[HN Gopher] Software and Hardware for General Robots
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Software and Hardware for General Robots
Author : ericjang
Score : 22 points
Date : 2020-11-29 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.evjang.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.evjang.com)
| ilaksh wrote:
| I actually registered a company named "General Biomimetics" in
| Delaware and have so much ambition and so many (unfortunately
| mostly vague) ideas about this. Specifically I have been thinking
| about washing dishes and other tasks in the kitchen. So its been
| something I have been spending at least two days a week on (I
| have a job).
|
| But due to the depth of the problem and not having resources or
| much knowledge, it was maybe a little silly to create the
| company. But I like the idea of reserving that name, just in case
| I ever get anywhere.
|
| From the hardware side, I feel like some of the robotics issues
| can be resolved by "just" copying people more closely. For
| example, it seems like the way real arms and muscles work should
| provide more leverage and force than the typical servo setup. And
| having five fingers provides the potential that manipulations
| could be copied from people.
|
| There is also a very promising new type of artificial muscles
| called HASEL.
|
| Of course, in order to efficiently build these human-like limbs,
| "all" we need is a way to 3D print with several materials at
| once, including a new type of conductive ink that can handle high
| voltages for the HASEL muscles.
|
| But the starting point to me is a robot that can actually
| understand what it's looking at. In that it sees with depth, and
| understands the composition of objects and their orientation,
| etc.
|
| Capsule networks seem interesting but also maybe are a bit
| computationally expensive and unproven? Also he seems to be
| focused on just the transformation matrix, but it seems like
| there are more aspects of the state that could be relevant and
| maybe are unique to different object types. But I am slowly
| trying to understand capsules anyway.
|
| I have seen a few ideas about more general neural network-based
| systems that suggest it is necessarily to have multiple neural
| networks, or networks of networks, or neural modules, etc.
|
| To me it seems like the ideal thing would be to have some
| standard shapes for networks or modules and also be able to reuse
| and adapt them for different tasks.
|
| So my vague ideas now are something like: standard-shaped
| modules, trained on core modeling tasks such as finding 3d
| surfaces in 2d images. But at the same time somehow segmenting
| into different objects. And the potential high-level objects
| should be able to feed into the potential low-level understanding
| and visa-versa.
|
| My intuition is that ideally there is a sort of 3d wireframe
| overlayed on the 2d image, identifying each object and sub-object
| with its exact dimensions, shape and orientation. Kind of like
| I've seen in one or two science fiction movies. So if I can
| somehow generate all of that, I know I have properly decoded the
| image.
|
| Today I was looking at a GAN tutorial. But I have never made a
| CNN before, so decided that must be first.
|
| Usually I think about this stuff for awhile and then just decide
| I don't really know what to do and then go back to Coursera. I
| finish Ng's first class and am looking at the hyperparameters
| one. I feel like I need to make some actual neural networks on my
| own though, because mainly Ng is teaching me how to convert from
| math notation to vectorized Python as much as anything.
|
| If nothing else, this is really motivating me to learn about
| existing AI techniques. Which I feel like, to be a good
| programmer, I actually should be able to use things like
| Tensorflow etc. for narrow AI tasks.
| [deleted]
| bArray wrote:
| I believe robotics hardware is near and damn it there, and has
| been for a while now. We're already seeing semi-reliable robots
| such as 'smart' hoovers enter homes.
|
| The biggest problem by far is the software - in particular the
| AI. The biggest companies in the world have thrown billions of
| dollars at AI, Universities have had some of the most brilliant
| minds among their ranks, and we essentially got some (impressive)
| slightly better search algorithms.
|
| There are absolute fundamental questions (+) that need to tackled
| in order to have the kind of generalized AI such environments
| require. Most AI (that I'm aware of) currently lacks the ability
| to do anything other than optimize itself for strictly specified
| scenarios/environments.
|
| Personally I quite like the information theoretic approaches to
| self-motivated agents, there are some nice mechanisms out there
| such as empowerment [1]. It's not the full picture, but it's a
| step in the right direction. I don't think this is something we
| can throw larger neural networks and computation resources at and
| hope it solves itself.
|
| (+) This is the subject of a paper I am currently writing.
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.1863
| iab wrote:
| A thoughtful article. It is becoming increasingly obvious that
| the integration of field/home robotics into our daily lives is
| going to require us to adapt to the technology, more so than it
| adapts to us. For example, a (new) house constructed with a
| robotic-assistant in mind might alleviate some of the issues
| mentioned in the text; a gantry robotic arm, for example, with
| full access to the entire house. Washers/dryers designed to be
| integrated with robotic manipulators; things of this nature.
| ericjang wrote:
| I think that's probably the way to go if a business wants to
| tackle the problem of a useful home robot in the next decade. I
| totally agree with your point about home developers being
| forward-looking and designing homes with robots in mind.
|
| That said, I don't relish the idea of my oven or toaster being
| internet-connected
| (https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/11/25/1910244/aws-
| outage-...).
|
| I also think it's good to also think long term beyond what is
| immediately feasible or commercially viable. Personally, as
| someone who enjoys the sci-fi movie Blade Runner, I would much
| prefer to see a robotic android being "more human than human",
| than having to compromise in the design of homes.
| WJW wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a compromise in the design of the home.
| Almost nobody thinks of the inclusion of electrical wiring
| and sewer piping into modern houses as a compromise, even
| though they take up space and cost money. If there was a
| reasonable system for (say) a standardized robotic arm on a
| rail to cart itself around my house and do useful stuff that
| might be really nice and it can slowly grow as more
| appliances get adapted to the robot arm.
