The robotics revolution is here, and it's changing how we live | Hacker News Reader

The robotics revolution is here, and it's changing how we live

nationalgeographic.com

"If it works, it's a machine. If it doesn't work, it's a Robot" - Kane Hsieh, Root VC

Reminds me of the "if we understand it, it's just a machine, if we don't, that's technology". Nobody calls a bus "technology" anymore, but ML, now that's technology!

Whoever came up with renaming statistics to be machine-learning-artificial-intelligence was the venture capital alchemist of the decade.

I'd say it's the other way round: people were trying their hands at what they called AI for a while. See the original AI winter etc.

The modern renaissance in AI came when partially from trying to put these techniques on more sound mathematical footings like statistics.

People who don't understand things, call them some variant on magic. People who do, use their true names.

Clarke's linguistic corollary has probably been true for as long as there's been technology.

I prefer Buckbee's Law: "The value of a robot is proportional to the degree it does not look like a robot."

Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

Japan would like a word with you.

Captain Bryant toka, me ni omae-yo.

The AI effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

Good time to share Kane’s MachinePix project, which is made for this crowd: https://twitter.com/machinepix

Can we please change the title of this post? "And it's changing how we live" is not only click bait, it's not even in the original article.

Agree. Please, dang.

I agree it should be changed, but to be fair, it is the title of the webpage. Sites often have different HTML titles from the article's "real" title that is shown on the page itself. I'm sure it's for click-baiting, as you indicated.

Understand your annoyance but "it's changing how we live" is in the raw HTML source tag <title>. It may have been the most convenient text (e.g. maybe default title in RSS reader) to copy paste into the submission form. From browser's view source:

  <title>The robotics revolution is here, and it&#039;s changing how we live</title>

I’ve recently got a roborock vacuum, and it’s actually been life changing. I have a number of pets, and not having to vacuum 3x a week or so has been incredible. I had a roomba when I was a kid and it sucked (or not I suppose). The roborock has lidar and it’s super meticulous.

What model have you got? I've been looking and it a seems robot vacs have finally started to be good.

So looking to make a purchase between now and Christmas-ish.

Not GP; I have a Roborock S5.

But it hasn't run yet. I have yet to get around to rooting it to avoid privacy issues.

https://www.iot-tests.org/2019/02/from-the-land-of-smiles-xi...

On the upside, apparently once it is rooted and dustcloud installed it is apparently even more responsive as it pretty much stores the database on itself.

https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud

As usual, disclaimers apply, YMMV etc etc.

Both S5 and S6 are great (actually there's not much difference) as long as you don't try to mop the floor with it (I haven't).

Setting up red zones with the app is the most important part of making them useful.

I have the s6 pure which I got for a little less than 500 USD iirc. It’s fantastic.

Did you already upgrade it so it screams when it hits a wall to make it more 'human'?

https://youtu.be/mvz3LRK263E (fun starts around 3:30, might be nsfw)

> I had a roomba when I was a kid

OK now I feel old.

Surprisingly “introduced in September 2002”, so to be fair they could be as old as their early 30s.

It’s not as bad as the “favourite childhood game on an iPhone” the other day

La la la you're not helping! fingers in ears :P

True about the childhood iPhone games, though.

Robots are still very much special-purpose devices, so I would call them just machines, like a dishwashing machine.

The moment they become more versatile we can call them robots. E.g. when the same machine can bake an egg, do the dishes, and vacuum the floor.

I use robots in my day job for industrial automation. $12k to 60k, SCARA or 6-axis robot arms, from Fanuc, ABB, Epson, Denso etc.

We call them "robots" and not just "machines" or "actuators" like the rest of the equipment because, in comparison with the rest of the industrial LEGO with which they interact, they are incredibly versatile.

They're not sci-fi "Do what I mean" versatile, no, but if the requirements change (or are likely to change) then they're probably going to be your easiest path to accommodate those changes, without buying new parts. Sure, you can, say, design in a shim pack to precisely set the travel of a pneumatic cylinder (to make one of six degrees of freedom able to be changed), but with a robot you just bolt the fixture down to the concrete at woodworker precision and let the robot programmer (sigh...) accomodate any tolerance you may need to take up.

This feels like a Wired article from 2003.

"If you're like most people, you've never met a robot" is a very odd opener. I have seen a roomba? And ridden in a car with autopilot? And outside the tech bubble, I'd expect that nearly all factory workers have "met" a robot by this point.

Man, I wish we had articles written like Wired from 2003-2009, that was the height of their editorial.

If relationships with China go further south, I've been wondering/worrying if that might eventually (and sadly) affect the supply of cheap components to young, developing 'makers', many of whom ultimatately tend to end up in this line of industry after years of tinkering.

The knock-on effect could be huge in the future.

I’ve worried about this too, but it is a two way street. China’s industry can’t stop supplying these components to manufacturers without taking a hit. The extra supply that feeds Makers won’t go away unless the production itself goes away. In spite of all their efforts, this is still Capitalism, and there are still willing buyers.

The Chinese government is boneheaded enough to do something like that, definitely. It would of course be a bad idea in the long run as production would simply move.

We also have things like this where a drip coffee machine would do exactly the same thing: https://images.wsj.net/im-223921?width=1280&size=1.33333333

If it cleans up that would be a pretty nice pour over station.

If the robotics revolution is here, why is productivity growth so low? American factories underwent dramatic automation during the 1950s and 1960s, and productivity growth was very high at that time. Maybe that was the real robotics revolution?

It's all so new, and far from being fully deployed, to be seen in economical averages.

Then why use the word "here"? Your point is that this is something that is still nascent -- maybe we will see results in a few years. It is not "here" yet.

Because people who want to risk a little for some interesting gains should be doing it now, not when it's in the averages. It gets in the averages years after all the purchases, setup, customization and consulting is done.

Then why use the word "here"? Your point is that this is something that is still nascent -- maybe we will see results in a few years. It is not "here" yet.

It was not my point, but I think our definitions of 'here' differ. I don't need to wait until everyone has it to consider it 'here'. I consider it here when I can start doing it.

Tractors are the most influential robots of the past century.

Every example they give is a demo, not a production system.

A few they mention are production systems at fairly high volume. The floor scrubbers from Brain Corp and shelf scanners from Bossa Nova are running in hundreds of Walmart stores, and the delivery robots from Starship are running in dozens of cities.

I've seen the Starship robots rolling around, always with a human watcher following along.

The meaning of the expression 'to be here' when applied to a technology has changed in recent years. consider the sentences:

The robotics revolution is here.

Self-driving cars are already here.

The expression 'to be here' no longer has any specific meaning.

I like robots but bullshit.

There is no Robotics revolution and won't be until the Paradoxes are broken. We have toys until then.

Is a vendo machine considered robot?

Only if you need to make your word quota for the week.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com