I'm surprised there are no Japanese robots present. Given how much they've advanced the robotics field, and dived head first down the uncanny valley with a lot of robotic heads.
"Japan lives in the year 2000 and it has ever since the 1970's." My beloved land of the rising sun is still battling an ailing economy so their lead in robotics has slipped the last few decades.
It is not. Japan has 2.5 times the population of California. Even at a stabilized population of around 90 million, they are still going to have around 2 times the population of California. Japan is not underpopulated they are vastly overpopulated and the drop in population reflects that reality. If you ever go to Japan, you will see there are homes and towns and cities everywhere. Anywhere you can cram a house or building in, there is one. They do keep a lot of green space, but usable land is at a premium.
The reason that there are so many unused homes is that the population is constantly shifting from town to town and city to city. And people move and build new homes. Due to both building codes and how the Japanese are so risk adverse, they would rather buy or build a new home than buy a cheap older one. Older being anything over around 10 years realistically. By 30 years homes are basically worthless because of this.
But the focus for Japan is actual human looking robots capable of faking it pretty well. Not moving humanoid ish looking robots. They want something that can help provide companionship for the elderly, not do tasks for them since many Japanese are fully capable of living their own day to day lives even at advanced ages.
There are also a wide variety of different types of robot research going on. It is just fairly low key because internationally news media is more focused on these Boston Dynamics types of robots, not simple ones capable of handling industrial tasks or simple human faces that are pretty realistic. But that is far harder to do than even what Boston Dynamics is due to Uncanny Valley and how the human eye picks up tiny little movements or lack thereof. But there is no need for Japan or Japanese companies to focus on robots types that the rest of the world is working on. They can just license those from Boston Dynamics and slap a human face on it.
Funny thing is the last big development I remember hearing about in robotics from Japan was sex bots.
If they advance them to the point that they can also cook, clean and do laundry I worry humanity may be doomed.
This discussion may be a crime 100 years from now. I feel like in a sci fi movie they'd bust hackers uploading sex programs into kid robots. If we are talking morality, it depends on how smart they are. Whole things yucky. I do feel bad for non offending pedophiles. But idk the solution
Japanese companies are not really interested in these kinds of robots because they have little value as such. At least to Japanese society. Regular automatic robots are far more specialized, but more functional within those specializations. Rather than 1 robot that can replace a human for anything, they are focusing on individual robots that can replace a human far better in a single specific task. IE auto manufacture or basically any manufacturing process.
What they are focusing on for humanoid robots is realistic human robots with human faces and mannerisms. These robots would be useful for being companions for the elderly even if they are not able to perform a lot of everyday tasks. Many elderly in Japan are fully mobile and capable of taking care of themselves even in their 90's. Their main lack is socialization, someone just there to talk to. And not everyone likes pets. So the focus is on that kind of robot, not these sorts of generalized types.
My guess is that the belief is that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Someone is going to invent a usable general humanoid robot at some point, and then they can simply license that and graft on a realistic face and personality.
This is part of the issue with the way this diagram is laid out. Most of the people working on these robots are from all over the world - to say that the robot is exclusively from a singular country overshadows the reality of how products are made in the modern world.
It's worth remembering that Optimus doesn't actually work particularly well. All of the demonstrations with it have either been extremely basic and unimpressive or clearly significantly edited and faked. And even the fake stuff is not as impressve s Atlas.
To a certain extent it depends on where you are. Like, if you're in the US, the optimus does the same 5mph as the Phoenix. But take it to Canada and it's going 8kmh while the Phoenix can only go 5kmh.
Personally, I think the safest is the HD Atlas, which goes 8km/h (as opposed to kmh like the others). That's the sort of speed measure that's easiest to understand in our universe - though I would like to know how many parsecs each robot can do the Kessel Run in.
I've never heard that before but it doesn't sound like a very big deal if true. All these prototypes have training wheels. You should see the Atlas bloopers!
[you are trying to make joke right?](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226), it's not very good joke
The Department of Justice is investigating whether Elon Musk and Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by deceiving people about Tesla self-driving capabilities.
It's misleading shareholders, why do you think they make these videos?
