@futurebird @epicdemiologist Bending over is so important! I saw an excellent talk at an HRI conference years ago on how they tried to get a PR-2 robot to operate in an office environment for a month without humans stepping in to help, and one of the things that happened was that it dropped its power cord and couldn't pick it up to plug itself in to charge. (PR-2's don't bend!)

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@robotistry @futurebird @epicdemiologist

In fairness, I am also mostly unable to bend over and pick up objects off the ground.

@robotistry @epicdemiologist

Am I just showing my age because I like these “general purpose” robots better?

They just seem like robots I could program, they are clearly based on “the human form” but take advantage of “better ways to move” when we are talking about motors and metal rather than muscles and bones.

And I’m impressed with the accomplishments. This is what I thought we were doing.

@venya @robotistry @epicdemiologist

Sadly then u shall be “deprecated”

@robotistry @epicdemiologist

When it comes to robots like this there is a lot of work to be done on how they break and fail and how to make servicing the robot easy enough for life outside of a lab with experts.

Hopefully it won’t all be “the lubricants in servo 48 are dried out please take it to the genius bar/ tesla dealership” for every little snag in operation.

This could all be very exciting— if the will exists to really make it happen.

@futurebird in a career of boosting hokey tech, Muskbots are surely the hokiest.

@sidereal

They look so unstable and uncanny it gives me anxiety.

@futurebird @epicdemiologist Nope, not an age thing. There have always been "we should build general purpose humanoids" and "we should build form-follows-function specialists" camps. The C3-P0 and R2-D2 camps, if you will.

There are solid use cases for humanoid robots (C3-P0 is humanoid in part because his primary function is both social and political), but they are much narrower than they appear because the robots themselves are much more behaviorally fragile than humans.

I would like a humanoid in-home care robot, but it will take many orders of magnitude more work and investment to make something useful compared to a 70% solution like the Labrador: https://labradorsystems.com

@futurebird @epicdemiologist So. Much. Work.

It's not even "lubricants in servo 48".

It's "why is my robot suddenly failing a little after 3pm every day?" (where reasons might include "you started opening the curtains to see if your kid was almost home yet" to "daylight savings time started" to "your neighbor cut down their tree and the light in your living room has changed" to "your wifi password changed and it can't back itself up").

It's "how do I know the robot that I have been adding random apps to for four years will be safe around my new baby".

It's "I added an app to the robot because my PT said it would let it help me with my exercises and now it can't load the dishwasher anymore".

@futurebird @robotistry @epicdemiologist This particular guy looks unthreatening as well; no uncanny valley syndrome, and doesn't look like it's actually designed to be a weapons platform ( ala those dog things ).

@toerror @futurebird @epicdemiologist The most intimidating robot I've met was a four-wheeled robot that could move on two or four wheels. Like the one linked below, but bigger, heavier, blacker/less red, and taller than me. When it was in two-wheel mode, I always felt like it was going to run right over me.

(www.reddit.com)

@robotistry @toerror @epicdemiologist

It’s an intrinsically mischievous form factor.

When it stood up I wanted to say “cut that out right now”

same thing with the prancing.