Austin company unveils humanoid robot | Hacker News Reader

Austin company unveils humanoid robot

kxan.com

18 pointsjdmark26 comments

Honest question: Why are people still putting so much effort into making humanoid robots? I understand investment in robotics in general, I just find this particular little branch of that tree to be a bit mystifying. It seems to get a lot more investment than it seems to be worth, to me. Is there some reason to think "humanoid-ness" is a particularly useful property for robots to exhibit?

Edit to add: Thanks for all the responses about how the world is already engineered for human-shaped things. That makes sense to me! And it wasn't really on my radar. Consider my thinking on this updated :)

The world is designed around humans, so a humanoid bot can replace humans in all scenarios instead of many specialized bots. (Or so the thinking goes)

Media attention. You would have never heard of the company otherwise.

Being able to operate in spaces designed for humans and being able to operate things designed for humans. You can have other form factors - and indeed we do in the vacuum robots - but they can't generally interact with the environment the same way we do.

The reason I've been told is that the built world is made for humans. You gain access to places to work via vehicles, doors, and ladders, etc... that are made for humans.

Mu guesses:

* A lot of engineering in low skill labor infrastructure is already designed around humans

* More marketable to the mainstream

* Less intimidating than a giant steel arm for other workers

> Why are people still putting so much effort into making humanoid robots?

You might not believe it, but as someone in the field myself, most of the time it is because both investors AND senior management are the old generation (call them boomers/genX if you like) and those prefer to see things that resemble what they watched on scifi movies back in the day, so many cases I witnessed where we bring a better UGV design, reliable, and efficient, then it gets turned down in favor of another UGV that looks like Johnny 5 with eyes (aka PTZ camera) on top, “yeah!! This looks cooler!!” And it gets approved..

I wondered whether this was part of it. "People with lots of money think it's cool" explains a lot of stuff :)

One reason I saw people talking about is that ergonomics is designed on behalf of human, so humanoid robot can just fit into everything smoothly.

Althought I would argue that 4 arms + 4 legs will be way more useful then only 2.

[Cannot be viewed in Europe] Also it's 7AM in Austin so not many Austinites will get to see it either :/

I’m in Austin and I only saw it because I got woken up unexpectedly.

> This content is not available in your country/region.

Yeah such content should be flagged on sight in my opinion

Looks like they posted this video a few days ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uJOA5IDaL5g

Video seems focused on moving boxes. Perhaps that’s the entry point for them in the market.

This said, they also show the robot moving what look like very dexterous fingers.

I am not familiar with the space, but is moving boxes from A to B even a real pain point for many businesses such that they’d get an ROI by buying something like this just for that sole purpose? It just seems like one of a hundred specialized location and company specific tasks an average warehouse worker needs to do, and they need to show robots doing something a little more specialized or compelling to make this anything other than lame video demo hype. What is their beach head market? Any insight appreciated!

This thing hobbles around like an Asimo from twenty years ago. What sets it apart in a world where Boston Dynamics' robots dance better than I do?

I’ll save you guys the google.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=UAG_FBZJVJ8

Pretty amazing moves.

I'm surprised Dark Mirror got it so wrong in their episode Metalhead. The killer robots should have been bourrée stepping in their chase. But on a more serious note, the robot olympics should be quite fun.

There're some spits on the floor (2:00), is it oil leakage in hydrolic system of the bot?

What bothers me most about Boston Dynamics is that they have no real competitor, not even a distant one, despite so much time has passed since their BigDog unveiled.

To have competition you need a market. What are these robots are going to do exactly? We already have robots replacing humans in almost any hard physical work. The rest of the physical work requires intellectual adaptability. Good luck having delivery robot for example, we can't even have cars that drives themselves.

Don't get me wrong, these robots are cool (and scary) but I don't see a huge markets for them, at least in the medium term which is what investors are interested in. What happens in 20 years they couldn't care less.

There is no pricing or availability info in the article or the company's website. Pretty lame. Is this a real product or not? These days its hard to know if the video is even real or AI generated.

when I think humanoid, I think something like the evolved robots from bicentennial man. When they basically resembled humans very well. Japan is leading here but probably mostly with sex dolls but those seem really life like, if so uncanny valley. Just because it walks on two feet and can do tasks isn't enough for me to consider it humanoid it needs to at least check off more boxes in resembling how a human looks, walks, and talks.

Amica on those YouTube videos is much more humanoid than this thing.

Website has nothing technical except the total weight (160lb) and battery life (4hrs), nothing else, rest just use cases and “let’s get in touch”, hard to tell how good/bad it is.

For the folks who are outside the US, this robot is literally nothing new. Boston Dynamics and Honda's 90s robot are more impressive.

Not sure why you’d use this bot to move boxes when a simple pack and pick delta bot exists. What a waste.

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