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Comment by nkrisc | Hacker News Reader

That’s an incredibly optimistic timeline.

Slowly, then all at once.

Computers were nowhere for ever, then everyone had them. The internet was tiny, then everywhere. Smartphones were a teensy market, then everyone had them. GLP1s were for a small group of diabetics, now a significant portion of the population take them.

This is how things playout time and time again.

Does it mean the commentors 10 years is correct? No. But it also doesn't need to be incredibly optimistic. All it takes is getting the robots right, and there are multiple companies who seem very close.

It took almost 20 years from computers that nobody brought on electronics and photography stores to computers in everybody's desk.

Robots will probably be slower, because there is way less room for optimizing their cost.

Mostly just the cost, yeah. It will be like buying a car. The economics will have to make sense for regular people, while it starts popping up in tons of places and become a status symbol.

robots have existed for more than 20 years though. Boston Dynamic's dog is 22 years old, Atlas 15-ish

What can I as a normal person use these robots for?

Nothing. They were designed for the military.

And what do the military use them for?

Supposedly as a sort of extremely expensive but basically tireless mule.

Computers also existed for more than 20 years before they started being sold to end-users.

And again, the robots market will probably not evolve anything near as fast as the computers.

We have had more than 10 years of robotic vacuums and yet they are still a fairly niche product.

Digital computers existed for ~10-20 years before hitting the consumer market. It took almost a half-century for the microprocessor to become a ubiquitous appliance.

We’re already seeing huge progress in humanoids coming from china. The big problem is software and world understanding, but the data collection from today’s humanoids and the rush to capitalize on their potential now that manufacturing their form is largely solved (save for hands) will see these problems overcome.

I expect it will be common to see them make deliveries in five years. Regular people don’t have to buy them for them to see widespread use.

So, after they work out all the mechanical kinks (there are quite a few!), and after they work out all the software issues (again, many of them), the last problem is the biggest: production. Anyone can make a half dozen robots by hand. A hundred thousand is a completely different challenge. If they can't be made efficiently, their cost makes them more of a toy than a tool.

One of the Tesla's factories is winding down car production in a plan to convert to producing humanoid robots.

I can buy China doing it, but not Tesla. They have a terrible track record of production, nothing even close to China's capability. In the past they've "developed" factories by taking huge government incentives and then basically doing nothing with them and pocketing the cash.

Is that because they're close to building robots or because Chinese EVs are eating their lunch and Tesla is flatlining?

The line between moonshot and scam is thin and elon is known for doing jumping jacks on it.

Explain again why you are so proud to be racist and easily manipulated.

You need to recalibrate your bullshit sensor, because that statement from Tesla is clearly a farce.

Have you seen the mass produced humanoids from China? They’re incredibly capable (again, save for hands which is a huge mechanical and software problem) and cheap.

https://youtu.be/mUmlv814aJo https://youtu.be/GzX1qOIO1bE

Deliveries use hands because humans have hands, not because hands are a prerequisite for deliveries. Last mile is already “solved” with the little robots that drive around cities, no need for hands. Humans are useful because of our brains, because we can adapt to almost any situation for very little cost. Humanoid robots will remain a novelty until the cost is reduced far beyond what is plausible.

How do we define common? I’ll bet that in 5 years, the average person, even in somewhere like SF, will not see a humanoid robot during their every day life.

> Last mile is already “solved” with the little robots that drive around cities, no need for hands.

And yet we haven’t seen widespread adoption because they can’t handle stairs, steep slopes, streets without sidewalks, sidewalks with mud, or a hundred other real world challenges

We haven’t seen widespread adoption because they can’t hope to compete with human delivery drivers on cost. The cost to DoorDash and Uber Eats of a delivery driver is nothing upfront and a few dollars per delivery. The cost of a delivery robot is thousands of dollars upfront and more per delivery. Stairs aren’t even in the top 10 problems these robots face, they’re more than capable of delivering to most customers already.

I predict that we'll see limited combat use of the latest Chinese bipedal robots within two years. They'll sell to both Russia and Ukraine.

Ukraine already has UGVs and they're tracked or wheeled. I can't imagine bipedal robots being cost efficient for 99% of missions in the near future.

Right, the wheeled and tracked units are more cost efficient. But there are some mission sets and terrains for which bipedal robots will be more effective. Everything is going to get tested to see what works.

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