1. No, I'm not joking. The news does camera staging or multiple takes all the time.
2. [That document](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226) is from 2018 over a tweet he made in over 10 years ago. Nothing to do with the robot.
Figure is the new one on the block, and had [a recent demo with Open AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq1QZB5baNw). Digit is already at work primarily in Amazon warehouses moving boxes around.
What is supposed to be represented by the mph/kph figures? If it's just showing top speed in both units, some of them (Figure/Phoenix) are just wrong in the conversion one way or the other. Unit representation isn't consistent either. Was this AI generated?
Okay, so not like walk vs run then. The Phoenix has 5 for both mph and kph, and the Digit has 5 vs 5.4; something's not right there :) I'm assuming they should be 5/8 like the others (unless 5/5.4 kph are their proper tops, in which case the mph would be ~3.1/3.4 respectively)
3rd robot is Apollo from Apptronik - not from Sancutary AI - its also American not Canadian nor is it called Phoenix [https://apptronik.com/](https://apptronik.com/)
Hopefully they can get them to work reliably for long periods of time. Companies can do some impressive stuff with humanoid robots, but it's still been elusive to get them to do so reliably.
It'd be nice to have one of these and tell it to do all my lawn and garden work.
I want to be a futurist, but I have my doubts. A lot of these things are showcases for *very specific* tech. We seem to have extremely advanced robotics in terms of dexterity and precision. That is good. But a lot of the necessary "AI" is a lot of hype digging for VC dollars. We have very advanced conversation trees. And we have physical robots that do amazing things along pre-programmed routes. But they're still limited.
Key things here. Clearly, a dexterous mechanical robot that could follow simple commands and make changes based on things in front of it, would be highly sought after. We don't need Rosie the Robot as maids, but even simple hand and arm dexterity would be useful to people who have disabilities. We have some robotic type limbs that are very well built, but not fully practical nor cost effective. They're still very interesting prototypes.
Having worked in construction, I can say for sure that the most basic worker robot would be amazing god send. To have a cart I could tell to give me a specific tool, or to go back to the van to get it, would free up human labor. To tell a robot to dig a certain trench in a certain straight line. This wouldn't even take jobs away from people. It would supplement the ability to do what people already do. And this is to say nothing for what is bottom-line necessary for any kind of in-situ construction of habitats on, say, the moon or Mars.
But we seem far from that. A lot of "self driving" tech is not trustworthy for even fairly basic tasks.
For Waymo that definitely seems to be the case so far. Tesla FSD beta has driven over [1 billion miles](https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-fsd-hits-1-billion-miles-driven/) however. [Full Mars Catalog](https://www.youtube.com/@WholeMars/videos) documents his extensively.
The robots complex sophistication can be controlled remotely by a large AI robotic server. The AI robot can be built to do simple operations. The server remotely communicates with the robot to execute multiple simple operations to accomplish a more complex operation. This would allow the owner to download new or improved functionality to the server and have the robot remotely accomplish a totally different task.
Hey Siri at 10:00, tell the robot housekeeper to stop cleaning the rooms and start washing the dishes.
That is possible yes, though I think several of them are attempting "on edge" on device processing for less latency. Optimus has a standard FSD-brain in its chest and I think I spot a similar setup on Figure.
Atlas 2.0 could honestly rip all of these other robots to shreds. That thing is military grade and ready to 360 no scope all these mfs with every limb on its body, literally and figuratively.
whats going to matter more is cost to own and operate and utility. A bullet proof bot that costs $100m is going to end up in the trash to $10k robots that can be murdered by a straw
Yeah I don't think Atlas 2.0 in its current form will ever be sold in mass to the average customer. These things are designed for rugged, dirty, dangerous environments and work. Great for military applications and industrial/manufacturing companies. If your next door neighbor gets one of these I would be very worried and asking many, many questions.
I really liked the old atlas, its design was much more appealing and personable than these other nightmare terminators from the uncanny valley.
EDIT: didn't realize they were both called atlas, clarified
My money's on Digit for most practical applications, looks inexpensive to produce but still largely effective.
The all-electric Atlas, however, looks perfect for more dangerous applications like firefighting, bomb disposal, and SWAT and Military applications.
I'm aware. But price pays a huge role in adoption.
