Apptronik’s Humanoid Robot, Apollo
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Looking over their website [1] they only have renders so far-- looks pretty vaporwarey-- but they are pursuing real-world business cases for humanoid robots, which is interesting.
> He describes an approach of moving from one task to three to four, and from there, “400.” Even getting to three or four will take an abundance of testing, first in Apptronik’s makeshift warehouse facility in Austin and then with select partners. These things need to be battle tested to an absurd degree and then battle tested some more. Having a system fail on the job isn’t in anyone’s best interest.
This quote from the article really encapsulates it for me. I'll start getting excited about robotics again when these companies can release the kind of videos that show their products standing up to intense real-world problems. The feeling I got the first time Boston Dynamics showed robots dynamically regaining their balance, it really felt like we were on the verge of something.
... And the thing is, with where deep learning models currently stand, maybe robotics is in for another step change. But some part of me can't help but feel like there's an impossible distance to go to beat the fully loaded costs of minimum wage workers. Without a revolution in battery tech can they even be competitive? And even then, what do the increased electric costs look like?
So I'm not exactly excited by this announcement but I do see it as food for thought at this juncture in AI history.