[HN Gopher] Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
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Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
Author : haberdasher
Score : 267 points
Date : 2021-07-23 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.x.company)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.x.company)
| jliptzin wrote:
| How is it possible that we don't have robots to do very basic
| household tasks such as fold laundry by now?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Because folding laundry is extremely difficult for robots, easy
| for humans and people are not willing to pay much money or give
| up much space for a laundry folding robot.
| morcheeba wrote:
| I currently have a robot washing my clothes, another robot
| washing my dishes, a third robot vacuuming my floors.
| Cybernetic systems adjust the temperature in my house and water
| my lawn. I even have a little robot I keep in the freezer to
| make ice cubes while I sleep.
|
| So, two answers - 1. folding laundry is a difficult technical
| challenge. 2. when we get a robot to do that task, we won't
| call it a robot.
| Twixes wrote:
| My quick test for a robot would be: does it have at least one
| appendage-like part performing a task? A washing machine has
| nothing like that, but a Kuka robot practically is a
| programmable arm, and Boston Dynamics robots have legs.
| geodel wrote:
| Nothing says serious business more than a Medium post.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| But how can robots be used to harvest personal data?
|
| Maybe this is an end-use case.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| It's the most effective Trojan horse if they actually succeed
| in general robotics.
|
| Currently the amount of people using Google home is tiny. But
| imagine if you can just say "Google, make me a sandwich" and a
| few moments later the robot comes along.... And the automatic
| cleanup etc. People would buy them instantly, giving Google all
| the private data of households which would have never bought
| any of the current "smart assistants"
|
| I'm pretty sure that household robotics is going to be the by
| far most profitable field if general robotics is ever achieved,
| as literally all households will want one, just like a washing
| machine.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| The problem with household robotics is that people who have
| the dough for the maid-bot probably own stuff way too
| expensive to have it cleaned by a robot.
|
| The Lusty Automaton Maid, on the other hand, is sure to sell
| like botcakes.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| At this point personal data is irrelevant, the new goal is for
| robots to harvest persons directly.
| [deleted]
| jmeister wrote:
| Quite a modest proposal.
| code_duck wrote:
| The Roomba sure is good at (pardon me) sucking up personal
| data.
| kevincox wrote:
| The title should probably be "Introducing Intrinsic" to match the
| source and be much more meaningful.
| gopalv wrote:
| Not just that.
|
| > I'm now leading Intrinsic, a new Alphabet company
|
| > After five and a half years developing our technology at X,
| we're now ready to become an independent Alphabet company,
| leaving the moonshot factory's rapid prototyping environment
|
| If you don't know what "X" in Alphabet/Google is, then this
| announcement looks a little vague and confusing, not like the
| skunkworks unveil it is supposed to be.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've added the Alphabet above.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Unlocking the creative and economic potential of industrial
| robotics for millions more businesses, entrepreneurs, and
| developers
|
| No. Just no. Why can't we downvote OPs here?
| valeness wrote:
| Forgive me, but what's wrong with this?
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| On the face of it I'm not understanding the instant dismissal
| of the idea -- what's objectionable about this?
| joshu wrote:
| this is hacker news, where scorn is the major currency
| canadaduane wrote:
| I think Hacker News tries hard to be constructive in its
| criticism and even upbeat. Consider the guideline: "Be
| kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't
| cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer,
| including at the rest of the community."
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| One of the reasons I visit hacker news is because of the
| collective will to try to abide by guidelines like these.
| zabzonk wrote:
| It doesn't make any sense. "Unlocking", "creative",
| "economic"?
|
| If you believe this BS, then good luck to you.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nynx wrote:
| This is great. A concerted effort to make robots be able to
| assemble and make more things.
|
| This is a piece of the puzzle of building a machine of machines
| that can make almost anything without human intervention.
|
| Are they hiring interns?
| visarga wrote:
| > building a machine of machines
|
| a self replicating robot / factory / 3d-printer, a potentially
| new form of life
| armatav wrote:
| The last GIF is Portal
| aazaa wrote:
| > Back in the late 90s when I was just starting Moonfruit, the
| world's first SAAS website builder, creating your own website was
| hard. From setting up your own server, to working with an ISP, to
| getting a content delivery network and integrating a middleware
| layer to communicate with your computer, to design and UX --
| creating a website was a lengthy multi-step process that was only
| accessible to a small group of technical experts or large
| companies. It wasn't until websites were simple and easy to make
| that the full creative and business potential of the web really
| began to blossom.
|
| It's not good that this introductory post doesn't start right off
| with a problem to be solved. Instead it presents the credentials
| of the current leader.
|
| If I had to pick out the problem, it would be this sentence,
| contained in the fourth paragraph:
|
| > Currently just 10 countries manufacture 70% of the world's
| goods.
|
| In the fifth paragraph, we get a more clear phrasing of the
| problem:
|
| > The surprisingly manual and bespoke process of teaching robots
| how to do things, which hasn't changed much over the last few
| decades, is currently a cap on their potential to help more
| businesses.
|
| Ok, so this is going to be a company that solves the problem of
| poor usability of industrial robots through machine learning. The
| larger goal is to put manufacturing capacity closer to consumers
| for better sustainability.
| MattRix wrote:
| The purpose of the first paragraph is not to present the
| credentials of the leader. The purpose is to make a parallel
| between the current state of the robotics industry and the
| creative & commercial expansion of the web once the technology
| became more accessible.
| aazaa wrote:
| I'm saying it doesn't work as a paragraph to do that. The
| article makes the reader work to figure out what this thing
| is.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Makes sense. The end state appears to be that humans should only
| be supervising ML that generates goal and outcome based behaviors
| for robots, and the machines will construct tools to solve
| problems themselves.
|
| The leap from an AI model learning how to replicate a behaviour
| (e.g. evolving walking to solve problems
| https://unitylist.com/p/2id/walking-ai ) to reasoning about it in
| terms of actuators and physical feedback, to assembling a
| physical model out of a relatively small list of parts seems like
| a solvable engineering problem when it is broken out into a
| pipeline.
|
| Those robot parts are basically a version of mechano with
| actuators that a model would map a behavior to, and the robots in
| the article would assemble them. When you look at something like
| Lego or Mechano as an intermediate representation to construct
| buildings out of, where all objects made from it are essentially
| a directed graph of those elements, robots designing and building
| robots seems like less than 20 years away.
|
| e.g. we could functionally specify to an ML model, "produce a
| digraph of these element parts that has these degrees of freedom,
| and then load or derive a model that solves for this outcome
| within the domain of those degrees, where outcome is 'plug cables
| into a board' "
| golemiprague wrote:
| They can't even give me relevant ads in youtube, you think they
| are going to solve all those problems in 20 years? not even in
| 200
| zelon88 wrote:
| Humans design products with a variety of design elements to
| meet different circumstances.
|
| Look at cars for example. Tell an ML model to "make a car that
| can drive over rocks" and it will give you a rock crawler with
| the motor in a location where it won't be easy to fix. Tell the
| ML model to "make a car that is easy to fix" and it will make a
| car that is probably unreliable. Tell it to make a car that is
| reliable and easy to fix you will get a car with no motor at
| all.
