Humanoid development at Chinese robotics company Unitree continues apace. Following its entry into the melee just last year, its fast-walking H1 bot recently got its backflip groove on. Now the faceless and hand-less humanoid is being joined by an impressive all-rounder.
I’m surprised more people aren’t aware of how rapidly robotics are currently developing. The same LLM AI that is capturing public attention with generative art and ChatGPT is equally revolutionizing robots.
Here’s an illustration of it. This is the closest I’ve seen yet of a mass-market-priced and extremely capable robot that could sell in tens of millions around the world. This looks close to the type of robot you could bring to many workplaces and get to do a wide range of unskilled work. How long before we see fast food places fully staffed by robots like these? At the current rate of development that seems only 2 or 3 years away.
there is labor that can* be done with extremely little skill. Think vacuuming a large flat room with nothing valuable on it, that task could be done (more or less) with a robotic vacuum. Entire jobs might not be fully replaced but labor demands can be greatly reduced.
*not necessarily done well, but done to minimum standards
You know what it means, god dammit. There’s jobs anyone can fake with a week of training and there’s jobs that need six years of school to not kill people.
What’s the use case, though? There really isn’t much benefit to humanoid form robots outside of looking good to human aesthetics. Much of what robotics and automation would be good for don’t actually require humanoid forms.
Navigating human environments. Imagine a team of these robots toting moving boxes down the stairs of a third floor apartment and loading them into a truck.
Yes? A triped robot would have just as much ease navigating human environments, while having much more stability. Same logic applies to arms and joints - there’s no real reason to limit it to what humans have, it would likely perform much better in other configurations.
A total inability to fall over or navigate any terrain regardless of roughness isn’t a benefit? Increased manipulators would also increase productivity / capability, probably much more than making up for increased cost.
Your argument is essentially that the human form is the best possible one imaginable, which I find highly doubtful.
My argument is that humans have built our cities to be navigated best by the human form, so that in that environment it is the best form. In most terrains a quadruped form is better.
None of these robots can take my job. Until you get one that can do customer service, and then operate in a warehouse running a forklift then I get worried.
The strange thing about fast food places is that there’s no “train of food” where you just have to order in a screen and a robotic line makes your food. I’d say it’s one of the first places that could do that.
We’ve seen a few robot restaurants open in the past few years. I wonder how they’re getting on. I remember at least one was a failure because it needed humans to supervise everything.
Food is just unpredictable. What shape is lettuce?
Word on the street is that robots that can chop and sautee carefully provided ingredients themselves are probably coming, but that’s more evolution than revolution. The big space to watch is AIs taking your order in a more human way.
I’m surprised more people aren’t aware of how rapidly robotics are currently developing. The same LLM AI that is capturing public attention with generative art and ChatGPT is equally revolutionizing robots.
Here’s an illustration of it. This is the closest I’ve seen yet of a mass-market-priced and extremely capable robot that could sell in tens of millions around the world. This looks close to the type of robot you could bring to many workplaces and get to do a wide range of unskilled work. How long before we see fast food places fully staffed by robots like these? At the current rate of development that seems only 2 or 3 years away.
There is no such thing as unskilled work. That is pure classist bullshit.
there is labor that can* be done with extremely little skill. Think vacuuming a large flat room with nothing valuable on it, that task could be done (more or less) with a robotic vacuum. Entire jobs might not be fully replaced but labor demands can be greatly reduced.
*not necessarily done well, but done to minimum standards
You know what it means, god dammit. There’s jobs anyone can fake with a week of training and there’s jobs that need six years of school to not kill people.
What’s the use case, though? There really isn’t much benefit to humanoid form robots outside of looking good to human aesthetics. Much of what robotics and automation would be good for don’t actually require humanoid forms.
Navigating human environments. Imagine a team of these robots toting moving boxes down the stairs of a third floor apartment and loading them into a truck.
Assuming it actually works good. Right now they’re probably going to get a limb caught irrecoverably on a doorknob.
Yes? A triped robot would have just as much ease navigating human environments, while having much more stability. Same logic applies to arms and joints - there’s no real reason to limit it to what humans have, it would likely perform much better in other configurations.
Seems like a tripod robot would offer little benefit over a bipedal one while having more parts (costing more).
A total inability to fall over or navigate any terrain regardless of roughness isn’t a benefit? Increased manipulators would also increase productivity / capability, probably much more than making up for increased cost.
Your argument is essentially that the human form is the best possible one imaginable, which I find highly doubtful.
My argument is that humans have built our cities to be navigated best by the human form, so that in that environment it is the best form. In most terrains a quadruped form is better.
Put it this way - does it seem like cats and dogs have any trouble navigating our environment?
The dog shaped robot is $70,000
None of these robots can take my job. Until you get one that can do customer service, and then operate in a warehouse running a forklift then I get worried.
The strange thing about fast food places is that there’s no “train of food” where you just have to order in a screen and a robotic line makes your food. I’d say it’s one of the first places that could do that.
We’ve seen a few robot restaurants open in the past few years. I wonder how they’re getting on. I remember at least one was a failure because it needed humans to supervise everything.
Food is just unpredictable. What shape is lettuce?
Word on the street is that robots that can chop and sautee carefully provided ingredients themselves are probably coming, but that’s more evolution than revolution. The big space to watch is AIs taking your order in a more human way.
Shit I want one but it needs to be programed to cook and clean.
And I’ll call it Rosey…
No way! That name of my robot. I called it first.
Fine, then I’ll just call mine Rosie.
I need to wait for the after market attachments, and preferably less pinch points.
Lol yeah, but what are going do with yours?
Fuck it, then perhaps have it mow the grass. Its probably going to need a job too, 16k is a lot.
Cheaper then having kids with mowing the grass in mind.