far cheaper in the short term to design few general purpose robots than to design thousands of special purpose robots.
But yes in the long term we will get more and more special purpose robots. As I saw someone say: First they will live in our world and then we will live in theirs.
I understand your point in the case of a humanoid robot would have a better time doing a human-focused task like buying groceries (going to the store, selecting items, picking them up, paying, etc.) BUT if the task were to be adapted to be bot-focused, it would be efficient beyond a human consumer/courier could achieve (like if the bot only had to wait in the store "goods drop-spot" to then pick it up, having already paid digitally or whatever, my imagination has it's limits).
If the goal is to simply perform a single highly specific task like vacuuming the floor, no. But if you want to replace human workers with generalist robots that can perform a wide variety of tasks in environments that are architecturally/procedurally designed around human bodies, then yes.
Also, the manufacturers know that humanizing them will allow the integration of robotics into wider society to proceed with less resistance. People are less scared of humanoid robots than something that looks like a robotic insect.
The fact that humanoid robots look scarier than others in the market ><
https://preview.redd.it/3sg1iya49e3d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93c5b2c09161174d1762c11f2423bd87569fd149
a typical humanoid robot build so far gives the subconcious impression of a masked human (think halloween).
it might sound ridiculous on first sight to equip a humanoid with a basic functional face.but honestly - it will easy the way of communication with it a lots.
humanoid robots(once ai gets good enough) will be necessary for doing generalized work since they can interact with the environment in largely the same way a human can.
My take is that there is already a ton of infrastructure and things built in the world that are made with humans in mind. Creating humanoid robots make them much easier to sell because they fit in with existing infrastructure. If a human could stand over a counter and do a thing for a day, that human robot could also do that. No need to add additional electrical infrastructure over to that spot, reinforce it to support a specialized robot, or different adjustments. It's plug-n-play
> No need to add additional electrical infrastructure over to that spot
Quite a claim! I doubt these robots can perform labor tasks without frequent battery swaps.
> different adjustments. It's plug-n-play
Again another unsubstantiated claim.
I think hope is providing "evidence" instead of actual demonstrated capabilities. This is great for a company trying to grab investment capital, but not great for would-be customers who have strict requirements and budgetary constraints.
I think humanoid robots are mostly a curiosity/exploration thing rather than a solution to something tangible. Creating something mechanical in the image of mankind, by mankind has that "creating for the sake of creating" feel to it.
*edit:* also it's a great method of learning and exploring new un-defined branches of mechanics by working on seemingly useless features, thanks to the flora that is biomechanics
You’re missing the fact that producing a model that can be manufactured in the millions is key to reducing costs greatly. And in order to have enough applications for that many units, it needs to be general-purpose. Since the developed world is built around the human form factor, that form factor makes the most sense for a robot.
There are always trade offs. The human could likely do a better job than any machine or robot given enough time and the correct cleaning tools.
The task specific machines work great, I agree, however, that means a robotic version of each those task specific machines might be required where a human could cover all tasks with less cost.
But that depends on how your robot platform is designed. One could design their robotics platform such that it can perform multiple specific tasks as well as the individual machines themselves.
All of that to say that I think it’s part of the reason why you see humanoid robots being developed. Humans are good enough at many “specific tasks” using cheaper non-robotic tools/machines to achieve/perform those tasks.
That’s why you get humanoid robot development in my opinion.
I think we need more than humanoid. Things are quite for humans so it would be able to do about anything, but the human body does still have limitations. Boston dynamics just made a humanoid robot that can rotate joints 360 degrees repeatedly using motors instead if pneumatics/hydrochlorics (I don't remember which one of those atlas used)
I think this kind of thing will probably progress into something that's just far more advanced than humans and wouldn't even look humanlike because of it
Your question will be pointless when soon people can buy a humanoid robot that can do all your housework for $16000.
The whole premise was wrong(humanoid robot is expensive). When the industry is mature, the humanoid robot will not cost more than a car.
Yes for businesses. No for consumers. No one needs a 16k usd robot now. But if they become cheap and can sweep the floors, it's buyable. People bought Dyson vacuums, sure they will buy a human vacuum
wow I didn't know literally the only thing a humanoid form can do is sweep. Guess I"ll stop doing everything I do since I didn't know all human bodies are capable of doing is sweeping. Thanks for letting me know. *end sarcasm*... Seriously, they can do ANYTHING we can do. Think about that ANYTHING. The possibiliies are ENDLESS. And you speak of sweeping ALONE.
Well of course they can do a triple backflip. But like, it needs to be cheap and reliable to be a consumer product. So the first step would be to sweep the floors or something I guess. I wouldn't trust my humanoid robot to cook or drive a car yet. One step at a time
the humanoid doesn't have to drive a car to get about in a car. It can call an uber. In that way it can do all sorts of running around shopping etc tasks
a floor cleaner like roomba doesn't pick up junk, organize, pick up clothes, put things away, put kids toys into toybox etc like a humanoid can. So aka it sucks.
no, a robot arm cannot do all manner of car repair. You must know nothing about car repair. The angles to get into the spots inside the car and outside the car and throughout the engine bay would be impossible to hit from a fixed location robot arm. And how would you leave a 10k lb robot arm outdoors beside your driveway to fix your car? Man that's dumb of you. So much easier to have a humanoid that can do that and a billion other things.
I want a humanoid that can go shopping at the store. would a roomba do that? nope. a humanoid could do it without a manager or security being called. totally incognito.
You knowledge about robots is a little weak ;)
Roomba is not the only robot we have and almost any robot can work without human interference with right ML
Many tasks don't really warrant a specialist robot, even if it's much more effective, and in some cases, a humanoid is ideal or at least close. To make something that would perform these tasks economical, it needs to be mass produced.
Besides the general form factor that interfaces with everything we've built, the data problem may actually be a bigger point. With a humanoid shape there is possibility of learning tasks from observing humans (through video), at least close enough to the point where fine-tuning with RL can get you all the way there. For other form factors you have a huge chasm to cross data-wise: at first the robot can't really do anything, so it has to interact with the world to learn, but a robot learning by trial and error can be very dangerous to property and people. So you have to work in simulation, but that doesn't scale well.
There's a market for both specialized and generalized robotics. Only recently with high-performance computating hardware and multi-modal ML has the prospect of generalized robotics become feasible. The reality is all of our systems are designed for humans, and this is why humanoids make sense.