|
| I'm not saying it's impossible, because it obviously is
| possible. I just think your 20 year time-frame is hopelessly
| optimistic. What good is an ML model that takes 10 weeks to
| setup that solves a problem that only takes 2 weeks to solve
| without ML?
| neltnerb wrote:
| https://www.mujin.co.jp/en/
|
| This is not manual or bespoke and it has sensors. The videos
| are incredible and they work in real life already.
|
| This one is it moving petri dishes full of liquid without
| spilling! This is obviously not being pre-programmed to move
| along some kind of 1980s style fixed paths for welding parts as
| Alphabet apparently thinks everyone is still doing. The
| obliviousness of suggesting that using ML models for robotic
| control is some unique new idea is really off-putting. Mujin
| has been around since 2012.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vleHnx7uug&t=136s
|
| The more the merrier, of course, but just dismissing the state
| of the industry and claiming you've made a huge technology leap
| (compared to the 80s and 90s instead of something harder)...
| ugh.
| taldo wrote:
| The few Mujin videos I watched look a lot like PCB assembly
| pick-n-place machines. A little bit of computer vision, a
| little sensing here and there, but overall fairly simple pre-
| programmed moves, on a pretty controlled environment.
| neltnerb wrote:
| If you check out the beginning of the video link (I had it
| fast forwarded towards the end) you can see that it is
| doing an awful lot more than that, and in 2013.
|
| A pick and place is 2-axis movement with a suction cup.
| This is controlling a robot arm with a ton of degrees of
| freedom and developing paths for moving through all those
| degrees of freedom without hitting anything and using
| internal models to do so.
|
| I suppose in some very broad sense it looks similar, but
| the difficulty of x-y + down is way, way lower than what
| you're seeing in that video.
| cryvate1284 wrote:
| It is harder than x-y + down, however I don't think this
| video is impressive really, having slowed down the video
| it doesn't look special to me and I did work on
| robotics/machine vision around that time.
| azernik wrote:
| It doesn't seem like Alphabet thinks that? Their ad copy
| explicitly compares "training times".
| zelon88 wrote:
| I agree. It appears that Google is trying to pat it's own
| back in a room full of people who have never seen a modern
| place of production.
| yunohn wrote:
| > as Alphabet apparently thinks everyone is still doing. The
| obliviousness of suggesting that using ML models for robotic
| control is some unique new idea is really off-putting.
|
| Intrinsic/Alphabet are not suggesting they are somehow
| unaware of easily-Google-able state of the art in ML
| robotics. They literally used to own Boston Dynamics.
|
| From the post, the second demo of their tech ("Two robots use
| perception, force control, and multi-robot planning to
| assemble a simple piece of furniture"), is very clearly much
| more than "moving Petri dishes".
|
| FAANG has access to the leading factories in Shenzhen, and
| heavily utilize robot tech in their HW supply chains.
| kortilla wrote:
| > FAANG has access to the leading factories in Shenzhen,
| and heavily utilize robot tech in their HW supply chains.
|
| Do you know what the N stands for in FAANG?
| yunohn wrote:
| This is really boring pedantry, that does not further the
| conversation. Do you have anything to reply to from the
| rest of my comment?
| kortilla wrote:
| It's not pedantry. Those companies have effectively
| nothing in common when it comes to HW.
| simsla wrote:
| TL;DR: making industrial (e.g. manufacturing) robots easier to
| use, by improving sensing, planning, etc.
|
| I suspect that Dr. Chelsea Finn's work in meta-learning
| (affiliated with Stanford and GBrain, when I saw it last year)
| might play a big part here, which is e.a. about generalisation of
| RL policies to out of domain tasks. (E.g. similar task, but
| slightly different tools, slightly different task, etc.)
|
| Learning IRL (cameras and actuators) reinforcement learning
| policies is a huge time sink, so generalisation is a hugely
| important task. Related solutions can be found in
| simulation->real generalisation, also an active topic of
| research.
| tus89 wrote:
| I have always wanted a robot to plug the HDMI cable into my TV.
| Life will never be the same.
| ccchapman wrote:
| The x.company website is unusable on Firefox. One scroll wheel
| movement and I am lost on a completely different part of the
| document. There is one way to ensure an immediate bounce.
| neogodless wrote:
| Took me a bit to get to the web site, since I was lost in
| Medium land for a while, but there's an unlinked text-only
| "www.x.company" at the bottom I could copy/paste.
|
| But yeah scroll speed is ludicrous!
| lbhdc wrote:
| Weird, its loading fine in firefox for desktop and mobile for
| me.
| johndough wrote:
| Do you mean the blog? That works for me as well, but
| scrolling on https://x.company is broken.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| the_duke wrote:
| Just block JavaScript on all Medium blogs. Simple click with
| Ublock Origin. Much better experience.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| the x.company landing page is the one they mean, its full of
| scroll-captures that freak out on firefox. It scrolls
| smoothly in Safari.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| hahaha, try using the up/down arrow keys, they do nothing!
| davidholdeman wrote:
| Same here. One detent of the scroll wheel and it's 2/3 of the
| way down the page. I tried disabling smooth scrolling, but that
| didn't fix it. Note that we're talking about the home page,
| x.company, not the page linked.
| rhizome wrote:
| They only hire the best of the best!
| CleverLikeAnOx wrote:
| Does anyone actually like these homepages that move around a
| bunch as you scroll? I don't see the appeal of parallax effects
| and the like. To my eye, they are neither pretty nor useful.
| everdrive wrote:
| NoScript improves another webpage. Scrolling's working just
| for me, you just have to prevent the site from working as
| intended.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| To me, this is _robot vs process_ - how much do we need clever
| robots and how much do we need to change the job.
|
| There is an old saw about the transition from steam powered
| factories to electrical power. Initially the large steam engine
| was in one location, and basically its power was delivered by
| belts running off one central location. The factories initially
| tried to replace the steam engine with one big electric motor,
| and it worked ok but the factory was still a hub and spoke and
| pieces had to be moved from one spoke to the next.
|
| It was not until a new generation of factories were built with
| _many_ motors at any point in the factory that the modern line
| was built.
|
| Of course this is a massive simplification, but I look at two
| robots using 10 m2 to assemble some Ikea cabinet, and think
| "awesome geekery" but if you want a factory producing pre-made
| furniture go back at least three-steps.
|
| Robots that can replace a human arm in the assembly process just
| feel like we are replacing that big steam engine in the middle of
| the factory.
|
| And, yes industrial robots is where you start, of course. But a
| factory can change its process to eliminate the need for a
| general purpose robot. But _the home_ - that 's a different
| story.
|
| * Take up two "normal" sizes of a washing machine. A hopper
| accepts clothes, sorts them using RFID tags, and begins a run in
| a smaller drum, spins, dries and folds them. (yes, its probably
| magic but this would be on everyone's XMAS list)
|
| * (completely foregoing everything I just said) a mobile robot
| arm that can learn where each item in a house belongs. 3D
| tracking, ML etc, and it picks up the toys my kids have left
| lying around.