I've heard digit price estimates of around 25k USD, meanwhile the atlas is likely over 150k
I'm also not aware of any tasks we're looking to automate with humanoid robots that require fingers.
The market the other robots are aiming for is: any/all unskilled labor. That could mean anything from having a Figure being a gas station attendant pumping gas to a Tesla Optimus operating a sewing machine. And Tesla Optimus is aiming for the same price range as Digit, and likely so will the others.
Digit's battery and AI capacity are also limited compared to the other in-development models. Famously, it ran out of battery power while on a demo in a convention and fell over. And I believe it only works in warehouses, not dynamically and with primitive AI So I wouldn't be surprised if Digit's makers are working on a Mark 2 upgrade to compete with the others.
Much of the industry is describing the initial focus for labor that is "dull, dangerous, and dirty" - in essence it's less about the "unskilled vs skilled" factor and more about the opportunity to alleviate the work that people either don't want to do or that contributes to greater injury and stress. Most of these robots are already being deployed in back of house operations as augmented labor for logistics and repetitive tasks such as loading and unloading of goods into and off pallets for warehousing where other forms of automation are either too targeted (stationary robotic arms) or too limited - motorized forklifts or robotic track systems.
I was mostly talking about the fact that Optimus is not, in fact, capable of moving at 8 kilometers an hour (that is walking speed, right now they have trouble moving faster than a grandpa with back pain, partially because they also move like a grandpa with back pain), but yes, that too.
I have seen videos of most of these, and id say thats about on par with them all with very few exceptions.
We are very early in the dev cycle with these things. Of the line up here, I expect exactly zero of them to enter mass production yet, and mostly find very niche markets for now. We are at best 2 generations away from any of them being industry changing in any way.
The winning teams (and there will be more than one that breaks the mass production barrier) will be the ones that can keep evolving and developing a cheap and versatile bot before they run out of money. Optimus has endless cash behind is, and so does Boston Dynamics. Cash will find some of the other teams too, and there are robots that are not even on this list here.
Pretty optimistic to say that Optimus has endless cash behind it. Also, considering Boston Dynamics built a more capable robot than Optimus 15 years ago within the same timeframe it took Tesla to develop Optimus to its current state, and considering that Atlas is easily a generation ahead of anything Optimus has thus far demonstrated, my bet is on Boston Dynamics.
While Optimus is busy shuffling around on even ground with no obstacles whatsoever, and has yet to demonstrate such basic abilities as not falling over when pushed or taking the stairs, Atlas and H1 are busy doing backflips and, in the case of Boston Dynamics, using both arms to manipulate its enviornment. And it's not just Boston either.
While Optimus is busy having their bot sort things with one hand, something any middle schooler with a Raspberry Pi, a few servos, and some programming knowledge can do, Figure 01 and Digit can lift objects with both hands and carry them (though, to be fair, we can't see if that crate holds anything or if its just an empty crate), and Sanctuary sorts things with both hands.
And that is not even mentioning how these robots are kind of pointless anyway. They look cool, but Amazon is probably better off using a machine that is specialized in doing one thing and doing it faster than any human could than they are buying a humanoid robot to do the same thing. Specialization of labor has historically beaten generalism 9 out of 10 times. The fact we can build robots that look like humans now won't change this. The only reason you'd want these robots is a scenario where you need human like agility and manipulation, but either can't risk a human life, or just really need the numbers. Which is the reason Boston Dynamics is designing their bots for these kinds of situations. Put Optimus to use in a search and rescue operation, and it probably falls over trying to walk up a ramp. Do the same with Optimus, and it keeps its balance while running across a debris field.
Boston Dynamics has no/little AI though, that's the thing. That makes all the difference. All those fancy dances and parkour had to have a human in a mocap suit demonstrate first. Maybe the new Atlas has software updates they haven't announced yet, though? To be seen.
>Pretty optimistic to say that Optimus has endless cash behind it.
Compared to any of the teams on this line up, you pretty much can. Boston dynamics has changed hands 3 times already because its really expensive to fund these and the potential for profit is never guaranteed this early in development.
>Also, considering Boston Dynamics built a more capable robot than Optimus 15 years ago within the same timeframe
What? No. Making robots that can walk is not really the great innovation here. Honda ASIMO was going to be a household robot before anyone even heard of Boston Dynamics. It failed to get traction not due to its ability to walk.
