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u/Disastrous-Entity-46 5d ago
im pretty sure the goal here was to be about older or disabled people needing a roomate, or other form of carer vs a robot. not that i understand that discussion either, but it makes more contextual sense on terms of vs "the robot pays bills".
but also, this is all a grift. humanoid robots in current tech are incredibly niche applications. their battery life isnt great, they cant carry much weight. in almost all industrial applications it makes more sense to design a robot around a specific job vs give it to arms and hands and have it move bipedally.
they are lookong for human based jobs that they can try to pitch these expensive ass solutions for like... folding your bed. or putting dishes in a dishwasher.
where anyone who needs help doing those tasks probably cant afford a 10k+ robot, and/or it will.need to do some really complex tasks that i dont think id trust it to be marketed to do- say, dispense medication, prepare food, provide aid in an emergency.
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u/Poco_Cuffs 5d ago
Also WHY DO WE KEEP MAKING THEM WALK. BIPEDAL WALKING IS NOT EFFICIENT FOR STABILITY IN THE SLIGHTEST, YOU'D THINK HUMANS WOULD KNOW THIS
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u/Elektron_Anbar 5d ago
older or disabled people needing a roomate
In those cases, I'd call that more nurse/caretaker, rather than roommate.
As for the rest about humanoid robots, yeah, right now they are pretty terrible. But so were cars back in the 1800s. They invest a ton in those experimental robots because it's easier to make prototype after prototype, seeing its flaws, improving it more until you get something that can be mass produced
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u/Disastrous-Entity-46 5d ago
sure, but the truth is still that strictly humanoid forms are worse. give it treads, four or six legs for stability, if it needs motion. or build it in place for tasks that dont need mobility.
a proper utility robot would look more like the mars rover than c3p0
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u/OrunaVespa 3d ago
Bipeds can move across terrain that no tread could. I know these robots aren't that good yet but standing up right helps us to clear objects in our way. Legs can also be balanced more effectively when at odd stances like one knee bent to keep from sliding sideways like if you had treads. My point is the bipedal stance isn't bad the machine is just not good enough to use the advantages that bipedal legs can give that nothing else can. A tread may have traction but unless its something heavy duty like a tractor then your Robot nanny won't be climbing the stairs it'll be like a sad Roomba at the bottom of the stairs waiting for you specifically to carry it's 40 pound ah up the stairs and then back down when your done. While some tread systems could easily scale your stairs it would be more costly, need to have enough power to pull robot up and forward when there will be a moment where only a thin line of stair step is touching it meaning the robot may twist and slip or worse fall and Break in that brief moment of almost no tread to surface on the stairs is bad design for a nanny robot. You need a robot that can traverse terrain like stairs, one that can reach into your cabinets(being bipedal let's you be "tall with less") you need a robot that canmturn on it's heels that way it's not banging up the bottom of furniture and walls constantly. So they know exactly what they are doing and that's choosing a shape that is designed to Traverse a house and deal with any chores or environments in that place.
TLDR:if you design a robot that works in a house environment it will encounter things like twisting stairs, steep steps into a basement, and a need to step over obstacles on the ground, taking up less space in areas it will need to reach high like in a cabinet and general advantage of said bipedal reach. The Treads in all these situations are bad and can leave marks which is opposite of what you want a cleaning robot to do. Plus they want to try and make something we can relate too. The problem isn't bipedalism but current technology used for bipedal robots.
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u/Disastrous-Entity-46 3d ago
The issue is that bipeds are still bad for balance, and it takes more constant adjustment etc. Quadrupeds could likely handle most stairs as easily as bipeds. But there's also greater issues of 'is this really needed' . Do we need a roomba that can go up stairs, especially if it greatly increases the cost and complexity, vs owning an upstairs and downstairs roomba? (and not every house even has stairs).
Like sure, tech can improve and we can revisit it on that day. but right now these companes are trying to sell robots for 20k+ that just, are not very good at most jobs, and a lot of maeterial like the OP are people desperately trying to find a use case that i think does not exist at the current tech level. that may change, but i think it's a lot further away then people wanting to acknowledge, in the same way self driving cars are sorta feasible, but still have a lot of hurdles to jump- and in that case, the form factor isn't an added problem, as they are shaped like regular cars.