|
| * I am not sure where the "robot" vs "process" sits here, but
| food purchase and prep is a large time sink for many, but there
| seems to be a viable disintermediation of supermarkets - I mean
| if i choose a decent set of meals for a week, why send the food
| to the supermarket so it can use its shelves as a collection
| point to send it on to me. And if the food is picked so i get
| "nice meal on Saturday" plus "something with the extra Tues
| lunch"
|
| I think there is a real possibility of robots making the middle
| class home like a B&B.
|
| As Jerry Hall said, "My Mother told me if I wanted to keep a man
| I needed to be a Chef in the Kitchen, a Maid in the living room
| and a Whore in the bedroom. I said I would hire the first two and
| take care of the rest myself."
|
| Edit: honestly I am not trying to be HN-negative, and I think all
| this investment is only going to build better robots. Which is a
| win. But I remain under-convinced that building general-purpose
| robots to replace general-purpose humans, when humans are already
| having the easy bits replaced by specific purpose robots is a
| good idea - it feels like running uphill.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Lots of grocery delivery services do use purpose built
| warehouses. Stores like Walmart aren't doing that because it
| would cost a bunch extra vs picking from the stores they
| already have.
|
| The furniture assembly thing probably doesn't make sense for
| huge runs, but you could stick one in front of a modest
| warehouse and build 200 different products on demand.
| soheil wrote:
| This is a Google company.
| nostromo wrote:
| This was a helpful comment when it was made. Downvoters should
| know that the original title didn't mention Alphabet or Google;
| that was added later.
| htrp wrote:
| It seem that this company is doing more of the middleware and
| higher level interfaces/adding intelligence to industrial robots
| than they are trying to build their own robots (Google tried that
| at least 3 times and failed).
|
| Anecdotally, I've heard that FANUCs don't respond well at all to
| any input deviation.
| falcor84 wrote:
| >...the US manufacturing industry alone is expected to have 2.1
| million unfilled jobs by 2030.
|
| Is the implication here that they're aiming to automate away all
| of these jobs?
| extropy wrote:
| The implication is that noone wants to work those jobs anymore
| and the options are to either import illegal workers being paid
| below minimal wage or replace by robots.
| falcor84 wrote:
| >noone wants to work those jobs anymore
|
| The implication of that in turn is that these US companies
| aren't willing to pay at a rate that would be competitive in
| the market
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Or that Americans aren't willing to work for the prevailing
| global wage that manufacturing workers demand. Why would
| any company keep manufacturing here when labor is so
| expensive? Effective manufacturing robots would allow
| manufacturing to move back to the us.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The government buys a shitload of stuff and everything
| has to be sourced* and made in America*.
|
| *There are exceptions, but they are rare.
| NtochkaNzvanova wrote:
| How could this possibly work for, e.g., electronics? How
| does the government buy computers that are made in
| America? Unless there is some loophole whereby all the
| parts are acquired from wherever they are acquired, and
| the manufacturer just assembles the box in the US and
| gets to label it "Made in USA"?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, people will do all the jobs.... even hard, shitty
| jobs... just not for minimum wage.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| The other implication is that the US is unwilling to take
| advantage of the millions of people that want to immigrate
| here.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| I'm guessing this comment got down voted because
| Americans are against immigration in general. But whether
| its a good idea or not the fact remains that our
| desirability as a place to live could be used to satisfy
| any labor shortage.
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| So they are scripting Kuka robots effectively?
|
| Well, actually if they do some AI stuff that might be impressive.
|
| I guess stationary robots are seen as less of a reputational risk
| in comparison with Boston Robotics nighmares.
| xor99 wrote:
| Robotics is not a software problem and SV companies bias is
| towards software development (a little different with X but still
| apparent). I think most companies that try to throw data at
| existing problems in robotics using existing machines will have a
| hard time matching human efficiency. For example, in something as
| straightforward as the usb insertion task.
|
| Hardware and mechanical is like 95% of the problem so there's a
| need to take the approach of making the machines that make and
| then add the software on top and developing synthetic task
| orientated data from that. E.g. the dishwasher, which works
| because its physically designed for washing plates and then
| automation was added. The robot arm is a general purpose
| technology that has been around in the same form since the
| 60s/70s. There are many options as alternatives (e.g. magnetic
| assembly or even self-assembly in certain industries) but ofc
| these are incredibly risky commercially.
|
| I'm aware that this is just the first post and the above is well
| known in robotics development so excited to see what gets built!
| sangnoir wrote:
| I'd say it's _very_ different with X. I looked at the large
| number of hardware design docs that were open-sourced[1] when
| they shut down Makani - hell, even the Makani documentary[2]
| was mostly about hardware (material science, mechanics,
| aerodynamics) with a some software sprinkled in.
|
| 1. https://github.com/google/makani
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_hEja6bzE
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| But it is a software problem. Surprised that you mentioned
| robotic arm, which is basically just 3-5 servo/stepper motors
| connected to case and not super complicated to build with 3d
| printers. It's the software that powers it. Boston dynamics
| robots are not the top of the line in terms of hardware. It is
| the software that gives their robot the power to even stand up,
| which anyone who has coded the robot knows it only looks easy.
| glitchc wrote:
| Why does it have to be servos in the first place? A very
| narrow way to think of robotics. Boston Dynamics is more
| about the hw than the sw.
| xor99 wrote:
| Sure software is crucial to the final working of the robot
| and it's not solely all in the physical design. Robots are
| not possible without software but I think the fundamental
| problem in robotics for manufacture is about physical
| intelligence and industrial design and engineering.
|
| My approach would be to manufacture custom arms for
| particular tasks and in principle 3d printing the arms is
| exactly what i'm getting at (e.g. that optimised physical
| design processes save on cost and improves performance much
| more than software + expensive externally manufactured arms).
| 3D printed arms with comparable repeat accuracy would be an
| excellent optimisation over buying v expensive Kuka products.
| Then you could start think about different mechanisms
| (compliant mech, soft parts etc) and control
| systems/software.
|
| Kukas are not really just a couple of servos (e.g. encoders)
| and there are many examples from the 90s of self walking
| robots with little software too. There's good literature on
| "morphological computation" or Rolf Pfeifer's book How the
| Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence.
| gopalv wrote:
| > But it is a software problem.
|
| There is a software authoring problem (which is where the ML
| bits are crucial).
|
| If we had to program all robots like we had to with CNC
| machines, then programming them would be a high skill
| problem, even if we throw a lot of tools at it.
|
| I can work my way through a Tormach, but is that really what
| I want to spend time with? The ultra low level specification
| of what I need done?
|
| I'd love a pedal based training system with something like
| "Identify", "Orient", "Place", "Count", "Test" to teach it
| things in steps & get a program out of the demonstration
| (that donut computer vision project was amazing, because it
| showed you didn't really need ML to do these things).
|
| Like we have people who are demonstration learners, I wish I
| could do something like that of going from many scenarios to
| a final one and have the robot to dissect every one of my
| actions into a flow-chart of its own.