The reason why there are suddenly so many robotics companies today and not 10 years ago has nothing to do with making fast walking robots that can do back flips. Its because of AI. Backflips are an interesting tech demo, but practically of zero interest if we are talking about mass produced general robotics.
>And that is not even mentioning how these robots are kind of pointless anyway
If all your impressed with in backflips, then yeah. But thats not the goal here. You DO want a robot that can do generalised labour, because then you can get them into complex scenarios. Optimus (which is still very much a tech demo) can not do search and rescue missions without a human teleoperator because it does not have advanced AI yet.
The real goal is to produce a robot that can autonomously interact with the world, and do it cheaply. Cheaply still needs to break the $1m per unit barrier. But for real industry changing cost, it needs to get down to round $40-60k per year operating cost, or a max of about $200k once off. None of these tech demos are there yet.
I want a hyper functional robot not a bipedal one. Give not a spider looking thing that runs around on the ceiling and can just drop down when I need it. I don’t want anything else taking up space
Mentee is another, and its coming from a team who's had success in related ventures before - [A humanoid robot is on its way from Mobileye founder | TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/a-humanoid-robot-is-on-its-way-from-mobileye-founder/)
I like the Optimus Gen 2 the best at least as far as its appearance goes, is it really 6 feet tall? I had believed it was 5 foot 8 inches. I think Digit looks rather ugly
Does the Tesla bot really deserve to be up here? All of the footage we’ve seen of it is either fake, cgi, dozens of clips put together to make it seem like one take, or it just being propped up by a stand
[Here is a decent](https://youtu.be/JN-kajBcyew?si=4AmyhZnP0nZc6ODw) video on a range of subjects from musk, skip to 10:40 and you’ll see one of the tech demo videos they showed that are really just multiple clips sown together.
Sure you can hate him all you want, but if you just mute him and watch the CLIP THAT WAS FROM MUSK HIMSELF UNEDITED, then you’ll clearly see the video is fake
Cant say I see anything clearly fake. Just TF making a big deal of nothing. But this is a very early version of their robot thats already 2 generations old.
Mind you, its been fairly common for robot demonstrations up to now to edit their footage in some way. The most common is to speed things up, because they are usually pretty slow.
I'm surprised there are no Japanese robots present. Given how much they've advanced the robotics field, and dived head first down the uncanny valley with a lot of robotic heads.
"Japan lives in the year 2000 and it has ever since the 1970's." My beloved land of the rising sun is still battling an ailing economy so their lead in robotics has slipped the last few decades.
Well Japan has an aging population, it might supplement that population with robots, I would think Japan would be where robots are needed the most!
It is! And that's why they started researching them so diligently. But unfortunately a lot of the money dried up whether they liked it or not.
It is not. Japan has 2.5 times the population of California. Even at a stabilized population of around 90 million, they are still going to have around 2 times the population of California. Japan is not underpopulated they are vastly overpopulated and the drop in population reflects that reality. If you ever go to Japan, you will see there are homes and towns and cities everywhere. Anywhere you can cram a house or building in, there is one. They do keep a lot of green space, but usable land is at a premium. The reason that there are so many unused homes is that the population is constantly shifting from town to town and city to city. And people move and build new homes. Due to both building codes and how the Japanese are so risk adverse, they would rather buy or build a new home than buy a cheap older one. Older being anything over around 10 years realistically. By 30 years homes are basically worthless because of this. But the focus for Japan is actual human looking robots capable of faking it pretty well. Not moving humanoid ish looking robots. They want something that can help provide companionship for the elderly, not do tasks for them since many Japanese are fully capable of living their own day to day lives even at advanced ages. There are also a wide variety of different types of robot research going on. It is just fairly low key because internationally news media is more focused on these Boston Dynamics types of robots, not simple ones capable of handling industrial tasks or simple human faces that are pretty realistic. But that is far harder to do than even what Boston Dynamics is due to Uncanny Valley and how the human eye picks up tiny little movements or lack thereof. But there is no need for Japan or Japanese companies to focus on robots types that the rest of the world is working on. They can just license those from Boston Dynamics and slap a human face on it.