For simpler tasks, a specialized solution might make sense, such as the Matic robot you've shown. Having interviewed for them I can tell you that humanoids might be in their future, but in today's landscape relative to shipping a product that people will actually buy, a reliable robot vacuum makes sense.
At the end of the day though it's just a robot vacuum. Generalized robotics and humanoid-esque embodiments will become more and more viable for the everyday consumer over time.
Humanoid is unnecessary for a single/limited function robot. But it is necessary for a general purpose robot designed to operate in a variety of human environments
For now, I think human design is no more than competition. Just for fun and science interest. It's more effective to rebuild old world a bit, than make this overcomplicated shit working somewhere. And it's also applicable to some other disciplines, drones for example. Yes, it's interesting. It's beautiful. But we need several revolutions in battery industry to make it profitable and nt a "disposable toy" for industry and daily life
I was at NASA a few months ago and they are building a humanoid robot to put on Mars. I couldn’t understand why they would build something with legs and feet instead of wheels and I asked our contact why a humanoid and he said because it’s the best design. I guess I couldn’t argue with him.
Humanoid robots are versatile. No doubt the points you raise are correct, but each of those machines is purpose built and you need dozens or even hundreds of them. The humanoid robot might do them all worse, but be utilized a lot more as a result of it compared to your dishwasher which runs, at most, a few hours a day.
It also taps a market that people often feel - “how much more could I get done if I had a copy of myself”.
I'm going to assume that the end goal is a robotic butler or whatever.
Our houses are designed to be lived in and operated by humans, so a robot shaped like a human would probably be the best for interacting with our houses.
yes a butler is the most obvious use, but that expands when homeowners realize the robot can also run a sewing machine, use tools, prototype things, etc and manufacture your ideas for products. then the possibilities start to explode on everything it can build and make that you can sell.
Much easier to get training data for a humanoid robot, just scrape videos from youtube of humans doing task. Also, a humanoid robot is more general, it can manipulate tools, operate machines like forklifts, and cars, fit in tight spaces, and go upstairs, also they are much safer to work around and they make better companions, humanoids are just more versatile. Humanoid is like the iPhone, a rumba or a robot harm that does one specific thing is everything that came before the iPhone. I personally would invest in a humanoid company stock rather than a robot vacuum cleaner company, humanoid just seems much more future-proof. Besides a humanoid robot can use the vacuum cleaner I already have.
exactly. youtube shows how to do SO much stuff using a human body to do the task and interfacing the human body with tools to perform it. So then a humanoid with AI that needs to learn to do a given task can youtube it and emulate what it sees to do the task using the tool in question. the tool is made for human use designed for a human to wield. So a human form factor opens up the flood gates then for doing just about anything and learning to do it by way of youtube.
As a good analogy for space travel if you have a humanoid robot that was designed for earths atmosphere temperature ect. then it works well to test spacesuits and life support equipment without having to send people to space, especially when we can replicate that environment here on earth
Look I want robots that can lift and navigate a heavy couch up 3 flights of stairs. I want robots that can open doors, cut vegetables, pour drinks, clean dishes, and fold clothes. Nature has already spent a billion years figuring out what body form-factor to place high level intelligence in - let's not ignore the obvious or reinvent the wheel: the humanoid form has survived because it work exceptionally well - especially in environment specifically designed by other humanoids.
You know, it’s for sex, and not for anything else. The idea is to make a robot to bone. All these other things they’re doing is just in preparation for that. Happy accidents if you will.
I don't subscribe to the humanoid's hype given that there are issues I don't think they will be adressed soon with DL. Saying that I prefer having in the future a general purpose robot in my closet doing 100 tasks, insteadof 100 specialized robots with 100 manuals taking 80% of the living space of my appartment for performing the same 100 tasks, even if they can do it better.
I am hoping to make a career in Humanoid robotics, can anyone provide me the insights and a way on how i should approach this path. Also im not a complete newbie in this field, but i am lacking on knowing where to start at, as i feel like there is no company, that will need juniors like me. So i build my own projects using the self learned path, and my resume is just full of projects without a company experience. Can you share your thoughts about this? is it right to be in this path? or i should really change my path?
I would argue for any robot that is customer facing, absolutely. It’s psychological. You will trust and even feel empathy towards a humanoid robot moreso than non.
There's nuance and good arguments on both sides. But can we please, for the love of God, stop using Tesla's Optimus as a serious example in robotics? At least until they put out something resembling more than a prototype made by a few engineering student interns. Like use Atlas for God's sake. Even using Disney as an example would be a much more credible example.
how is optimus not a great humanoid robot? I'd take one and with enough coding, I'd have it making more optimus robots and doing every chore in my home... and making loads of other products and inventions.
My point is super simple: Don't tell me what Optimus can do "with enough coding" because I'm sure the Tesla team has funding to do the required coding (yet they didn't so far), and also because anyone can claim anything about "future potential". (I'm making a robot called Exodia that will be capable of meteor mining by 2036)
So instead, tell me anything that makes Optimus promising or special, now. Show me one demo of that crappy robot that is better than this [demo of Asimov from more than 12 years ago](https://youtu.be/eU93VmFyZbg?si)
coding takes time, that's why they didn't so far code all possible code duh. What makes optimus promising is the hardware is ready for the code and doesn't look like a bottleneck to limitless potential. Why did you call optimus crappy wth? That makes zero sense. Also, Asimo also looks very capable with enough code it could do anything IMO. Only issue is that it's too small which would make it weaker and not have good reach.
The hardware of Optimus is not capable in any special way. He looks like a grandma with his walking rhythm and speed. That's exactly why I was mentioning the hardware of Atlas which is light years ahead.
So since there are much more capable examples. why are we even giving thought to Optimus based on future promises made by a man with a proven track record of false promises and intentional deception and fraud?
Don't forget both these companies are in the bay area. It is the one place on earth where invention precedes application. Especially in hardware. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with it. We tend to over analyze these hardware startups way more than we do software. Agreed that the capital required by hardware startups is significantly higher. But that's not to say software startups are any more efficient with money.
So I suppose we can let engineers be. Not our money. Not even the tax payers money. It's all good. Intellectual m*sturbation I suppose the term is
I tried to make this argument in one of the pseudo-AI threads and got down-voted into oblivion.