| zone411 wrote:
| Human tactile sensing is still much superior to that of robot
| hands.
| nieksand wrote:
| Google owned Boston Dynamics at one point. I'm curious what made
| them flip flop back to robotics again.
| rhacker wrote:
| BD seems like it's mostly interesting in creating dogs. This
| new thing seems like it's a generic robot for making objects.
| FunnyLookinHat wrote:
| That was certainly the perception I used to have, but this
| demo video changed my mind. :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn3KWM1kuAw
| gerash wrote:
| BD focus has been mainly on control and locomotion whereas
| what Goog wants is neural net-ification of perception and
| control altogether.
| duped wrote:
| X has done a lot of robotics projects. Boston dynamics wasn't
| Alphabet's only attempt.
| ra7 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what were the other ones?
| duped wrote:
| A bunch of their public projects incorporate robotics in
| some way, just from glancing at x.company/projects.
| Everyday robot, mineral, wing, loon, waymo, makani. I'm
| sure there is a lot more going on, like intrinsic.
| genericone wrote:
| Promising generalized solutions that apply to the physical
| world from advances at DeepMind (AlphaFold) perhaps?
| jcims wrote:
| These are complementary developments, Boston Dynamics is
| building robots that excel at navigating the world in the way
| its built. This seems to be intent on building robots that
| excel at interacting with the world in the way it wants.
|
| The latter has a much broader customer base. From picking
| fruits to folding shirts to installing a headliner into a new
| vehicle, there are many applications.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If you can't program it by directly showing it what to do, throw
| it in the bin. They probably intend for it to be SaaS too,
| effectively having you pay a workers wage for a truly terrible
| worker. You're competing with general intelligence robots that
| cost $12 - $15/hr. That's 10 years of full time labor for
| $300,000. No shot.
|
| This looks like something designed to attract ignorant
| investors/talent who think small time manufacturing looks like a
| Ford plant but with less robots and more humans. In reality it
| looks something closer to Grandma's kitchen on Thanksgiving. How
| are you gonna stick a robot in there and have Uncle Fred program
| it?
|
| I can't see this as anything other than a flashy high school
| engineering project. Much wow! little application.
|
| Source: Work in domestic manufacturing. <$50 million company.
| Mostly do government/military electronics building.
| justicezyx wrote:
| When you are working on domestic manufacturing, what automation
| you have? How much if that is programmed by human (in house and
| from vendor?)
|
| This is definitely far from mass adoption. But somewhere
| certain expensive product might benefit from this. Guess:
| mechanical watch assembly, given the amount of manual labor,
| and the claimed learning ability, it seems possible for a robot
| to assemble a 1milions worth of Swiss watch.
| danield9tqh wrote:
| Assuming 8hr work days and a 250 day working year for humans.
| No such constraints for robots. That's 2,000 hrs/yr for a human
| vs 8,760 (assuming 24/7) hours for a robot. Obviously there
| will be other costs for robots (downtime, electricity, repair
| etc) so no telling whether it will be worth it in the long run
| but the hour calculation there does seem a little off.
| Vivtek wrote:
| Weird. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27861201
| rexreed wrote:
| The list of Robot company failures and the robotic industry
| dead pool runs very deep. Just in the past few years:
|
| * Rethink Robotics https://www.zdnet.com/article/sudden-
| unexpected-demise-of-re...
|
| * Anki https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-
| robots/con...
|
| * Jibo https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-
| robots/jib...
|
| * Blue Workforce https://www.therobotreport.com/blue-workforce-
| robot-files-ba...
|
| * Mayfield Robotics (Kuri)
| https://www.heykuri.com/blog/important_difficult_announcemen...
|
| * Starsky Robotics
| https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2020/03/20/why...
|
| * Reach Robotics https://www.therobotreport.com/reach-robotics-
| shuts-down-con...
|
| * Google Schaft
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/15/18096469/google-robotics...
|
| * Willow Garage
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-20/robotics-...
|
| * Honda Asimo
| https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/28/17514134/honda-asimo-huma...
|
| * Amazon Vesta https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/28/amazons-
| vesta-no-show-hig...
|
| Everyone thinks that they are somehow different, but all these
| firms fail for the same reason. Robotics is hard. The market is
| not that big. Lots of costs. Investors are skittish. The
| combination of those things isn't that good.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Amazon bought Kiva a while back now to do robotics for them,
| and it's used heavily in their warehouses and facilities
| around retail side. Anything they can automate through
| robotics, they try to as robots can work 24x7 (other than
| maintenance requirements) and over their life span cost less
| than human workers. They also sponsor engineering
| competitions around trying to make generalised picking
| machines. It's good PR for them, and although unlikely any
| time soon, someone _might_ have an inspired idea and solve
| something that has vexed experts for a long time.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUx-ljgB-5Q shows some
| footage of the robotics they use.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Tom Scott had a good video a couple of weeks ago about a
| grocery packing warehouse that has a sophisticated picking
| network:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE
| arkitaip wrote:
| That Ocado factory had a fire recently cause by a robot
| collision, so the quality doesn't seem quite there yet
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/07/19/ocado-
| warehouse-fir...
| pphysch wrote:
| I think the key here is that Intrinsic is (apparently)
| focused on designing new interfaces for _existing_ , proven
| industrial robot models, rather than being focused on novel
| hardware R&D (a monumental task).
| Igelau wrote:
| It's not that the robotics is hard. It's hard to stop the
| time-traveling saboteurs from the Resistance from undermining
| you.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Your conclusions are true, though I think it may be helpful
| to further subdivide into some categories as far as what the
| target market was and where they were at with technical
| readiness.
|
| Like, some of them (Anki, Jibo, Mayfield, Asimo, Reach) were
| 100% toys, and were always going to be at the extreme end
| price-wise trying to compete with increasingly "smart" toys
| being manufactured by regular toy companies with regular toy
| company processes, volumes, and margins.
|
| Others (Rethink, Willow, Schaft, Blue) were trying to do
| something really ambitious and potentially provide B2B value,
| but were never far enough along to have a compelling value
| proposition for the end users they were targeting. They were
| never fast enough or reliable enough to be competitive with
| the minimum wage labour that they would have displaced-- if
| robots are hard, then mobile robots are harder, and mobile
| manipulators are the hardest of all.
|
| I think the saddest story in here is still Starsky, because
| they weren't in either of these groups: they really did have
| a clear value proposition, and they were technically there as
| far as delivering on it. The market needs what they were
| offering; they seemingly just ran out of runway at a time
| when investors were too starry-eyed about vaporous promises
| of L4 autonomy to want to back a company working on a viable
| hybrid solution.
|
| (Disclosure: I work for a B2B mobile robotics company)
| soheil wrote:
| Starsky value prop was teleop, but that was the same thing
| that cooled investors. Adding an extra 20-100ms latency to
| driving is akin to driving after two drinks. Operating a
| vehicle 10x larger than the ones on the road does not make
| this problem smaller.
|
| Operating large trucks is not a game VCs wanted to play.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I don't think it was ever meant to be live driving at
| highway speeds:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/stefanseltz-
| axmacher/2020/06/16...