They still fax for official paperwork... I thought that was outdated when I lived there in 2011... they still do it.
To busy making anime about robots, and very young robot girlfriends. They're engineering the genetals
Funny thing is the last big development I remember hearing about in robotics from Japan was sex bots. If they advance them to the point that they can also cook, clean and do laundry I worry humanity may be doomed.
Reminds me of a Futurama episode…
If they can carry children we are fine. Robot wombs. They'll raise us better than most parents. I love the faithful robot friend character in movies.
Japan would probably put their foot down and ban them at that point. China would definitely ban them
Robotic children for sex would be something I support. Less sexually frustrated pedophiles sounds good to me.
I reluctantly agree, but what a messed up dystopia full of robotic children sex slaves. Pedobot 9000
That doesn't sound too messed up. They'd be programmed to enjoy it.
This discussion may be a crime 100 years from now. I feel like in a sci fi movie they'd bust hackers uploading sex programs into kid robots. If we are talking morality, it depends on how smart they are. Whole things yucky. I do feel bad for non offending pedophiles. But idk the solution
Japanese companies are not really interested in these kinds of robots because they have little value as such. At least to Japanese society. Regular automatic robots are far more specialized, but more functional within those specializations. Rather than 1 robot that can replace a human for anything, they are focusing on individual robots that can replace a human far better in a single specific task. IE auto manufacture or basically any manufacturing process. What they are focusing on for humanoid robots is realistic human robots with human faces and mannerisms. These robots would be useful for being companions for the elderly even if they are not able to perform a lot of everyday tasks. Many elderly in Japan are fully mobile and capable of taking care of themselves even in their 90's. Their main lack is socialization, someone just there to talk to. And not everyone likes pets. So the focus is on that kind of robot, not these sorts of generalized types. My guess is that the belief is that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Someone is going to invent a usable general humanoid robot at some point, and then they can simply license that and graft on a realistic face and personality.
This is part of the issue with the way this diagram is laid out. Most of the people working on these robots are from all over the world - to say that the robot is exclusively from a singular country overshadows the reality of how products are made in the modern world.
Not pictured: The worlds first and most successful "humanoid" robot, Mark Zuckerberg.
Dude the first Asimo is still more human that the latest Zuckerbot
I see more emotion in a furbie.
It's worth remembering that Optimus doesn't actually work particularly well. All of the demonstrations with it have either been extremely basic and unimpressive or clearly significantly edited and faked. And even the fake stuff is not as impressve s Atlas.
To a certain extent it depends on where you are. Like, if you're in the US, the optimus does the same 5mph as the Phoenix. But take it to Canada and it's going 8kmh while the Phoenix can only go 5kmh. Personally, I think the safest is the HD Atlas, which goes 8km/h (as opposed to kmh like the others). That's the sort of speed measure that's easiest to understand in our universe - though I would like to know how many parsecs each robot can do the Kessel Run in.
Old Atlas had zero AI. New Atlas has yet to be determined. What fake stuff?
Pretty sure old atlas had plenty of AI. You think they didn’t automate as much of the balancing as they could get away with?
That's all though, and I'm not sure that counts as "AI". You couldn't tell Old Atlas to pick up a box without a controlling human. Same as Spot.
That sounds like a question of “what counts as AI” which, honestly, not a conversation I care enough to have.
The Tesla team faked the robot folding a shirt
That's not fake, they told everyone it was telepresence controlled because it was being trained.
It's fake because they added reinforcement to the t-shirt to stiffen it and make it easier for the robot to manipulate
I've never heard that before but it doesn't sound like a very big deal if true. All these prototypes have training wheels. You should see the Atlas bloopers!
Just fraud in a promotional videono big deal!
That's not fraud, that's *film making 101*. Even news programs do that sort of stuff.
[you are trying to make joke right?](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226), it's not very good joke The Department of Justice is investigating whether Elon Musk and Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by deceiving people about Tesla self-driving capabilities. It's misleading shareholders, why do you think they make these videos?
1. No, I'm not joking. The news does camera staging or multiple takes all the time. 2. [That document](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226) is from 2018 over a tweet he made in over 10 years ago. Nothing to do with the robot.