| ericjang wrote:
| Humor me - what would you use such an arm for? What does
| the design look like? How many times a day would you use
| it? A lot of time in homemaking (a full time job for some
| people) is spent cleaning, unpacking things, and packing
| things away. How would such a system work?
| WJW wrote:
| If you'll indulge some science fiction dreams: I'd want
| something like the canadarm on the ISS but with ~4
| segments of 50 cm each, a multipurpose
| gripper/vacuum/button presser attachment on one side and
| it'd be attached to some sort of rail system on the
| ceiling and/or walls.
|
| Software wise it'd be both individually programmable and
| have access to some sort of thingiverse equivalent with
| actions that others have dreamed up. Otherwise it would
| not really need an internet connection at all, except
| perhaps to the local wifi to talk to other more-or-less
| automated systems in the same house.
|
| For applications, some of the ideas I had while typing
| the rest of this comment:
|
| - If there is a package outside the door, open the door,
| pull the package inside, close the door again.
|
| - If the mail has been delivered (for houses that have a
| front door with a mail slot in them), use the vacuum
| attachment to pick up the mail and deliver it to a
| central location (desk? dinner table? kitchen?)
|
| - If the dishwasher is done, use universal gripper to
| pull it open, open the closet and put the dishes away.
| (Or into a drying rack, whatever).
|
| - For most people I know the washing machine for dirty
| laundry is someplace away from the bedroom. I don't think
| it'd be reasonable with current tech to expect robot
| folding of clothing but at least it could pick up dirty
| laundry from various places where it's collected and
| bring it to the washing machine so people only have to
| come in and turn the machine on.
|
| - Depending on how good the gripper is and how well
| adapted my coffee machine is to it, perhaps it could pick
| up a coffee capsule and prepare it while I'm in the
| shower.
|
| - Once per day it would make a round around all the
| bathrooms and refill the spare toilet paper roll holder
| if there is only one roll left.
|
| - Maybe it could wipe down sinks and stuff regularly too.
|
| All in all, it'd be useful several times per day I think.
| Not doing anything I couldn't do myself but definitely
| taking care of various simple chores throughout the day.
| It would need pretty good sensor coverage as well of
| course. Finally, I realize that with current tech this
| would be prohibitively expensive.
| ericjang wrote:
| Something like this?
| https://www.theburnin.com/technology/toyota-ceiling-
| mounted-...
|
| Thanks for enumerating the use cases. They are fun to
| think about. I wanted to dive into the first application
| you mentioned. As mentioned in my post, even the most
| basic manipulation tasks on human-centric objects and
| spaces are actually full of little details.
|
| I hope people think more on that low-level dextrous
| manipulation when designing robot hardware rather than
| the fairly high level "open door, pull package inside,
| close the door", which might make robotics people
| receptive to the idea that a humanoid is truly the only
| viable solution.
|
| What if your door has a step down to the porch where the
| package is delivered? The robot can't "just" pull a large
| box inside, it would get stuck. You'd need to lift it up,
| and at this point you'd require two arms or a gantry that
| can extend outside of the home above the porch. Obviously
| the home can be re-designed around this, but my point is
| that there are really two kinds of robotics - ones that
| try to solve a human problem, and ones that try to do
| everything a human can.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I'd love to work on the AI side of this. Are there any good arms
| I can buy for not too expensive and start trying out ideas?
|
| Could I really have a pick_up_object() start up? There's actually
| demand for that?
| ipnon wrote:
| The TinkerKit Braccio robotic arm seems a reasonable entry
| point.
|
| https://store.arduino.cc/usa/tinkerkit-braccio
| bArray wrote:
| I would suggest picking up a small, cheap arm first. Look at
| one with There are a few you can control via Arduino. With an
| MG958 15kg metal gear servo you can already pick up some small
| objects.
|
| One you go to a large, heavy arm you need more powerful and
| precise motors, and the cost of mistakes dramatically increases
| (monetarily and physical damage).
| bArray wrote:
| Regarding a startup, there is quite a demand in manufacturing.
| I hear investors will throw money at projects that promise such
| things, but there isn't much scope for "real" AI as such.
| pontifier wrote:
| In my robotics experience I've come to the conclusion that some
| problems just need to get back to the physics, and trying to put
| labels on things like "grasp" is fraught with problems that
| constrain things in unhelpful ways.
|
| It's more useful to think in terms of what forces are needed to
| be applied to the environment to accomplish a task. Then you can
| build a solver to develop innovative physics based solutions that
| are unconstrained by the semantics.
| ericjang wrote:
| Often defining a function that classifies whether a task is
| accomplished or not requires a fair bit of semantic precision
| as well...
| bArray wrote:
| ... And going further, what it even means for a task to be
| 'accomplished'.
| cantagi wrote:
| I'm not a roboticist, but can the ability to do general purpose
| manipulation be built up from a universe of known simpler
| manipulation tasks using something a bit like transfer learning?
| Is this used? Are there methods that don't need this?
|
| Also, what would a good interface between a Software 1.0 program
| and a Software 2.0 program look like in robot software? I mean,
| what would the boundary between (3) and (4), and (4) and (5) look
| like in this imaginary stack?: (5) Autonomous
| controller (software 2.0) (4) A high level interface for
| giving instructions to (3), and finding out what (5) is doing
| (3) Motor manipulation controller (software 2.0) (2) A
| daemon for converting NN outputs into safe hardware control
| outputs (software 1.0) (1) OS kernel (software 1.0)
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