|
| The point was that it was an autonomous system that could
| ask for help, and the "help" scenarios would mostly be
| cases where the truck was already stopped or at very low
| speeds: navigating a construction zone, a transfer yard,
| etc. Possibly in some of these situations it wasn't even
| wheel-to-wheel, but rather a system of choosing between a
| handful of high-level courses of action for the machine
| to then proceed with, or helping the perception system
| classify an unknown object it was looking at.
|
| I didn't sense from the postmortem articles by Stefan
| that safety concerns were what killed it. It was
| investors being disappointed that they weren't trying to
| build a truck without a steering wheel at all, since that
| was clearly where Uber, Waymo, Tesla, and others were
| headed (and at least at the time, external safety
| concerns were not seemingly impacting any of them).
| soheil wrote:
| I just don't think you can call that a real value prop if
| it's only for when the truck is stuck or a few minor edge
| cases. There are many scenarios where self-driving may
| not work or behave erratically so if their version of
| teleop doesn't solve those then not sure how Starsky
| argued they were ahead of competition.
|
| Additionally I think investors backed out primarily
| because of risks associated with operating an autonomous
| fleet, not the shortcomings of the tech itself.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel that it covers an awful lot of them. If you cap
| teleop driving at 20km/h or something (or maybe a dynamic
| cap based on your rtt), that still covers all of the
| parking lot scenarios, as well many sensor-failure
| situations, like if you needed to crawl along in the
| right hand lane because it's a blizzard and the radar is
| blind.
|
| In any case, the Forbes article specifically addresses
| how they modeled these things:
|
| "Up ahead a deer jumps into the truck's lane and hundreds
| of miles away a teleoperator is asked to take control of
| the vehicle. But they aren't able to in time - either the
| deer jumped too quickly or the teleoperator wasn't able
| to get situationally aware or worse yet: the cellular
| connectivity isn't good enough!
|
| Such was the situation painted to me time after time
| after time as CEO of Starsky Robotics, whose remote-
| assisted autonomous trucks were supposed to face exactly
| such a scenario. And yet, it was an entirely false
| scenario.
|
| As I've written about before, safety doesn't mean that
| everything always works perfectly, in fact it's quite the
| opposite. To make a system safe is to intimately
| understand where, when, and how it will break and making
| sure that those failures are acceptable."
|
| The fleet argument also confuses me; hasn't that been the
| Waymo/Uber pitch since forever, a centrally owned and
| managed fleet of autonomous vehicles for hire? Why would
| that be considered an especially risky direction?
| soheil wrote:
| > We also saw that investors really didn't like the
| business model of being the operator, and that our heavy
| investment into safety didn't translate for investors.
|
| This is what Stefan said here [0]. Honestly I hear
| contradicting reasons for the failure. It could be that
| their investors had a different risk tolerance than
| Waymo/Uber's.
|
| I guess I'm confused, sure, teleop could cover a lot of
| the edge cases but if there is a fat long tail you still
| end up with a pretty unsafe technology. The deer example
| is kind of a distraction and goes to show that maybe
| Starsky had a problem imagining and classifying
| catastrophic failure events. For every deer jumping in
| front of the vehicle there is a 10x more serious scenario
| that could lead to human fatalities.
|
| After reading his posts I'm still confused about the
| reasons they failed. Can you list the reasons from high
| priority to low as to why they failed?
|
| [0] https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-
| starsky-...
| ksec wrote:
| >They were never fast enough or reliable enough to be
| competitive with the minimum wage labour that they would
| have displaced
|
| This probably sums up well. Human are extremely adaptable.
| To point if we are measured as 100 then no Robot is even 1.
|
| There is a whole reason why even Foxconn gave up using
| Foxconn Robot, some task are just insanely easier and
| cheaper for a human to do it. They're not easily
| automatable and even if we could the cost benefits doesn't
| make any sense.
|
| So instead of having human plugging in DIMM RAM or M.2 SSD,
| now they are all soldered on the logic board using machines
| with automation.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| More specifically, humans have an incredible high
| adaptability:cost ratio.
|
| There aren't many businesses where precision:cost or
| volume:time are more important than labor costs.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| That may be true today, but it might not last forever.
| Labor cost in 1st world nations is skyrocketing (due to
| cost of living mainly) compared to poorer nations, and
| there may come a time when robotics becomes relatively
| competitive. Especially when those cheap labor countries
| start having the same effect.
| ksec wrote:
| Well, while cost are high in first world country, labours
| are mostly limited to services sector.
|
| In manufacturing most of these labour are still in Asia.
| And the cost / productivity is still insanely cheap. It
| isn't just the cost of the Robot itself, but to _program_
| a new task which requires software testing and engineers.
| So the cost barrier is still so far apart. Foxconn make
| _hundreds of millions_ of smartphone every year. You
| would have thought saving $10 per phone would have net
| them a few billions extra profits. And yet their
| employment rate has remained largely the same.
|
| If and If, US and Tech managed to do this ( there is
| _nothing_ even remotely close in the next 10 years, but
| let say somehow there is for the sake of argument ), this
| will be _the_ largest reset of manufacturing and likely
| be Industrial Revolution 3.0.
| yunohn wrote:
| > Especially when those cheap labor countries start
| having the same effect.
|
| You missed the comment's pivotal point. As developing
| countries, well, develop, higher labor prices will affect
| the entire supply chain. It's a Good Thing (TM), and
| that's why we'll need better robotics in that future.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I think a lot of that comes in the form of partial and
| adaptive automation, though-- like self-checkout at the
| grocery store, where it's "automation", but only in the
| sense that the self-checkout console enabled outsourcing
| the pick and place part of the work onto the consumer.
|
| Or elsewhere in the thread, the example of moving a
| previously-modular computer part onto the logic board, so
| that it can be soldered on rather than needing to be
| installed later in the assembly process.
|
| Companies like Rethink weren't in this world-- they were
| trying to build a manipulator (Baxter) which was a drop-
| in replacement for a person doing pick and place work.
| Which has a certain appeal, if it works ("no need to
| retool anything; just buy it and put it to work!"), but
| it puts you up against the direct price comparison of
| just having a human continue to do that job.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I've worked in software automation for about a decade
| now, and that's been my learned wisdom too.
|
| Don't try and boil the ocean: see what COTS is available,
| adapt your process to be able to leverage that, plug it
| in, and move on to the next project
|
| As commentor above noted, volumes have to approach
| obscene to justify a moderate+ amount of custom, one-off
| implementation work.
| soheil wrote:
| Market is not that big? What is the size of transportation
| industry alone? What about ride hailing? Investors are
| skittish? Cruise raised $10B most of it not that long ago,
| EmbarkTrucks is merging with a SPAC to go IPO soon, I could
| list others. Robotics is hard but that's kind of the point.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Saying the market isn't big is indeed questionable, as the
| total addressable market for advanced robotics is easily
| that of the global labour force.
|
| Likely what is meant is the market for current state of the
| art robotics, which have limitations and are cost
| prohibitive (capital wise).