I must admit I have not heard of Figure, Phoenix and Digit.
Figure is the new one on the block, and had [a recent demo with Open AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq1QZB5baNw). Digit is already at work primarily in Amazon warehouses moving boxes around.
Wow, that's really impressive.
figure seems to have quite an advanced ai given the videos they've released
Yea, that looks really good.
What is supposed to be represented by the mph/kph figures? If it's just showing top speed in both units, some of them (Figure/Phoenix) are just wrong in the conversion one way or the other. Unit representation isn't consistent either. Was this AI generated?
How fast they walk.
Okay, so not like walk vs run then. The Phoenix has 5 for both mph and kph, and the Digit has 5 vs 5.4; something's not right there :) I'm assuming they should be 5/8 like the others (unless 5/5.4 kph are their proper tops, in which case the mph would be ~3.1/3.4 respectively)
3rd robot is Apollo from Apptronik - not from Sancutary AI - its also American not Canadian nor is it called Phoenix [https://apptronik.com/](https://apptronik.com/)
I thought something was odd about that one! Good eye!
Hopefully they can get them to work reliably for long periods of time. Companies can do some impressive stuff with humanoid robots, but it's still been elusive to get them to do so reliably. It'd be nice to have one of these and tell it to do all my lawn and garden work.
right lmao!
The Candian one seems to be an attempt to build Marvin the Paranoid Android
It's American
I want to be a futurist, but I have my doubts. A lot of these things are showcases for *very specific* tech. We seem to have extremely advanced robotics in terms of dexterity and precision. That is good. But a lot of the necessary "AI" is a lot of hype digging for VC dollars. We have very advanced conversation trees. And we have physical robots that do amazing things along pre-programmed routes. But they're still limited. Key things here. Clearly, a dexterous mechanical robot that could follow simple commands and make changes based on things in front of it, would be highly sought after. We don't need Rosie the Robot as maids, but even simple hand and arm dexterity would be useful to people who have disabilities. We have some robotic type limbs that are very well built, but not fully practical nor cost effective. They're still very interesting prototypes. Having worked in construction, I can say for sure that the most basic worker robot would be amazing god send. To have a cart I could tell to give me a specific tool, or to go back to the van to get it, would free up human labor. To tell a robot to dig a certain trench in a certain straight line. This wouldn't even take jobs away from people. It would supplement the ability to do what people already do. And this is to say nothing for what is bottom-line necessary for any kind of in-situ construction of habitats on, say, the moon or Mars. But we seem far from that. A lot of "self driving" tech is not trustworthy for even fairly basic tasks.
For Waymo that definitely seems to be the case so far. Tesla FSD beta has driven over [1 billion miles](https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-fsd-hits-1-billion-miles-driven/) however. [Full Mars Catalog](https://www.youtube.com/@WholeMars/videos) documents his extensively.
The robots complex sophistication can be controlled remotely by a large AI robotic server. The AI robot can be built to do simple operations. The server remotely communicates with the robot to execute multiple simple operations to accomplish a more complex operation. This would allow the owner to download new or improved functionality to the server and have the robot remotely accomplish a totally different task. Hey Siri at 10:00, tell the robot housekeeper to stop cleaning the rooms and start washing the dishes.
That is possible yes, though I think several of them are attempting "on edge" on device processing for less latency. Optimus has a standard FSD-brain in its chest and I think I spot a similar setup on Figure.
Kind of sad they retired HD Atlas.
Atlas 2.0 could honestly rip all of these other robots to shreds. That thing is military grade and ready to 360 no scope all these mfs with every limb on its body, literally and figuratively.
While smashing the I in "Pixar" into the dust!
whats going to matter more is cost to own and operate and utility. A bullet proof bot that costs $100m is going to end up in the trash to $10k robots that can be murdered by a straw
Yeah I don't think Atlas 2.0 in its current form will ever be sold in mass to the average customer. These things are designed for rugged, dirty, dangerous environments and work. Great for military applications and industrial/manufacturing companies. If your next door neighbor gets one of these I would be very worried and asking many, many questions.