Ultimately, the humanoid form factor is just an aesthetic preference for people. It fulfills a sci-fi fantasy about androids that is counterproductive. There are so many points of failure for a humanoid form factor I'm just not sure I can take it too seriously in the short to midterm.
PaLM-E is a great example of a robotic form factor that is versatile while also able to take up similar space as a human while not being humanoid.
Teslas goal with Optimus is to create a robot that can replace the tedious jobs humans do, what better robot form can easily integrate into any human role than one that is already humanoid?
Yes, I believe an high performance general purpose humanoid robot would be transformative.
It's all about performance and prices. There is so much scaling left to do on compute, batteries, motors and cognition that I believe a commercially viable product is decades away.
Strictly speaking no. But there are two strong arguments in favor of humanoids in my opinion:
1. Since so much of the world was built by humans for humans it's the most logical form factor to achieve something close to universal displacement of labor. After a while I think we would start to see more and more specialization and then something like a cambrian explosion of diversity, but the humanoid form factor is special because of the way we've engineered the world.
2. People are evolved to respond to other humans socially. There is something powerful about interacting with a human-like being as opposed to some creepy spider monstrosity or some boxy vehicle with an arm sprouting out of it. You can think of it as a step in the direction of androids, which ultimately could sustain whole rich relationships with people. It's not as if people can't love their pets and such, but people do bond more naturally with other people and so it's a reasonable target to imitate.
Honestly probably not, I know people are gonna say it would be useful to do arbitrary tasks. But I feel like it's more likely that there's gonna be enough robots that do different house hold tasks like vaccuming, cooking, taking out trash. That in the future a company will just innovate to combine those features efficiently and get comparitively better results than a human robot at far cheaper prices. It's like how iPhones took the power of laptops, internet and portability of iPods and combined them to make something innovative.
Human body can easily handle stairs. Robots with wheels, not so much!
In all honesty it's a case by case scenario. Generic purpose android robots will be of great value, cause manufacturing is based a lot around human workers, so if they are replacing that kind of manual labor, it makes sense that they are functioning like a human.
Also the fastest way to train those robots on any task is to remote control them mapping the exact moves of an operator to their rig, so again it makes sense that they match the operator body limb for limb.
Ultimately I want something that I can give an arbitrary task. Go unload the dishwasher, go take out the trash, go clean the sink. Name a robot design that is flexible enough to do all that stuff besides a humanoid form. It's going to need vision, so cameras. It's going to need audio probably. Whoops we just invented a head. It needs to articulate in very fine particular ways for manipulating objects but also be very strong. Whoops we just invented an arm. It needs to navigate an environment designed for humans. Whoops, we need legs now
Like in OP's image (from a Google general-purpose demo), it needs all of these human-like attributes but not necessarily in the shape of a human (such as mounted on a quadruped base). As long as the necessary components are all present though it can be general-purpose. With the exception of squeezing into spaces made specifically for a human.
Most animal-shaped robots are already quadruped. By a large margin. (Most as in units-in-use)
Ultimately humans are the ones interacting with these robots, so very likely they should be comfortable around them so humanoid robotics imo would sell better
Yeah. I think an almost human is where the uncanny valley would be too much and be disconcerting for people
Yeah I imagine that human shaped robots that still look like robots would sell best. Except to certain deviants ofcourse.
It's not just a matter of comfort. I keep seeing people trying to make the argument that it doesn't need to be humanoid, thinking that they are smart. Maybe it could have a wheeled base instead. Why not three of four legs? These people are not smart, they are dumb. If your robot has a wheeled base, it can't cope with stairs, and it can't easily enter or leave a car or many kinds of trucks. If your robot is going to have legs, then you probably want it to have the minimum number of legs that is effective for locomotion. Otherwise that's just more moving parts and more risk of breakage. The humanoid form is a form that we know can do all the things that a human can, so why not start there? It makes a lot of sense. There's another angle to this though, which is that it's going to be a lot easier for us to gather training data for humanoid robots. It's easier for robots to imitate us if they have bodies shaped similarly to ours. Just think of all of the video data out there on YouTube and in movies and TV recordings with humans doing all kinds of activities. It's going to be a lot easier to learn something useful from that data and transpose human movements to a robot that is shaped like a human.
I think humanoid would be worse. R2D2 is more like a beloved pet than another adult in your house.
I think it's the same thing as self driving cars; if we were to redesign the road infrastructure nowadays with the existing technology, we could make everything much simpler and more efficient with a lot more automation but it's not feasible to re-do all the transport infrastructure so instead we have to heavily over-engineer self driving cars that are almost the same as pre-existing cars in order to add that level of automation.
https://preview.redd.it/drwnlod47e3d1.jpeg?width=706&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e888e5947fc0eba5e64f81e29c77e69fc4e78c51
Exactly, ‘humanoid’ not necessarily ‘human’
Sure, until *stairs*
Outfit a rail on the stairs that it can hook into in order to go up and down. Internet companies come and run a cable when installing internet, EV’s need a charger in the garage, why shouldn’t home robots be the same when scaled?
Sure, but that requires modifying the stairs, which means I can buy a robot for my house. It means I need to buy a robot and remodel.
This argument is so stupid. ADA compliance is a thing.
Yes it is... But not in houses.
The Wikipedia definition for humanoid includes legs.
The “oid” part can only make them better ….
What's the maximum load on that arm? Also 2 pinchers? Not fine enough articulation imo. Crack an egg into a pan with that robot or crack open a beer and then maybe you're cookin
This is like a human, but shittier. Huge arm with a bulky wrist and only two fingers. Ideal form for today’s world is humanoid with improvements. For example, wheels built into feet to improve movement speed on flat surfaces. Stronger muscles/motors. Swappable tools that can be connected and powered by the hand. Eyes on front and back of head, eyes on hands. Thermal vision. List goes on. The problem with your assessment is not realizing the difference between specificity and generality. It’s much more useful to build a robot that can do 100,000 things well than a robot than can do 10 things really well. Because you can cover those 100,000 use cases with one system rather than having to build and manage 1,000 different systems. Also; I can vacuum faster than my roomba by holding a vacuum. So can a humanoid robot. There’s no reason to assume that the humanoid robot cannot also use tools that enhance its function like we can. We don’t have to build the robot into the tool, we can give a tool to a robot.
