Comment by adastra22

Comment by adastra22 4 days ago

28 replies

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No, I’m saying they haven’t made the case. Or at least the case that is being presented and sold to investors is complete BS.

For example, I work in deep tech and pay attention to the manufacturing industry. The idea that humanoid robots will replace, streamline and revolutionize manufacturing is a joke in that community. They’ve already long since replaced the humans with CNC machines, industrial (non-humanoid) robots, and 3d printing.

The humanoid robotics craze is a lot like the crypto craze. Pure vibes and motivated reasoning. Like crypto, there is actual value there, but way out of proportion to the hype.

johnfn 4 days ago

I mean, forget the manufacturing industry. I'd happily pay a lot of money just to have one help me with menial tasks around the house. I mean, I'd probably pay thousands for a bot that could just do the laundry. Are you saying that such a market doesn't exist?

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  • olyjohn 4 days ago

    You already have machines that do the laundry. Put clothes in, they come out clean. Have you ever tried manually washing clothes? All you have to do is take them out and fold them.

    Reply View 6 replies
    • adastra22 4 days ago

      Next you’ll be telling me there’s a machine to wash your dishes.

      Reply View 0 replies
    • johnfn 4 days ago

      For some reason I can't understand, you appear to be contorting yourself into making a totally bizarre argument (there is no valued in saved time whatsoever). You can't honestly believe that.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • olyjohn 7 hours ago

        Well you go ahead and tell me how many hours a week you're going to spend working to afford a robot that saves you an hour a week of labor, then get back to me. If you think you won't be paying monthly subscriptions and doing maintenance on these machines to save you a couple hours of folding clothes, you're the one contorting yourself.

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    • zo1 4 days ago

      And yet such a HUGE amount of time is spent by families around the world (mine included) just moving laundry around in various states:

      Dirty -> Sort It Yourself -> Plan Washing Chunks -> Load into Washing machine -> Yay It "Washed it For You" -> wet pile of clothes -> Unload it -> dryer -> Dryer "Dries" it For You -> Fold It Yourself -> Storage.

      Now do this for a family with 2 kids that go to school. Washing is literally an hour or two of collective human time every day.

      I'd pay money to rather spend that time with my kids instead of yet another useless daily chore that can be automated.

      Now also apply the same logic to dishes, clearing up around the house, sorting cupboards, Driving!!, and a host of other things. The market is absolutely huge, and people are sticking their heads in the sand because they know that once this drops, humanity will reach an inflection point and all pointless manual labor will disappear, which means saying goodbye to cheap third world labor and only capital + raw resources + energy will be the only things holding back all scaling.

      Reply View 2 replies
      • numpad0 4 days ago

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washer-dryer
        Dirty clothes go in, dry clothes come out. Some have auto measuring detergent dispensers.
        Reply View 1 reply
        • olyjohn 7 hours ago

          Also, despite what people think, children are capable of doing their own laundry and clean up after themselves. Maybe they can spend an hour less on their screens. Imagine what a spoiled-ass shit kid would grow up in a house where they have no responsibilities.

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  • aloha2436 4 days ago

    The market exists, does it make financial sense to fill it? Are there enough johnfns out there willing to buy enough of them at high enough of a price to justify the mind-boggling capital required, not to mention the opportunity cost?

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    • AuryGlenz 4 days ago

      If you make a $10,000 robot that can do all of the dishes every damned household with kids in any semi-rich country will get one. A very good portion of our night is spent cleaning up after supper with just two kids, and that's time we can't spend with them. I'd even pay a subscription on top of that $10,000.

      If it does laundry too? We'd easily pay $20,000, and we don't have FAANG type salaries.

      Reply View 7 replies
  • ted_dunning 4 days ago

    A robot vacuum costs thousands of dollars (will about a thousand) and they don't work very. There is no way that you are going to get a machine that is orders of magnitude more complex down to that price point any time soon.

    A business case is not just a matter of a willing buyer. It is a buyer and a vendor who can agree on a price that works for both. You may have agreed but the physics of the matter mean that there is nobody to take the other side.

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  • hakfoo 4 days ago

    Humanoid robots are a lot of sizzle-- they promise all sorts of flexibility, at the cost of hugely higher cost/complexity/unreliability.

    If you can scope your problem to some degree, you can probably make some purpose-built automation that won't look like a human, but will do the job competently and cheaply.

    I see the demos with the robots carrying boxes and think "okay, why not just use a conveyer belt?"

    Reply View 6 replies
    • AuryGlenz 4 days ago

      Because, again, for home use we don't want a laundry robot, a dish washing robot, a cleaning robot, etc. We kind of have those (laundry machine, dishwasher, Roomba-types) but they all have big limitations. What people want is something that can do everything a human can do, so it can put away those dishes, wash a pan, clean the table, counters, etc. We've already scoped the problem and a humanoid-ish robot is probably the best option to do those things.

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      • seanhunter 4 days ago

        Well for home use you probably also want a robot that won’t accidentally murder your pet, injure your children, break itself and/or your prized possessions by doing the wrong thing, etc etc etc.

        These are unsolved problems for robotics. There is a reason that most industrial robots work behind guards or in very constrained areas with use cases that are 100% on rails and stringently tested.

        The idea that if you just make a robot in a human shape all these cease to be problems is magical thinking. We are fare from knowing that a humanoid-ish robot is the best option to do any of these things because we have no idea what it would take for it to do these things safely other than to say it would take technology that we currently don’t have.

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    • adastra22 4 days ago

      The laundry bot would probably be a box with some some 6DOF chopstick like positioners doing “cloth origami” to fold clothes. No need for an overkill 2kW humanoid.

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  • thefounder 4 days ago

    The market for that exist but the execution to get that product is beyond hard. Compare full self driving after all these years where are we? It’s still not a real thing. It’s still just a limited experiment. The cars have only speed and steering angle to manage. What do you think about “full self driving robots”? There is a business case for them but in the near term you cannot make one good enough for the tasks you want. Safety is a big issue on top of making the robot useful. You don’t want it hurt anyone.

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    • johnfn 4 days ago

      I responded to someone saying "Ain’t nobody made the business case for that. It is pure vibes." When I point one out, all the responses shift the goal posts, as you are doing, to say execution is incredibly hard or Tesla is far behind or whatever. But that's not what I was saying, nor what I was responding to.

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      • adastra22 4 days ago

        You didn’t make the business case though. How big is that market? How many units could be sold, at what price? What ongoing operating and maintenance costs?

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