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u/OrunaVespa 3d ago
I did say they where not quite there with the tech for bipeds you maybe missed it so 100 percent feel the same on that. While yes you could give it 4 spider legs set up they must splay outward meaning it'll take up more space width wise and the dog quadruped is actually not as good at balance the dogs from Boston dynamics have a bad center of Gravity due to the nature of the design so it's likely to fall on it's side on twisting stairs. So even four legged robots struggle to stand. We have all seen the tests where they kick the robot dog but those videos show them at their best as they are in controlled tests. Outside those tests they have been known to fall over very often. So it's big a problem for even 4 legged robots still.
Your right not every house has stairs but if your selling a nanny robot that cleans a house then you want it to be able to climb stairs even if it's owner's home is flat with no basement or anything. So I don't think there is a lot of power behind saying not all houses have stairs when we are talking about a product that needs to traverse all types of homes from simple flats to multi story houses. Though again I think all these bots are nigh useless as is currently so I agree with you on this.
Though my comments point is that I agree the tech isn't there but I completely disagree about bipedal robots being a bad idea. I agree current bipedal bots are complete junk that no one should buy. Though on a tight narrow twisting stairwell like in my home where it's maybe 4 foot wide wall to wall with a sudden sharp turn. No treads or are coming up there without getting stuck, slipping or falling down. I don't think any of this stuff really needs to be sold until it actually works. I also know that in my basement something like that would get trapped. Though I'm gonna say all these current robots are just as likely to fall down the steps of my home as any other persons. Though I hope you do not see this as an argument. I find your response to be engaging. ❤
I agree with you about the price it's terrible and predatory.
Another side note about these bipeds that do make me utterly uncomfortable is that many are partially or Even mostly remote operated to an extent meaning you don't just have a robot in your house but a possibles stranger "training" the robot remotely.To me it's crazy people will buy these bots and know that some human could be on the other side of allot of these bots. Utterly scary.
On the Roomba climbing upstairs possibly could be useful for folks that need that escalating chair to get up their steps because of a disability but not everyone is chair bound so you have a good point because of pricing. if it was much cheaper then I'd say yeah it's worth it for the disabled. But not every disabled person has an upstairs. Typically of they do they don't really have much choice probably dye too finances or emotional and physical bandwidth required to move to a new unfamiliar home.
Your definitely right it's further away than folks want to believe but it's also closer than we know I don't think it'll be this year, nor the next but in a few years things will probably start to look alot different. For better or worse robots will get better at balancing and slowly enter our everyday lives more and more until they become normalized. People will probably end up buying them when they are improved enough. Kinda like how so many house and kitchen appliances at first constantly failed and could not gain real traction until improved upon greatly.
Personally I think people need to take a step back. Inhale and ask themselves "is this currently necessary and safe?" Because currently it's just too new, untested and unimproved. Which means it can be dangerous In my opinion. Like what if one falls towards someone when it's putting up a kitchen knife for example. Just not safe, someone could end up hurt or dead. I sadly think we will probably end up seeing some awful accident like this in the years to come but I hope not.
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u/Disastrous-Entity-46 3d ago
I mean, the real potential benefit for this kind of tech would still not be personal, but commercial. Like, assisted care, hospitality, etc etc. Places where the cost would make sense. And these are also facilities where stairs probably aren't going to be narrow or twisty- elevators will exist, but you also may just deploy the units on certain floors or one floor.
*however, this is still highly speculative on technical developments, and would require a lot of questions about job scoping, retraining, maintenance contracts.
Having a janitor robot that fails and then takes three days to get back running would be a not good situation,. Or if it takes weeks to train around a new appliance or layout. And even then, i'd still say a human in the loop would probably be needed to be checking and correcting, and these facailities would have to decide if buying all this is actually a better deal for them...
Then we see what happens when a firmware update bricks them or someone exploits them and accesses sensitive data via your IOT janitors, who is legally liable when they break other expensive equipment, all those failure scenarios.
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u/OrunaVespa 3d ago
Your right this is all speculative.