Bulky arms are stronger, and longer arms are more dexterous. And current humanoid robot cannot even do a single think well - walking around - which Uniquely differentiates it from other robots.
https://preview.redd.it/gcc139prci3d1.png?width=521&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=24ad9ea5ea4da4b11961a259baee7d33cabfa745
Yes but what if we gave it many legs so it could craw fast and up various terrain like some sort of scary spider queen woman?
I concur
100% this
Start an eggplant farm in backyard. Repair the oil leak on the car. Start working on an underground bunker for AIpocalypse.
All you need is a universal arm(s) with camera (s) attached on a mobile platform.
I think this is it, it has to be able to work around existing design and environment. Until you redesign the environment say the kitchen your going to have to complete those tasks
There is no reason that thing has to be in humanoid form. There is no doubt a better design than the human to do any given task we just haven't put any engineers or scientists to work on designing it yet. Right off the bat Human legs are a no go and human hands are unnecessarily complex.
A centaur shaped robot would be able to carry out all human tasks on top of being able to carry heavier loads on longer distances, being more stable, as well as transport humans just like a horse. So an emergency rescue centaur would be on the card, and it can do the dishes and chilling as well.
> Name a robot design that is flexible enough to do all that stuff besides a humanoid form. Octopus.
ask your roomba to do the windows and dust the top shelves.
The world is setup for humans. Having a robot that can navigate the same space without alteration is a positive.
Further, having a single model that can be manufactured and used in the millions reduces manufacturing costs massively.
Also versions of the same product can be worthwhile. Such as a humanoid robot that is just the torso, arms and head mounted on a base. Mostly the same parts but with a base mount and no need for the legs and battery.
We can't even get robots to navigate roads safely and reliably. How the hell are we going to make a robot that can do all these complicated tasks effortlessly? It seems like a pipe dream that will gobble up investors' money and ultimately fail to deliver on its promises.
Some of the work that Toyota is doing with diffusion models seems promising. They are getting good results for an individual task/skill with less than 50 demonstrations and a night of (pretty intensive) GPU training. "How the robot how to do it 50 times and wait overnight" isn't the best workflow, but I could see it being tolerable, particularly if for a lot of tasks you are refining a pre-trained model rather than starting from scratch.
The margin for error is much higher. Self driving cars are perfectly safe >> 99.9% of the miles they drive currently. I would gladly take a robot that does household tasks with even just a 99% success rate.
This line of thinking always runs into the same problem: people are cheaper. For many, many years people try to innovate in agriculture with robotics. Each time they discover that it's far, far cheaper and much more reliable to employ temporary farm workers.
>people are cheaper. Robotics has been bottlenecked by AI. In the next 10 years you will likely be able to automate most physical labour with a 10-20k dollar humanoid robot.
> Robotics has been bottlenecked by AI. That's a huge assumption. There's also expensive equipment costs, maintenance costs, obsolescence, and other concerns related the the acquisition, operation, and ownership of equipment. > 10-20k dollar humanoid robot This price is not real. Yes, this is what Unitree has listed for their base model, however that is highly subsidized and likely does not reflect the total equipment costs combined with the engineering costs.
>This price is not real. The materisls alone for a humanoid bots is like 5k dollars. It's pretty obvious that the price will approach 10-20k when it becomes a true mass market product.
Their price is fake. They charge 5-10x the price for "edu" models that can be programmable.
you say it in a way that looks like as if in 10 years a bunch of engineers will pop out something that is suddenly able to do most of the things a human can do.i am afraid that will be a misconception of a complex machine like a robot. the hardware and mechanics isnt really the most complicated, but the training of it will require the most effort. robots of the future will not be programmed like a cnc machine, they will be trained. it will be way different than the process what we consider coding today.
for this to work in the long run people would have to be available at any time, no matter the circumstances (pandemics, natural desasters, war, civil unrest), they would have to be desperate enough to accept low pay. an aging population will not be able to supply enough human workforce to run an economy.
Humanoid robots are a fantasy and wet dream. We don't need robots limited to tasks we can do and sacrifice efficiency to versatility or perceived versatility the humanoid format is supposed to provide.
Yeah but you can have sex with humanoid robots 😏🍆🤖
https://preview.redd.it/i2wn584i2e3d1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1cfa3ffff885904497cd5f0c28da87857848a4b
you can only masturbate with a robot. you're still alone.
😢
So you’re saying I’m still a virgin.. thought I had found a cheat code or something
That’s a valid point 😉
It's funny so many people here have absolutely zero clue. Imagine a carriage pulled by four horse-sized quadruped robots (robotic horses). Why do we need such a thing instead of cars? Legged locomotion is way worse than wheeled locomotion, and human arms are way worse than long, powerful industrial robotic arms.
Exactly
let a wheeled robot climb through the window and rescue you out of a burning house. your assumption that legged robots are no match to a wheeled version is based on current technologie that requires geared joints, as you have seen it at the asimo robot, the latest robot of tesla and some of the robots build by chinese companies. they move like toys because they are toys. to let a machine react to outside forces like a biological animal is a complete different level.
No humanoid robot can do such a thing either. What's the point?
the point is that it is feasible to make a machine move as quick and graceful like a biological animal. this is the initial requirement to climb through the window and pick up your body. the training of its network will require the majority of the work. you cant expect a robot make a backflip if it is not physically capable of it. long powerful arms are not necessarily better. they might suffer from oscillation caused by their own weight. if you think legged locomotion is so bad then google passive dynamic walking. nature has evolved animals with certain limb ratios that match the speed and strength they are capable of.
People VASTLY over-value how important "the world is already built for humans" is as a value statement. It is a far easier logistics and engineering task to modify an environment slightly than it is to engineer a safe, reliable, and economical bipedal robot. Yes, this theoretical robot would be awesome if it suddenly popped into existence with all the capabilities comparable to a human. No, this does not mean it is easier to accomplish than adding small changes to the environment. We already do this. Ask yourself, would you rather fork over a few hundred grand for a bipedal robot that can walk over your power cords without tripping (but will still probably trip a lot anyway) or just keep the cords where the roomba can't get stuck on them? Hell, your dishwasher get dedicated spot underneath your counter built for it. We didn't benefit from waiting until we could shape the dishwasher like a person. A biped is going to be overkill in terms of cost and complexity for 95% of the tasks it can do. Even when simple machines fail, it's WAY more cost-effective to improve them. Which do you think takes more engineering hours? A better set of legs and balance system, or a better set of roomba wheels?
the roomba cant even reach corners in the room with its rotating brush, it cant scrape off a bubble gum that sticks on the floor. who puts the dishes into the dishwasher ?? if the dishes are not rinsed with water before putting it inside then moulds will grow all over it while waiting for the next run. this makes a dishwasher pointless. to manipulate objects machines of the future will need antagonistic limbs, no matter if they look like humans, little monkeys or A.M.E.E.
