Figure 03, Our 3rd Generation Humanoid Robot

The modem[1] folks? :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USRobotics

I agree on the data part. I love the potential idea of a humanoid robot at home to take care of chores, but now it seems like the potential for it not being constantly connected and collecting data is gone out the window.

I find it quite strange that they are openly bragging about how much data it will be gathering and uploading from within your home. That feels like the part you would not say out loud.

Also one of the chores I hate doing the most is folding clothes. If I could have a machine that does it well every time, I'd buy it.

Why is it so important to you that people fold their own clothes and wash their own dishes?

Why do you idolize a life of increased drudgery?

On the other hand, would the removal of these inconveniences allow for the highest calling of humanity - I argue creativity - to flourish to the fullest? My gut reaction is once again that inconveniences are actually a very important resistance to creativity, like how you need gritty sand paper to create smooth wood.

You can buy an expensive robot, or maybe you can meditate and be mindful that inconveniences play an important role in the meaning of your life. I am of course speaking of the household use here - I think the debate is likely different for a business setting.

If my cleaner was a robot, I'm sure I'd eventually lose that sense of embarrassment. I'm usually polite with ChatGPT but I think that's also passing...

You can wash the dishes and tidy up after every meal, rinse and sort your recycling but you're still trashing the planet more or less the same as the person who does none of those things.

Commoditization and Walmart-level deployments at scale are still a few gens off.

On the robot side, there are many things that have to go right. Hardware needs to become good enough, reliable enough and cheap enough to scale. Then you have the software stack on top that needs to scale in training, fine-tuning, control and generalisation. None of these are "easy" even in a lab setting. Doing it at scale, in production will be huge. And then there's data collection, where whoever does it better will probably win. Collecting data in peoples houses is problematic, but on the factory floor should be ok.

ATM my bet is on Tesla being the best positioned to best deliver (eventually). They have plenty of experience on all fronts, and more importantly they have ample places to test them. Their factories are as automated as possible, so it's safe to say that every human being still doing manual labor is critical in their role. As soon as they can replace some of them with humanoids, and see the "task success" number go up, they can scale it up all over their floors. And we know they can scale.

I used to think that generalist humanoid robots are still 10y out, due to hardware and generalist software stacks, but it seems like things are heating up. It's gonna be an interesting next decade.

30 years ago we figured out how to contact charge cordless phones with metal pads and prongs.

But a cable is a fair question.. you'd think it could plug itself in...

Maybe that's a hint at the robots actual capabilities at this point... or, they didn't want to bet on the unpredictability of environments: what if there's something in the way of the cable, though something could also be in the way of the inductive charger

Yes, like gasoline. But still batteries. Maybe some kind of bearing sized batteries which can be poured like a fluid?

Also, the charge rate matters. If robot can charge to 80% in say 30 minutes, then it can take small charging breaks during the day between critical tasks.

Also, if the feet have inductive chargers, it's possible to place the robot on a large charging mat that allows it to run indefinitely, like in a factory environment. If your robot takes 30 minutes to fold the laundry or do dishes, why not place a charging mat at these locations so it can work and charge at the same time.

In the future, new homes might include charging coils embedded in the floor every 12 inches so that your robots can work all day.

> Bonus points if the robot has data on the degradation BMS that can tell battery health is common so this should be there.

Yet, it's being sold as capable of doing and folding your laundry.

I would sell th stock to the next idiot the moment they announced this.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/podcast/2023/01/a-private-...

Yeah I'll pass thanks.

Going to be a wild ride.

All factors of "it was Vegas" aside, one of the things that stood out to me was that the hotels have moved rapidly to rapid checkin/checkout systems where you punch in your confirmation code or name/dob and present a photo ID of some kind (passports can just be slapped against the reader) and it asks a few questions ("do you need late checkout", etc), directs you to the exact place your room is (and prints it, which was nice) and tells you where the bellhop station is if there's more than a little while before your room is ready and it can't dispense your cards.

All told, four of these stations had roughly 90% the throughput of the four real humans, but they "moved faster" because it didn't feel like queuing for a human, more... "waiting for a toilet"?

Kiosk based stuff is great until it fails. Spend an hour in the checkin area of a major airport and you'll see any number of interesting failure modes.

As for the washing machine bit: Why not push for more standards usage in home automation? We have Thread, which is really cool, and which is driving the home automation future that we're slowly getting. Once it's loaded, a homebot should't have to check the thing manually, it should get information about when, what, and how and be able to have "eyes in the back of its head" so to speak.

This week, I had my first experience with exactly this at a car hire company. It was… not smooth.

It took multiple attempts (with requests for help to the employees in between) to get the system to recognise our code, whereupon we learned (by way of an unhelpful generic error message) that the system had somehow given someone else ‘our’ car. After another round of asking for human help, we had to wait while someone came outside, unlocked the machine, and put the keys for our new car inside. We then went through the code process again, and were finally given the keys.

The vision is somewhere there, but the execution isn’t exactly the future we’re hoping for!

An illustrative example is a warehouse. They're still partly designed for humans because they're not fully automated, but the need to make them human-friendly will disappear soon.

I would pay extra to avoid it - just let me download a pass like a boarding pass to my Apple Wallet as I walk through the front door and head directly to my room.

Small servers with console, PA speakers, field metrology or data acquisition machines, those things could have the lower torso or two for this and relocated as needed. The PhD guys can just park the truck and let those deploy wherever AI thinks >65% suitable for human use on their own, instead of users burning 15% of brain juice thinking and executing that. That would be immensely useful.

(also re: hotels that others are commenting, there were never technical reasons the door keycard readers couldn't ever had doubled as credit card readers - I think the reason why clerks are required is for sanity check, that the guests aren't in need of immediate safety/health assistance and ok to proceed to beds)

I mean standing there for 10 minutes and giving them my passport to give me a plastic card with a digital code has very little to do with human touch.

I want that human touch at a bar perhaps but not at a reception.

If your critisism is only about the reception part: There has to be a transition part and a 'let a human do it for a bit' or 'here is a complicated case please robot move aside i'm here'.

I think we have A LOT of old people in precare situations because they are not aware of the possible difference this can make.

In the 2010s everyone purchased those rumba vacuums, because whatever, they're cheap. Now I usually see them collecting dust.

The strong use-case for robotics is industrial/manufacturing and construction, agriculture probably more than ever. They don't need to be humanoid at all, and in fact maybe they shouldn't be because that very feature could spook unions and labor groups. Robots that actually look like they're "just tools" will be more willingly embraced.

> 30 grand

> we all start having them in our houses

Have you traveled ? Even a bit ? Most people don't make 30k in a year, before tax. It just shows how utterly disconnected from reality tech people, and especially execs, are. Virtually no one is going to pay 30k for a bot to mop the floor and fold their clothes

As for myself even if you'd pay me 30k I'd refuse to have one.

> Helix: Figure 03 features a completely redesigned sensory suite and hand system which is purpose-built to enable Helix - Figure's proprietary vision-language-action AI.

Aha, now its clear ;)

Also, now that I've typed that out, "sit down with ChatGPT and have a nice chat about." is a helluva thing to say.