Two reasons why this is just another bullshit claim:
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Generalized robotics don’t have any autonomy yet. They require immense amount of power to be mobile, and charging takes a lot of time. You’d need fleets to replace fleets upon fleets. Maybe 20m of runtime, and then the same for charging.
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Everything needs to be trained for job-specific tasks. Repetitive work that does a single purpose is way easier than a robot with multiple jobs. Right now all these tech demos are simplistic at best, and only focus on single jobs.
Tesla’s robot is a total scam, akin to a child’s toy that reacts to certain things, and requires internet connectivity (wonder why???).
Boston Dynamics isn’t even trying this noise, they know what their purpose is…military use.
Agility hasn’t even demonstrated autonomy yet.
1X is maybe the closest, but again…single purpose.
Honda is basically off the map right now, but actually have the most advanced articulation platform.
It’s a mess. Stop worrying about this shit and ignore the headlines for 5 years maybe.
I think a lot of this boils down to cost, too. Especially since you made the point about Boston Dynamics. We could look up the price for Spot (the dog) or the estimates what Atlas cost. The military or some bomb defusal unit are logical target audience. They’re happy to pay that kind of money and might have some good use for it. It’ll take some time until it’s worth the price for a cost-optimized warehouse which absolutely needs humanoid robots and can’t do it with the tech that automates warehouses for decades already. And the androids need to become much more affordable (aka mass-produced) to be bought by regular consumers. So yeah. We need to invent them in the first place. And I’m pretty sure adoption will take quite some time. Just because inventing something, and mass-producing it and making it affordable are two very different things.
(And I think currently we have neither. I saw a few videos about this year’s World Robot Conference in China… And the androids look great. But they’re all doing very limited tech-demos, if at all.)
Last time I looked, the dog started at $75,000? So Atlas is going to be roughly the same as a mortgage?
Yeah, seems right. And seems like I’m not up to date with the Altas models any more. Last time I checked that thing still had rollover bars, was made of aircraft-grade aluminum and titanium, and probably also cost a similar amount to build like a decent airplane… I don’t think they’re for sale, though. Those (Boston Dynamics) bipedal robots are prototypes for research.
Most people wouldn’t be able to even afford these things anyway. Don’t worry about it.
I would 1000% take a 30 year “mortgage” for a robot that would truly be able to absolve me of household chores LMAO