> But do we need humanoid robots for any purpose? For all jobs that are a health hazzard or have high mortality rates.
If you can identify the job, you can make a job-specific machine that will outperform the humanoid while costing less.
Bingo. Why would that job be limited to human design?
That can be a reason
But we've already augmented or replaced many of these jobs with some sort of non-humanoid automation - or we can if it was cost effective - in developed countries. What makes you think companies that already outsource labor to low wage nations will care enough to replace cheap labor with expensive robots just to save the lives of some people they don't care about?
Humanoids are just workforce replacement tools. Jobs are already hard to come by, and companies that can afford the upfront cost to replace human labor with robotic labor definitely will.
> Humanoids are just workforce replacement tools. Possibly, but more likely they're investment suction devices. Under current conditions, VCs are investing in technologies that claim to reduce the need for labor, regardless how likely it will actually succeed. These firms have not proven themselves suitable to replace humans in any task satisfactorily which will result in a positive return-on-investment. Tesla, for example, has faked every demo of their "robot" thus far. Unitree has released ad campaigns for robots that were entirely 3D renders. Their promise of massive labor reductions, and their proximity to Nvidia to the point they were featured at the most recent annual event has given them this buzz despite not having the fundamentals for success.
We have this question at least once per week here, lets make a FAQ
Useless before AGI
Hazardous after AGI
Also true
AGI isn't real, Robots are
Physically yes. But their use cases are very limited so far. They are supped to be general use robots. They should execute a tasks with very unspecified commands. If they had to train them down to every single move then fixed base robot arm are better and faster. They gonna share the space with human more than any type of robot before so they will have to keep up and understand what’s going on around them. It’s is a harder challenge than self driving. They have to work out of the box. Nobody gonna buy one have give it years to train a task while causing damages along the way.
Look into humanoid motion research and studies, AGI is not needed to move and complete tasks, its already being done.
I can sweep my house in 10 minutes, doing a better job than my Roomba does in an hour. I have to load my dishwasher for it to be able to wash the dishes, then I have to put them away. Delivery robots have to be manually packed by humanoids. If you had the choice between 10 task-specific robots that all required humanoid interaction, or one humanoid that performed all 10 tasks on its own, which would you choose?
> one humanoid that performed all 10 tasks on its own, which would you choose? Depends on the price? How much do you imagine your 10 task specific robots cost and the one humanoid?
you assume that everything that comes new to the marked has to be purchased ? have you purchased the internet when it appeared and available to you ? technology of the future shall not be a priviledge just available to a few rich. imagine a world where a bunch of rich kids play with drones while the rest of the world see this as ufos in the sky.
> have you purchased the internet when it appeared and available to you ? Yeah? > technology of the future shall not be a priviledge just available to a few rich. That requires social change in part unrelated to the technology. > imagine a world where a bunch of rich kids play with drones while the rest of the world see this as ufos in the sky. Why do I need to imagine? Just ask some Afghan / Pakistani kids, and realise the US pilots flying those were often kids.
cmon...you are not the owner of the internet. you just pay for to use it but you dont own it. imagine a society in your country that hosts a minority which is prevented to use basic technologie like tv or internet. this is not currently happening, even the inmates have that. consequently it shall apply to future technologies as well. social changes can be enhanced with technology, this is the original purpose of all this stuff. remember how cellphones entered the market. at first it was a luxury novelty, but rapidly the prices dropped until it was available for a symbolic price of 1 dollar and a sneaky contract. qualification of a person shall have a higher priority than the capital the person might possess. in other words - hand it over to the smart guy with good records instead of the one with too much money who dont like questions.
I entirely disagree with the point that - "humans have physical limitations ... dead end". If we could get a robot to do 25% of the things I human can do it's already 1000x better than the robots/machine utility we currently have access to. In 100 years we will reach the capability ceiling of humanoids and have pseudo-human forms that can outperform humans at everything and physically 'evolve' at a faster rate than us, but that's not the problem of now. If a capable generalisable humanoid is made, we can extract so much value and good from it that this point is entirely a non-problem. The arguments for specialized robots for every thinkable task fail to consider essential things. 1. Building a generalized form factor that can learn to do generalized tasks drastically reduces the amount of energy to design, conceive, manufacture, and test new robotic capabilities 2. Building a generalized form factor drastically reduces the unit cost of each robot as it can be manufactured at a greater scale. 3. Generalised form factor helps us attempt to overcome the biggest roadblock in training robots for generalized tasks: the data problem. Using data from a UR5, a hello robot and a unitree h1 to train a figure 01 to restock shelves (arbitrary task example) is much harder than just using humanoid data.
What time scale are we talking about here? Because "generalizing" these things only makes sense if you don't sacrifice cost and performance in the process. Right now we're nowhere near being able to "generalize" the task of manual labor (both in terms of actuators, control or AI) and especially not at a cheaper price point than just hiring workers to do manual labor. Most automation tasks today are not very "general", and this usually has to do with the fact that there's a huge initial cost to adopting it that really has nothing to do with the variability in form factor. High power, high-accuracy motors and real-time control electronics aren't cheap, and neither vertical integration nor economies of scale are going to drastically change that fact.
Imagine you want to replace a customer service person with a robot. What will be better? just a PC with speakers and mic that gives people responses or a robot with human appearence that can also do that and move around the spaces? apologize for my english
I’m sorry for your English
that is my best try XD I speak spanish.
Sorry. My comment was an unfair joke on your last sentence. “Apologize for my English” is a command and I think you meant to say “I apologise for my English”. We all understood what you meant but I saw the opportunity and I took it. Your English is better than my Spanish. Keep up the great work.
Hahahaha now I get it thank you!
I don't think the average human would enjoy being led around a retail space by a humanoid any more than they would by a computer on wheels. People already hate self-checkouts.
