Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpm_sd | Hacker News Reader

iRobot got crushed by Chinese competitors. Rethink failed early, they had a poor quality product and Universal made a much better cobot. And this new venture is pointless, there are 10 other companies in the Boston area alone doing warehouse automation...

View on HN

The comment about humanoid forms raising expectations comes from Rethink's hype and failure. Rethink tried to solve manipulation and failed.

The Rethink hype video, with their cute little face on a screen.[1]

What the Rethink robot could actually do: take PC boards off a conveyor and put them in a fixture.[2] That's a routine robotic load/unload task. Like this one with Fanuc robots.[3]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4mULTknb2I

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnzmxJS4Rp4

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za5z1lb0hdU

The industry term, I believe, is "skill issue".

The conclusion to draw from "tried and failed" certainly isn't "it's impossible and everyone should give up on the notion".

I'm a huge fan of the ease of cleaning & repairing iRobots, especially the earlier models. I don't know if the competitors match that but I have preferred their simplicity & quality.

China competitors are always going to be tough to beat in terms of margins.

Details of this situation aside, the take "doing x is pointless because lots of other people are doing it" is a bit rough.

Upvote for you sir. I was writing the same response as you posted the exact response. The only thing I did not mention that I will add here. iRobot was kind of a turd. They basically kept the same turd of a robot for a decade plus. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com