| riversflow wrote:
| I agree with this analysis, although I'd disagree that
| it's questionable, I'd say it's straight fallacious. I'd
| draw a parallel to the development of CNC technology[1],
| in the case that if this software solution can become
| successful, it seems feasible to me that their might
| become some sort of equivalent to a machine shop, but for
| assembly/robotics instead of manufacturing/machining.
| Currently we have Foxconn, who is doing significant
| research in the manufacturing automation space, and seems
| to be making progress, but I see no reason this couldn't
| take a similar arc. CNC/CAD was initially only for the
| most ambition prototypes, but as it proliferated it
| reshaped the product market, making curves easy and
| allowing for much more complex 3d shapes, and was kick
| started by the stagflation of the 70's. I don't look
| forward to (more) products put together by machines that
| are impossible for a human to do. But I genuinely feel
| that mastering robotics is one of the most important
| goals for society as a whole (and especially for safety
| conscious western countries), up their with clean energy
| and carbon sequestration. There is a lot of manual labor
| that (especially) Americans need to do, from updating
| infrastructure for rising seas and fixing the poorly
| maintained infrastructure we have, to increasing housing
| in urban centers, to whatever form carbon sequestration
| ends up taking--and western disease leaves these
| countries mostly unfit for the task ahead.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_contr
| ol
| rexreed wrote:
| Transportation might be the identifiable _target_ market,
| but the actual market of buyers for robotics in
| transportation is very small, and the problem is that the
| chasm between the incumbent market and new entrant robotics
| space is far too large to surpass by the emerging startups.
|
| This is truly a crossing the chasm problem.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Looks rather small number of investment
|
| There were hundreds of copycats startups in China following
| the trendy business ideas at the moments.
|
| The Groupon era Streaming Short video Gif sharing Etc...
|
| It just looks like not enough money in robotics, not that
| robotics are wasting them
| rexreed wrote:
| And just today: https://www.aitrends.com/robotics/softbanks-
| humanoid-robot-p...
| genericone wrote:
| The fittest robot for any application is indistinguishable
| from an appliance or a machine tool made for that
| application.
|
| If your robot can't receive either of those labels, your
| robot company is doomed to a slow death.
| Qworg wrote:
| I cannot agree enough - we always used to say the best
| robots aren't called robots, they're called washing
| machines and dishwashers.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| The issue with most pure-robotics-that-make-things[0]
| companies is that they end up finding out that they need to
| iterate on the robot _while the actual product gets better_.
| It 's not like software where essentially everyone can use
| the same spreadsheet. It's "oh, I need this panel here to
| have a 3mm smaller gap" which works when you're Tesla,
| because the product is the company, but it doesn't really
| work when you're just trying to make a series of robots that
| solve generalizable problems. Reality isn't as standardized
| as a Turing tape. Too many dimensions, figurative or literal.
|
| [0] As opposed to robots that, say, fight wars. But we call
| those things "missiles" and "fighter jets" and "drones" not
| robots.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Missile robots are the best: you don't really need to worry
| much about supporting legacy products years after selling
| them to customers, and they are not expected to be
| functioning after just one use.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Sadly, not that easy.
|
| > you don't really need to worry much about supporting
| legacy products years after selling them to customers
|
| You really, really do. Missiles are expensive, and stay
| in inventories for a very long time, and they need to be
| made compatible with every update to every platform that
| can make use of them. That wouldn't be so bad, but then
| you also need to _prove_ that they work with all those
| platforms. This is hard.
|
| > they are not expected to be functioning after just one
| use.
|
| Missiles are only fired once, but that doesn't mean they
| are used once. The typical "use" of an aircraft carried
| missile is that it is attached to a plane, powered up,
| and then the plane does a sortie and lands, and then the
| missile is removed and maintained. There is a lot of
| maintenance that is done to the missile daily.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| You are running the joke by being _that_ Obvious, Cap.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| The head of robotics there mentioned that it was a strategic
| move because OpenAI wanted to focus on AGI. If OpenAI had other
| goals, like improving robotics, the division would still be
| around.
| tlhunter wrote:
| Well they don't have intrinsic.com or twitter.com/intrinsic...
| Those are still associated with a tech startup from a couple
| years ago:
|
| https://twitter.com/intrinsic/status/1164007322932277249?s=1...
| [deleted]
| amirhirsch wrote:
| Sensing and control are certainly part of the problem, but to me
| it always felt like a major limit to automation was the quality
| of actuators. It's much more than just a control problem to make
| robot hands with the sensitivity, acuity, and dexterity required
| to crack an egg, thread a needle, and play Chopin.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I agree, and the cost. Automation hardware is just
| fundamentally really really expensive. I guess part of that is
| due to the small market, but I'm a bit skeptical that they will
| ever bring robot arms to the masses just because robot arms are
| super expensive.
|
| The ability to plug in cables and whatnot looks like a useful
| ability but I'm guessing this will just be sort of like really
| good traditional robotic control software rather than anything
| really fundamentally different.
| fredliu wrote:
| It's interesting at a time OpenAI dropped its robotics branch...
| csours wrote:
| Billion dollar question: do you get more bang for the buck
| (return on investment, ROI) out of improving robot control
| schemes, or out of designing the product with automated assembly
| in mind?
|
| Bonus: the ROI changes as you invest in either bucket.
| eloff wrote:
| Probably both, to the extent that it's practical.
| csours wrote:
| Indeed. Looking at their sample footage of assembling Ikea
| furniture reminds me of fixturing. Watch manufacturing
| footage and watch out for jigs and fixtures. They are
| EVERYWHERE.
|
| Currently, you can either use fixtures and jigs and
| specialized machines and run fast, use humans and run medium
| speed, or use AI and generic robotics and run REALLY SLOWLY.
|
| Where's the value prop?
| Animats wrote:
| That's a very interesting question.
|
| Apple was once into design for assembly. The Macintosh IIci was
| Apple's peak at design for assembly. It was designed for
| vertical assembly. Everything clicks into place with a
| straight-down insertion move. No wiring harnesses. The power
| supply plugs into the motherboard. An automated plant in
| Fremont CA did the assembly.
|
| Then Apple gave up on design for assembly and went to
| offshoring and cheap labor.
|
| Motorola flip phones were designed for automated assembly. All
| parts were on boards, and the boards were stacked and
| compressed into a solid block, with bumps on the boards making
| connections to the next layer. A tough, reliable phone
| resulted.
|
| Then Motorola gave up and went to offshoring and cheap labor.
|
| Sony pioneered this approach. The Sony Walkman,, the original
| tape unit with motors and contra-rotating flywheels, was built
| for vertical assembly and assembled by a simple Cartesian
| robot.
|
| Then came the iPod.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Apple case is not exactly abandoning design for assembly. The
| advancement of electronic and metal machining allows smaller
| and more integrated parts, which allows cheap labor to beat
| the machine. If the electronics and metal machining did not
| advance, I am guessing the resultant production cost would
| not be this low.
| varjag wrote:
| Machining is more or less in the same spot it's been since
| late 1970s.