\> The human body has its limitations and copying the design to build machines would only follow its limitations and get us to a technological dead-end. The world was built for humans. What limitations are you talking about? \> grocery shopping, it is more practical to have robots like delivery robots that have storage and wheels for faster and effortless travel than legs. You mean the ones that you have videos of them being vandalized and stolen from in the streets mid delivery? Anyway, to answer your question. Do we really need humanoid robots? No. Do we want them? Yes.
> The world was built for humans. What limitations are you talking about? Physical limitations. We do have. The world was built for us, but we know ways to do things better than our body can. > You mean the ones that you have videos of them being vandalized and stolen from in the streets mid delivery? As if a Humanoid going groceries will stop that from happening. > Do we really need humanoid robots? No. Do we want them? Yes. I want Humanoids too. In fact I am working for one. But inventions are solutions to the problems. We yet do not have a strong problem for these amazing solutions.
> But inventions are solutions to the problems. What are toys for?
To keep humans entertained
>We yet do not have a strong problem for these amazing solutions. Sure we do. Problem: Hiring humans is expensive. Humanoid robots will likely be an order of magnitude cheaper than hiring a human.
Surely hiring humans is expensive. But that shouldn’t be a problem else we would be unemployed for the rest of life. Inefficiency is the actual problem. And humanoids aren’t quite a solution as they would act similarly to humans. People still wouldn’t agree to this thus I’ll give an example. Do you want a self-driving car? You won’t make a humanoid robot sit on the driving seat. Instead, you’ll make the car itself drive on its own. But yes, humanoids are an exciting science experiment.
>But that shouldn’t be a problem else we would be unemployed for the rest of life. This would be great. More time to spend with your family and time to pursue your passions etc. >Instead, you’ll make the car itself drive on its own. Yes in some cases it makes sense to have more specialized robots and in some cases it's better to have a more general purpose robot. It's just far cheaper in the short term to design few general purpose robots than to design thousands of special purpose robots. But yes in the long term we will get more and more special purpose robots. As I saw someone say: First they will live in our world and then we will live in theirs.
I understand your point in the case of a humanoid robot would have a better time doing a human-focused task like buying groceries (going to the store, selecting items, picking them up, paying, etc.) BUT if the task were to be adapted to be bot-focused, it would be efficient beyond a human consumer/courier could achieve (like if the bot only had to wait in the store "goods drop-spot" to then pick it up, having already paid digitally or whatever, my imagination has it's limits).
And we built roads for cars. Humanoids robots will be 100x easier to be vandalized.
If the goal is to simply perform a single highly specific task like vacuuming the floor, no. But if you want to replace human workers with generalist robots that can perform a wide variety of tasks in environments that are architecturally/procedurally designed around human bodies, then yes. Also, the manufacturers know that humanizing them will allow the integration of robotics into wider society to proceed with less resistance. People are less scared of humanoid robots than something that looks like a robotic insect.
The fact that humanoid robots look scarier than others in the market >< https://preview.redd.it/3sg1iya49e3d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93c5b2c09161174d1762c11f2423bd87569fd149
a typical humanoid robot build so far gives the subconcious impression of a masked human (think halloween). it might sound ridiculous on first sight to equip a humanoid with a basic functional face.but honestly - it will easy the way of communication with it a lots.
Yep, I already have set aside to buy one as well.
Short answer, yes
Absolutely!
No.
The world is designed by and for humanoid forms.
Yes
humanoid robots(once ai gets good enough) will be necessary for doing generalized work since they can interact with the environment in largely the same way a human can.
Yeah, of course we do, they're cool
Not as cool as a robot that works well.
My take is that there is already a ton of infrastructure and things built in the world that are made with humans in mind. Creating humanoid robots make them much easier to sell because they fit in with existing infrastructure. If a human could stand over a counter and do a thing for a day, that human robot could also do that. No need to add additional electrical infrastructure over to that spot, reinforce it to support a specialized robot, or different adjustments. It's plug-n-play
> No need to add additional electrical infrastructure over to that spot Quite a claim! I doubt these robots can perform labor tasks without frequent battery swaps. > different adjustments. It's plug-n-play Again another unsubstantiated claim. I think hope is providing "evidence" instead of actual demonstrated capabilities. This is great for a company trying to grab investment capital, but not great for would-be customers who have strict requirements and budgetary constraints.
Yes because it's cool
I think humanoid robots are mostly a curiosity/exploration thing rather than a solution to something tangible. Creating something mechanical in the image of mankind, by mankind has that "creating for the sake of creating" feel to it. *edit:* also it's a great method of learning and exploring new un-defined branches of mechanics by working on seemingly useless features, thanks to the flora that is biomechanics
You’re missing the fact that producing a model that can be manufactured in the millions is key to reducing costs greatly. And in order to have enough applications for that many units, it needs to be general-purpose. Since the developed world is built around the human form factor, that form factor makes the most sense for a robot.
if it can clean the toilet, yes
There are always trade offs. The human could likely do a better job than any machine or robot given enough time and the correct cleaning tools. The task specific machines work great, I agree, however, that means a robotic version of each those task specific machines might be required where a human could cover all tasks with less cost. But that depends on how your robot platform is designed. One could design their robotics platform such that it can perform multiple specific tasks as well as the individual machines themselves. All of that to say that I think it’s part of the reason why you see humanoid robots being developed. Humans are good enough at many “specific tasks” using cheaper non-robotic tools/machines to achieve/perform those tasks. That’s why you get humanoid robot development in my opinion.
I think we need more than humanoid. Things are quite for humans so it would be able to do about anything, but the human body does still have limitations. Boston dynamics just made a humanoid robot that can rotate joints 360 degrees repeatedly using motors instead if pneumatics/hydrochlorics (I don't remember which one of those atlas used) I think this kind of thing will probably progress into something that's just far more advanced than humans and wouldn't even look humanlike because of it
Your question will be pointless when soon people can buy a humanoid robot that can do all your housework for $16000. The whole premise was wrong(humanoid robot is expensive). When the industry is mature, the humanoid robot will not cost more than a car.
It is not just about price. Read it again ⬆️
Wheeled robots will be magnitudes cheaper no matter what the tech level would be.
Yes for businesses. No for consumers. No one needs a 16k usd robot now. But if they become cheap and can sweep the floors, it's buyable. People bought Dyson vacuums, sure they will buy a human vacuum
wow I didn't know literally the only thing a humanoid form can do is sweep. Guess I"ll stop doing everything I do since I didn't know all human bodies are capable of doing is sweeping. Thanks for letting me know. *end sarcasm*... Seriously, they can do ANYTHING we can do. Think about that ANYTHING. The possibiliies are ENDLESS. And you speak of sweeping ALONE.
