Hacker News Reader

Comment by 6a74 | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense. South Korea, where Hyundai is based, has by far the most robots per manufacturing employee [1]. They will make good use of the technology.

[1] https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5f719cf9f44...

View on HN

Feels like we said this about previous buyers. All I'm seeing is another sucker to keep the money rolling for more of these sweet viral robot demos that never seem to materialize into much of anything.

Keep in mind that “previous buyers” is a very small sample size, and there are a huge number of contributing variables. It is certainly not guaranteed to work out, but given the value of really nailing a leap in the space, the price does not seem like an unreasonable gamble

Atlas can definitely nail a leap at this point...

The two previous buyers, Google and Softbank, didn't have much presence in robotics, unlike Hyundai. Hyundai recently spun off the automation business to a separate company, Hyundai Robotics, early last year.

True, but this is Hydundai Motor Group, not Hyundai Robotics. The two are separate.

IMO, this is more about Hyundai's autonomous vehicle efforts. A BD robot is almost completely different than an industrial automation robot, the former attempts to use 3D mapping to dynamically generate an unpredictable path around obstacles between two points, while the latter is designed to always follow exactly the same kinematics between hard-coded points. A car with a steering wheel and forward/reverse electric motors is a lot more comparable to a Boston Dynamics robot than a 6-axis industrial arm is.

>> IMO, this is more about Hyundai's autonomous vehicle efforts.

I disagree. As the article points out:

  ..., why not just buy an autonomous car startup instead? Boston Dynamics is more about “robots,” which happens to be dead last on the list above. ...

I think Hyundai's VEX, Wearable Vest Exoskeleton, is inline with what the company is trying to do with BD:

https://www.roboticstomorrow.com/story/2019/09/hyundai-motor...

the sucker is the stock market buyer, but those "suckers" are getting rich

The stock market buyer when the music stops*. The music doesn’t seem to stop these days.

Brrrrr goes the printing press

Even if 1 out of 20 gimmicky bots work out or better yet solves a problem another Hyundai platform has makes that purchase worthy.

Well, Hyundai's market cap just went up $10bn on the announcement so the market seems to feel it's a win.

South Korea is also very advanced in using automated weaponry for their military:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGR-A1

Soon they may not only have sentry guns, but frickin' bots with frickin lasers attached to their back patrolling the DMZ.

Robot sharks?

Samsung SGR-1 is an interesting product, compared to their usual TVs and phones.

I hope the tech doesn't transfer to the TVs to prevent you removing the adware.

The ultimate test will be retrofitting their robots with chainsaws.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com