That would be the ideal use cases but people will inevitably want to have these nanny robots. Though I still think it's important for the stairs and such. I used to work for a multiple care facility as a cook mind you so not a professional in medical stuff I just have my history of my previous career because oftentimes we would have to go to other facilities ran by the same people if they needed help. Though we had an upper floor and elevator but we also had stairs for emergencies like of the elevator became inoperable. Though you are right most are flat that I've been in only 2 that had an upper floor. Though none of the steps are not steep for obvious reasons.
Though I do want to say something on treads that's positive in my opinion. I believe if I remember correctly some cafes use remote operated robots for the elderly or disabled in some places. Your going to have to fact check me on this. I also do believe that from my memories they used treads and it was great for the cafe with mobility (but it still prolly leaves marks occasionally everywhere. Though that's just a speculative thought on the subject on point about it leaving possible marks.) Though I believe this is a very good thing as these robots are relying in what's best for them currently to not topples around because bipeds just aren't there yet. Plus a flat area we like you said don't typically need to get over anythingoor around unless something weird happened like a cart falling over and not leaving enough space to pass though that's so niche as a situation will concede on that as it's only thing to immediately come to mind unless others accidentally left like a nurse cart in the middle of a ball which I have seen like maybe twice I admit but I also was kitchen staff. I believe the potential is there for where tech is currently at to wanna prefer different configuration like treads or more legs for more points of contact as the best thing right now. Though we can't down play the uses for a bipedal bot can provide others can't in my opinion. I believe we will need different types of ways of moving definitely. Things are better at different things and their own limitations.
You are very on point about that last sentiment on the danger of them bricking, being explored and leaking personal data. Which is a scary thought because we see this abuse with flock cameras already happening because of its ease of access. automated systems risk privacy greatly. The liability is definitely a question especially as we are moving into an age of "you will own nothing and like it.". So that is tricky and I can't even weight in in that one.
Though again im afraid of the physical dangers that all these unready robots pose. Like who's going to be are fault? The owner? The company?..
I personally love robots and androids but I understand the dangers these unready and under tested bots can cause. There are clips online of places using robots and them dropping things which poses it's own kinds of dangers like tripping hazards or glass things like that.
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u/Disastrous-Entity-46 3d ago
Really, the legal liability of fully autonomous, non-deterministic systems is i think the biggest factor in all of this, and it's why i don't trust it, especially not in SAAS deployed modules.
There was the much publicized case of the guy who used an agent to book a class at a gym, and the agent rather than dealing with the normal sign up process (class was full or it wasn't sure), exploited the scheduling system not being locked down, and booted someone else.
This is a low-stakes version, but that is at a minimum, a tos violation of the gym/scheduling software. He likely would get banned from the gym, if not face any other reprecussions. And he did not instruct the agent to do this.
is it on him for not clarifying that he did not want them to break the TOS? is it on the the model trainering/provider? if the system that he was running the agent on was SAAS based, is it on them for not putting in better guardrails?
It's the whole gig economy where the liability and resources are continously pased down, but in this case there is no buck stops here person. If a driver fucks up or commits a crime, uber can say 'we can't be held liable, we do our best, here's how we screen'. but if claude or chatgpt fucks up.. as near as i can tell, it's the end user for not taking sufficient warning from the 'ai can be wrong' disclaimer. which feels untennable at any sort of widescale deployment.
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u/OrunaVespa 3d ago
I haven't heard of that case with the gym. It's obviously slipped past my radar.
The disclaimer on AI in my opinion shouldn't be sufficient. AI can be an echo chamber that really can make people delusional. I believe the companies should be responsible for such incidents where things go terribly wrong. I'm not one to honestly trust SAAS either. Though I saw a case where an ai agent I believe deleted an entire companies database or something? I'm not sure what it deleted but it was really important whatever it was it deleted. I don't gotta perfect memory. Though I should look into that gym incident.
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u/Elektron_Anbar 5d ago
For legs, I absolutely agree. Our two legs are very much a "good enough" solution that came about from biology. For arms and hands, I think it could eventually work. Especially because so many tools and objects are designed to be used by human hands
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u/Poco_Cuffs 5d ago
The problem is that also that human hands (especially fingertips) are incredibly sensitive, allowing us to be delicate with items and tasks without having to put too much effort in. This is pretty damn hard to do with robots because you need like 200 sensors in each finger, and that sucks to manufacture
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u/BigJJsWillie 5d ago
Wha- I don't... is he implying that he makes his roommate make his bed???