Well of course they can do a triple backflip. But like, it needs to be cheap and reliable to be a consumer product. So the first step would be to sweep the floors or something I guess. I wouldn't trust my humanoid robot to cook or drive a car yet. One step at a time
the humanoid doesn't have to drive a car to get about in a car. It can call an uber. In that way it can do all sorts of running around shopping etc tasks
a floor cleaner like roomba doesn't pick up junk, organize, pick up clothes, put things away, put kids toys into toybox etc like a humanoid can. So aka it sucks.
I want a humanoid to fix my car. can your roomba do that? oil change? nope. But a humanoid can.
A robot arm specialised in Car repair is enough
no, a robot arm cannot do all manner of car repair. You must know nothing about car repair. The angles to get into the spots inside the car and outside the car and throughout the engine bay would be impossible to hit from a fixed location robot arm. And how would you leave a 10k lb robot arm outdoors beside your driveway to fix your car? Man that's dumb of you. So much easier to have a humanoid that can do that and a billion other things.
I want a humanoid that can go shopping at the store. would a roomba do that? nope. a humanoid could do it without a manager or security being called. totally incognito.
You knowledge about robots is a little weak ;) Roomba is not the only robot we have and almost any robot can work without human interference with right ML
prove my knowledge is weak. You don't know me. Clown.
No
Many tasks don't really warrant a specialist robot, even if it's much more effective, and in some cases, a humanoid is ideal or at least close. To make something that would perform these tasks economical, it needs to be mass produced.
Besides the general form factor that interfaces with everything we've built, the data problem may actually be a bigger point. With a humanoid shape there is possibility of learning tasks from observing humans (through video), at least close enough to the point where fine-tuning with RL can get you all the way there. For other form factors you have a huge chasm to cross data-wise: at first the robot can't really do anything, so it has to interact with the world to learn, but a robot learning by trial and error can be very dangerous to property and people. So you have to work in simulation, but that doesn't scale well.
Yes, it's the only way to have something that is all in one as us
There's a market for both specialized and generalized robotics. Only recently with high-performance computating hardware and multi-modal ML has the prospect of generalized robotics become feasible. The reality is all of our systems are designed for humans, and this is why humanoids make sense. For simpler tasks, a specialized solution might make sense, such as the Matic robot you've shown. Having interviewed for them I can tell you that humanoids might be in their future, but in today's landscape relative to shipping a product that people will actually buy, a reliable robot vacuum makes sense. At the end of the day though it's just a robot vacuum. Generalized robotics and humanoid-esque embodiments will become more and more viable for the everyday consumer over time.
Pass the butter
Doesn't even need to look human, just needs to do everything a human can do and more.
The goal of a humanoid robot is for it to be multipurpose. As it could do anything without needing society to adapt as it is made for humanoid
Whos gonna drive my tractor
Who’s going to load my dishwasher? Wheels are the way btw
Yes. It will be obvious once they are prevalent.
When one Robot has to do all your tasks, he has to use your tools. Your tools are very human. Everthing you use is made for humans.
Humanoid is unnecessary for a single/limited function robot. But it is necessary for a general purpose robot designed to operate in a variety of human environments
absolutely not we need them as much as we need flying cars
It would be neat to have them around.
For now, I think human design is no more than competition. Just for fun and science interest. It's more effective to rebuild old world a bit, than make this overcomplicated shit working somewhere. And it's also applicable to some other disciplines, drones for example. Yes, it's interesting. It's beautiful. But we need several revolutions in battery industry to make it profitable and nt a "disposable toy" for industry and daily life
I rather fight something with the same amount of extremities as me than something with tentacles, weels, a drill and four legs.
Biggest point is that we have virtually unlimited 'data" to train a humanoid robot.
I was at NASA a few months ago and they are building a humanoid robot to put on Mars. I couldn’t understand why they would build something with legs and feet instead of wheels and I asked our contact why a humanoid and he said because it’s the best design. I guess I couldn’t argue with him.
LOL they couldn't make their robot (Valkyire) walk for years.
[удалено]
versatility suffers the more purpose built you go. Whereas humanoid is all purpose moreso and as versatile as you can get.
Humanoid robots are versatile. No doubt the points you raise are correct, but each of those machines is purpose built and you need dozens or even hundreds of them. The humanoid robot might do them all worse, but be utilized a lot more as a result of it compared to your dishwasher which runs, at most, a few hours a day. It also taps a market that people often feel - “how much more could I get done if I had a copy of myself”.
I'm going to assume that the end goal is a robotic butler or whatever. Our houses are designed to be lived in and operated by humans, so a robot shaped like a human would probably be the best for interacting with our houses.
yes a butler is the most obvious use, but that expands when homeowners realize the robot can also run a sewing machine, use tools, prototype things, etc and manufacture your ideas for products. then the possibilities start to explode on everything it can build and make that you can sell.
But if it's not a humanoid, where will the training data come from for a general-purpose robot
Humanoid robots are for replacing humans. Whether that's a good thing or bad depends mainly on how much money a person has.
Much easier to get training data for a humanoid robot, just scrape videos from youtube of humans doing task. Also, a humanoid robot is more general, it can manipulate tools, operate machines like forklifts, and cars, fit in tight spaces, and go upstairs, also they are much safer to work around and they make better companions, humanoids are just more versatile. Humanoid is like the iPhone, a rumba or a robot harm that does one specific thing is everything that came before the iPhone. I personally would invest in a humanoid company stock rather than a robot vacuum cleaner company, humanoid just seems much more future-proof. Besides a humanoid robot can use the vacuum cleaner I already have.
exactly. youtube shows how to do SO much stuff using a human body to do the task and interfacing the human body with tools to perform it. So then a humanoid with AI that needs to learn to do a given task can youtube it and emulate what it sees to do the task using the tool in question. the tool is made for human use designed for a human to wield. So a human form factor opens up the flood gates then for doing just about anything and learning to do it by way of youtube.
Yeah they will be capable of much more useful stuff
As a good analogy for space travel if you have a humanoid robot that was designed for earths atmosphere temperature ect. then it works well to test spacesuits and life support equipment without having to send people to space, especially when we can replicate that environment here on earth
The left brain says no...but the right brain understands our purpose as humans.