| 542458 wrote:
| I don't think is true at all. CAM is dramatically more
| advanced than it was in the 70s - easier to use, and
| better algorithms mean much faster pathing. Costs are way
| down. Tooling is cheaper and more reliable.
| varjag wrote:
| Of course there's been quantitative improvements, but
| fundamentally everything that can be designed and
| machined today could be designed and machined in late
| 1970s using very similar tools, processes and control
| systems.
| morcheeba wrote:
| Yes, the technology is the same. But how many machined
| products were available for the consumer to buy in 1970?
| I was excited about the Macbook Air not because it was
| thin, but because it was CNC made, just like the
| aerospace products I designed. Injection molding remains
| dominant, but over the last 15 years CNC has made a lot
| of progress.
| varjag wrote:
| Yes, in the 1980s people were told they'd lose their
| manufacturing jobs to Japanese robots but the robots turned
| out to be Chinese workers.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Do you, or anyone else here, know how much money Apple saved
| by offshoring?
|
| I sometimes get it. Then when I hear robots were used, I
| wonder if it's really necassary to always go to the cheapest
| labor route.
|
| For years, I held it against Apple for moving manufacturing,
| but gave up when everyone followed.
| bobsomers wrote:
| > Do you, or anyone else here, know how much money Apple
| saved by offshoring?
|
| There's another axis here, which is how our desire for a
| product overlaps with DFM. It could be the case that
| offshoring to cheap labor actually increased the
| manufacturing costs 2x, but enabled a product that would
| sell 10x better than its DFM counterpart.
|
| (I have no data to say that _is_ the case, only the
| intution that these things are complicated systems which
| rarely come down to single-issue decisions.)
| varjag wrote:
| Manpower is a lot easier (and cheaper) to reconfigure
| between different products than robotic production lines.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I'd say invest in the former, as having better robot control
| schemes should allow you to more easily iterate on different
| design alternatives
| klysm wrote:
| The improvement of robot control schemes reduces the
| constraints on designs that are designed for automated
| assembly. I suspect there's a kind of slow moving coevoultion
| there where you have to go incrementally at both.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Half of automating tomato harvesting was breeding a tomato that
| could survive the harvesters. (Granted they also taste
| relatively horrible, but now we all eat them because they are
| cheap and ubiquitous.)
| thesausageking wrote:
| > "when I was just starting Moonfruit, the world's first SAAS
| website builder"
|
| Moonfruit, launched in 2000, was definitely not the first SaaS
| website builder. Geocities launched 6 years before it and there
| were dozens of them by the time Moonfruit came around.
|
| While not a big lie, it's an odd way to start a post like this.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Not odd at all, it's standard startup delusion trying to chase
| clout
| galdosdi wrote:
| Funnily enough, one of those dozens of examples hits close to
| home here:
|
| A main source of the original fortune that funded the creation
| of YC and thus Hacker News was the $49m sale to Yahoo! of
| Viaweb, a SaaS website builder (focused on ecommerce) founded
| by Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris in 1995.
| sp332 wrote:
| Geocities was free and didn't really provide any "software" in
| the service. It was a static web host.
| srhngpr wrote:
| Geocities had a WYSIWYG website builder, so yes there was
| some software involved. It's how I learned how to build my
| first website when I was 12.
| jacobmischka wrote:
| Off topic: Wow, X's main website[1] is infuriating. The scrolling
| is very janky with a touchpad, and the carousel at the bottom of
| the page which highlights projects in a timeline advances way too
| fast to read it comfortably, and there isn't any obvious way to
| pause on a slide. Shame, because I was actually interested in
| learning more about their projects.
|
| [1]: https://x.company
| tofuahdude wrote:
| What is the point of the first paragraph?
| i386 wrote:
| I'm "unlocking" that this will be dead within 18 months. It will
| get too hard and bored engineers will head back to Google Corp
| where the promotion game is better.
|
| I'm in manufacturing. Machinery is highly specialised. Making a
| generic robot without taking up huge amount of floor space and/or
| huge leaps in programming is like... Kubernetes being good for
| hosting your moms book club blog.
| danieldisu wrote:
| I'll remind myself in 2 years to see the state of this
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Funnily, their scroll capture is totally broken on their website
| [1] at least on my version of Firefox. Also, it's strange that
| they don't have their own website when they're a separate
| company. I guess it shows the ephemeral nature of these projects.
|
| [1] https://x.company/projects/intrinsic/
| dEnigma wrote:
| Wow, you're right. At least on Linux with Firefox 90.0.2
| scrolling with the mouse wheel moves the page by such huge
| steps that it's basically unusable. Had to navigate with the
| arrow keys instead.
| [deleted]
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Because, uhm, it's one of multiple projects? See:
| https://x.company/projects/
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Right, they seem like a project not a company. I suppose they
| can put in a request to have Alphabet fix the website, they
| may not have the autonomy for that themselves.
| okareaman wrote:
| I really dislike this writing structure of "before I get to the
| point, let me tell you a story about my life"
|
| Edit: I'm not alone, https://style.mla.org/dont-bury-the-lede/
| jszymborski wrote:
| Maybe I'm off base here, as it's no small feat by any means,
| but it's especially jarring to read when "first-website-
| building-SaaS" has so little to do with industrial robotics at
| its surface.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| I had a similar impression. It was jarring to say the least
| and made me ask so many questions that had nothing to do with
| the story. Does this person lead every tech related
| conversation with, "When I was the CEO of Moonbeans, the
| world's first SAAS blockchain beanbag chair crowd sourcing
| platform" just to buy some credibility? Why do they feel the
| need to tell us that? Do they have inadequacy issues or is it
| the opposite? I can barely remember what that article was
| about. Robotics? Oh, right, shame it's an Alphabet
| subsidiary. It's bound to end up in the Google graveyard when
| it fails to be one of the top 10 most profitable companies in
| the world. Even if they do great things and make a great
| product, it's the fate which will inevitably follow most of
| Alphabet's projects until the SEC breaks them up, this being
| one of many good reasons.
| skybrian wrote:
| I like inverted pyramid style too, but it's a very brief intro
| and letting the CEO of a new company introduce themselves
| doesn't seem so bad? You could skip the first paragraph.
| okareaman wrote:
| I often don't know how much to skip. Where is the point? I
| often give up unless it's something I'm really interested in.
| lanewinfield wrote:
| You will not be a fan of recipe blogs anywhere on the internet.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Those have gotten way worse. It's an SEO thing right?
| loa_in_ wrote:
| Clearly an attempt to lure you in when you're hungry and
| searching for some common queries like history of famous
| places.
| acdanger wrote:
| I've assumed it was to create a longer page which can
| hold more ads.
| kortilla wrote:
| Recipes by themselves aren't copyrightable. Bullshit
| stories are.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| Does copyright for a story containing a recipe protect
| against use of the recipe outside the context of the
| story?
| CrazyStat wrote:
| No
| lbotos wrote:
| No, but it stops straight scraping, and requires a
| scraper to do a little bit more work to copy the recipe.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think the question is "is it possible to split recipe
| from BS story programmatically"
| eps wrote:
| It's viewed as a DRM measure. Recipes are not copyrightable
| _unless_ they are attached to a story. It 's probably an
| urban legend, but can't blame poor food bloggers from
| acting on it.