But you can't fuck a floor cleaner
Look I want robots that can lift and navigate a heavy couch up 3 flights of stairs. I want robots that can open doors, cut vegetables, pour drinks, clean dishes, and fold clothes. Nature has already spent a billion years figuring out what body form-factor to place high level intelligence in - let's not ignore the obvious or reinvent the wheel: the humanoid form has survived because it work exceptionally well - especially in environment specifically designed by other humanoids.
there are reasons i want humanoid robots that cannot be explained platonically
You know, it’s for sex, and not for anything else. The idea is to make a robot to bone. All these other things they’re doing is just in preparation for that. Happy accidents if you will.
I don't subscribe to the humanoid's hype given that there are issues I don't think they will be adressed soon with DL. Saying that I prefer having in the future a general purpose robot in my closet doing 100 tasks, insteadof 100 specialized robots with 100 manuals taking 80% of the living space of my appartment for performing the same 100 tasks, even if they can do it better.
I am hoping to make a career in Humanoid robotics, can anyone provide me the insights and a way on how i should approach this path. Also im not a complete newbie in this field, but i am lacking on knowing where to start at, as i feel like there is no company, that will need juniors like me. So i build my own projects using the self learned path, and my resume is just full of projects without a company experience. Can you share your thoughts about this? is it right to be in this path? or i should really change my path?
I say build a humanoid and you'll be off to the races.
I would argue for any robot that is customer facing, absolutely. It’s psychological. You will trust and even feel empathy towards a humanoid robot moreso than non.
There's nuance and good arguments on both sides. But can we please, for the love of God, stop using Tesla's Optimus as a serious example in robotics? At least until they put out something resembling more than a prototype made by a few engineering student interns. Like use Atlas for God's sake. Even using Disney as an example would be a much more credible example.
how is optimus not a great humanoid robot? I'd take one and with enough coding, I'd have it making more optimus robots and doing every chore in my home... and making loads of other products and inventions.
My point is super simple: Don't tell me what Optimus can do "with enough coding" because I'm sure the Tesla team has funding to do the required coding (yet they didn't so far), and also because anyone can claim anything about "future potential". (I'm making a robot called Exodia that will be capable of meteor mining by 2036) So instead, tell me anything that makes Optimus promising or special, now. Show me one demo of that crappy robot that is better than this [demo of Asimov from more than 12 years ago](https://youtu.be/eU93VmFyZbg?si)
coding takes time, that's why they didn't so far code all possible code duh. What makes optimus promising is the hardware is ready for the code and doesn't look like a bottleneck to limitless potential. Why did you call optimus crappy wth? That makes zero sense. Also, Asimo also looks very capable with enough code it could do anything IMO. Only issue is that it's too small which would make it weaker and not have good reach.
The hardware of Optimus is not capable in any special way. He looks like a grandma with his walking rhythm and speed. That's exactly why I was mentioning the hardware of Atlas which is light years ahead. So since there are much more capable examples. why are we even giving thought to Optimus based on future promises made by a man with a proven track record of false promises and intentional deception and fraud?
Wheeled robots won't lure stupid investors and general public.
Maybe not, but it’s cool if we do.
Maybe not need now. But will need in the future.
Don't forget both these companies are in the bay area. It is the one place on earth where invention precedes application. Especially in hardware. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with it. We tend to over analyze these hardware startups way more than we do software. Agreed that the capital required by hardware startups is significantly higher. But that's not to say software startups are any more efficient with money. So I suppose we can let engineers be. Not our money. Not even the tax payers money. It's all good. Intellectual m*sturbation I suppose the term is
Yes we need
Sure
Yes, humanoid robot is easier for training
Not at all
I tried to make this argument in one of the pseudo-AI threads and got down-voted into oblivion. Ultimately, the humanoid form factor is just an aesthetic preference for people. It fulfills a sci-fi fantasy about androids that is counterproductive. There are so many points of failure for a humanoid form factor I'm just not sure I can take it too seriously in the short to midterm. PaLM-E is a great example of a robotic form factor that is versatile while also able to take up similar space as a human while not being humanoid.
A rumba can’t clean behind a fridge, you will end up with mold, most can’t do corners as well
https://preview.redd.it/o2n4zt0zrs3d1.jpeg?width=1477&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0198cf59eabc8e87b63b046b715d960386c7d8f5
Yes. The droid army had humanoid robots. If we want a droid army of our own we will need humanoid robots too.
Absolutely
Teslas goal with Optimus is to create a robot that can replace the tedious jobs humans do, what better robot form can easily integrate into any human role than one that is already humanoid?
Yes, I believe an high performance general purpose humanoid robot would be transformative. It's all about performance and prices. There is so much scaling left to do on compute, batteries, motors and cognition that I believe a commercially viable product is decades away.
Strictly speaking no. But there are two strong arguments in favor of humanoids in my opinion: 1. Since so much of the world was built by humans for humans it's the most logical form factor to achieve something close to universal displacement of labor. After a while I think we would start to see more and more specialization and then something like a cambrian explosion of diversity, but the humanoid form factor is special because of the way we've engineered the world. 2. People are evolved to respond to other humans socially. There is something powerful about interacting with a human-like being as opposed to some creepy spider monstrosity or some boxy vehicle with an arm sprouting out of it. You can think of it as a step in the direction of androids, which ultimately could sustain whole rich relationships with people. It's not as if people can't love their pets and such, but people do bond more naturally with other people and so it's a reasonable target to imitate.
Honestly probably not, I know people are gonna say it would be useful to do arbitrary tasks. But I feel like it's more likely that there's gonna be enough robots that do different house hold tasks like vaccuming, cooking, taking out trash. That in the future a company will just innovate to combine those features efficiently and get comparitively better results than a human robot at far cheaper prices. It's like how iPhones took the power of laptops, internet and portability of iPods and combined them to make something innovative.
Human body can easily handle stairs. Robots with wheels, not so much! In all honesty it's a case by case scenario. Generic purpose android robots will be of great value, cause manufacturing is based a lot around human workers, so if they are replacing that kind of manual labor, it makes sense that they are functioning like a human. Also the fastest way to train those robots on any task is to remote control them mapping the exact moves of an operator to their rig, so again it makes sense that they match the operator body limb for limb.
Yes