| human wrote:
| That hits so close to home. I've given up searching for
| recipes online because of this. And I'm not even mentionning
| all the ads you have to scroll through.
| mchusma wrote:
| Recipe for french toast: Step 1: Learn the history of France
| Step 2: learn the history of toast Step 3: heat bread, eggs,
| milk in a pan
| joezydeco wrote:
| Keep going. The ingredient list is on page 12.
|
| One time I inadvertently hit print on a recipe like this
| and the print dialog estimated 45 pages.
| [deleted]
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| You forgot the history of the writer's family and the
| impact that French toast has had on them for generations.
| quintin wrote:
| Most recipe blogposts these days have jump to recipe.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I can understand why the style may seem offputting, but the
| thing to understand is that it has been traditionally very hard
| to engage with the public on this topic of robotic advancement.
| In fact, I know a bit about this myself, having been in the
| robotics space for over a decade. But my own struggles in the
| field only reflect a longer trend, which I can even trace back
| to my grandfather.
|
| Growing up in a strict Lutheran household in the southwest-
| England town of Flenkelshire, Elias Nathaniel "Kazoo" Pendleton
| III did not immediately stand out among his peers. Born with
| dull red hair, one leg three inches shorter than the other, and
| shoulders that somehow resembled cornish hens, young Elias was
| a frequent target for the town bullies. A child at that time
| has only three options: fight better, run faster, or invent
| some kind of device that would enable him to escape his
| tormentors. Luckily (by chance or by fate), Flenkelshire was
| home to a radio-electronics store, _Bundleron 's Radio and
| Horseshoe Supplies_, which gave young Elias just the right
| ingredients to hatch his escape plan. And hatch a plan he did,
| though it would take twenty years for the town to understand
| exactly what he was up to.
|
| The first trap was set in the Fall of 1951. Winston Churchill
| has just returned to power. The Festival of Britain had just
| wrapped up and lit the imagination of attendees and non-
| attendees alike. And Elias Nathaniel "Kazoo" Pendleton III, now
| well-armed with a stock of electronics, metalwork, and several
| years of intense study, went into action...
| breakfastbar wrote:
| Bravo
| yunohn wrote:
| There is literally just one short paragraph of personal intro
| by the CEO, before getting the "plot".
| okareaman wrote:
| I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but...
|
| > Intrinsic is working to unlock the creative and economic
| potential of industrial robotics
|
| ...is under the fold, under two paragraphs and an image
| ignoramous wrote:
| Can we blame that on _the-most-important-job-of-a-leader-is-to-
| tell-an-inspiring-story_ narrative prevalent in the tech world?
| https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/nh3ubp0nRaw
| themolecularman wrote:
| I dislike this story in journalism and podcasts too. I listen
| to a lot of true crime podcasts:
|
| > Before Y was murdered, they lived in X. X is a quiet town,
| the type of place where you don't need to lock your doors. Y
| has a happy upbringing collecting flowers along the river at...
|
| Like we get it, this is the first half of every 1-hour long
| true-crime podcast. Also quite often the first half of every
| long-form article.
| mkwarman wrote:
| I don't mind it as much in true crime podcasts when it's done
| well. Totally agree that the generic "it was a peaceful town
| where nobody locked their doors blah blah blah" can get old
| quickly. But hearing about the unique lives of the victims in
| murder cases can definitely add to the story. And in podcasts
| more focused on the investigative side (ex. Someone Knows
| Something) knowing the background info can even be critical
| to solving the puzzle so to speak.
| SN76477 wrote:
| "On a cold autumn day in Brooklyn a young child crosses the
| street with his parents."
|
| How every NPR story about criminal justice starts.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| The domain name reminds me of x.com, Elon Musk's 1999 company
| that became PayPal. It was one of only 3 single letter .com
| domains. I have a memory that its issuance was a mistake or some
| sort of strange deal but I can't find any evidence for that now.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| you are becoming evil
| baq wrote:
| i might be willing to free up my garage for a laundry folding
| robot
| amelius wrote:
| I'm freeing up my garage for a robot that knits me a new set of
| clothes every day.
| munificent wrote:
| If you pay me as much as it would cost to buy one of these
| robots, I'll come fold your laundry for you. I'll make "beep
| boop" sounds at no extra cost.
| Animats wrote:
| Nice.
|
| Here's much the same job, being done almost 50 years ago, by a
| robot at the Stanford AI lab.[1] This robot has both vision and
| force feedback, and uses them to assemble an automotive water
| pump. It does the coarse alignment visually, and the fine
| alignment by feel.
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/sailfilm_pump
| azernik wrote:
| The point is fast (and hence cheap) training to bring existing
| technology to smaller companies, not doing anything new and
| advanced.
| theptip wrote:
| It's hard for me to compare precisely, especially since the
| Intrinsic videos are sped up, but the one you linked looks very
| shaky and hesitant, and also the "Ikea challenge" seems like it
| requires more fine-tuned force-feedback than putting metal
| pieces together. If I anthropomorphize, the Stanford robot
| looks like an inept/hungover employee, whereas the Intrinsic
| robot seems convincing that it's actually accurately aware of
| what's going on.
|
| Another possible difference -- how much programming time did it
| take to teach the Stanford robot to assemble the water pump?
| Sounds like Intrinsic trained the robots to do this with little
| supervision.
|
| It seems to me that this might represent pretty solid progress,
| although not exponential/paradigm-shift scale like we've seen
| in some other industries in that period, and nothing in the
| Intrinsic videos seemed like it was above par for other
| automation companies I've seen recently. But since you seem to
| be in the industry, what's your take on whether they seem to be
| ahead of the game, or even just realistic, with claims like:
|
| > In one instance, we trained a robot in two hours to complete
| a USB connection task that would take hundreds of hours to
| program. In other tests, we orchestrated multiple robot arms to
| assemble an architectural installation and a simple piece of
| furniture. None of this is realistic or affordable to automate
| today -- and there are millions of other examples like this in
| businesses around the world.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| You're just grumpy :-). On the plus side the computer that is
| controlling the robot isn't a DEC-10 in a climate controlled
| room so there is that.
|
| The correct feeling here though should be compassion, here is a
| group that has been safely nestled in the arms of Google X and
| is now being pushed out of the nest like so many projects
| before it, which currently has one such company, Waymo, that is
| currently not yet dead. Statistically speaking, it is unlikely
| they will be able to pupate into a products company before they
| run out of time.
|
| That said, it is also a truism that the constraints on robotics
| 50 years ago are not the constraints on robotics today. Re-
| implementing those ideas which had merit before but lacked a
| sufficiently robust ecosystem to be practical might in fact be
| really useful today. One hopes that they have the perspective
| of the excellent technical reports that SAIL produced to guide
| their development.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm still waiting for a robot that can assemble a LEGO model
| from a pile of Legos.
| arkitaip wrote:
| Probably faster and easier to get offspring who can do it for
| you.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Make sure to initialize with random weights
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