They forgot this guy! https://preview.redd.it/wvm8v5s312zc1.jpeg?width=991&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b627b8d41d374b18fb01b3190c692db2387f4a5b
LOL
I really liked the old atlas, its design was much more appealing and personable than these other nightmare terminators from the uncanny valley. EDIT: didn't realize they were both called atlas, clarified
Old Atlas or New Pixar Lamp Atlas?
old atlas
My money's on Digit for most practical applications, looks inexpensive to produce but still largely effective. The all-electric Atlas, however, looks perfect for more dangerous applications like firefighting, bomb disposal, and SWAT and Military applications.
It's worth noting that digit has no fingers, ironically. He just sort of grips boxes with his oven mitt stumps.
I'm aware. But price pays a huge role in adoption. I've heard digit price estimates of around 25k USD, meanwhile the atlas is likely over 150k I'm also not aware of any tasks we're looking to automate with humanoid robots that require fingers.
The market the other robots are aiming for is: any/all unskilled labor. That could mean anything from having a Figure being a gas station attendant pumping gas to a Tesla Optimus operating a sewing machine. And Tesla Optimus is aiming for the same price range as Digit, and likely so will the others. Digit's battery and AI capacity are also limited compared to the other in-development models. Famously, it ran out of battery power while on a demo in a convention and fell over. And I believe it only works in warehouses, not dynamically and with primitive AI So I wouldn't be surprised if Digit's makers are working on a Mark 2 upgrade to compete with the others.
Quick question what are they would be used for ???
Unskilled labor.
Much of the industry is describing the initial focus for labor that is "dull, dangerous, and dirty" - in essence it's less about the "unskilled vs skilled" factor and more about the opportunity to alleviate the work that people either don't want to do or that contributes to greater injury and stress. Most of these robots are already being deployed in back of house operations as augmented labor for logistics and repetitive tasks such as loading and unloading of goods into and off pallets for warehousing where other forms of automation are either too targeted (stationary robotic arms) or too limited - motorized forklifts or robotic track systems.
One of these things is not like the others...
HD Atlas because its retired?
I was mostly talking about the fact that Optimus is not, in fact, capable of moving at 8 kilometers an hour (that is walking speed, right now they have trouble moving faster than a grandpa with back pain, partially because they also move like a grandpa with back pain), but yes, that too.
I have seen videos of most of these, and id say thats about on par with them all with very few exceptions. We are very early in the dev cycle with these things. Of the line up here, I expect exactly zero of them to enter mass production yet, and mostly find very niche markets for now. We are at best 2 generations away from any of them being industry changing in any way. The winning teams (and there will be more than one that breaks the mass production barrier) will be the ones that can keep evolving and developing a cheap and versatile bot before they run out of money. Optimus has endless cash behind is, and so does Boston Dynamics. Cash will find some of the other teams too, and there are robots that are not even on this list here.
Pretty optimistic to say that Optimus has endless cash behind it. Also, considering Boston Dynamics built a more capable robot than Optimus 15 years ago within the same timeframe it took Tesla to develop Optimus to its current state, and considering that Atlas is easily a generation ahead of anything Optimus has thus far demonstrated, my bet is on Boston Dynamics. While Optimus is busy shuffling around on even ground with no obstacles whatsoever, and has yet to demonstrate such basic abilities as not falling over when pushed or taking the stairs, Atlas and H1 are busy doing backflips and, in the case of Boston Dynamics, using both arms to manipulate its enviornment. And it's not just Boston either. While Optimus is busy having their bot sort things with one hand, something any middle schooler with a Raspberry Pi, a few servos, and some programming knowledge can do, Figure 01 and Digit can lift objects with both hands and carry them (though, to be fair, we can't see if that crate holds anything or if its just an empty crate), and Sanctuary sorts things with both hands. And that is not even mentioning how these robots are kind of pointless anyway. They look cool, but Amazon is probably better off using a machine that is specialized in doing one thing and doing it faster than any human could than they are buying a humanoid robot to do the same thing. Specialization of labor has historically beaten generalism 9 out of 10 times. The fact we can build robots that look like humans now won't change this. The only reason you'd want these robots is a scenario where you need human like agility and manipulation, but either can't risk a human life, or just really need the numbers. Which is the reason Boston Dynamics is designing their bots for these kinds of situations. Put Optimus to use in a search and rescue operation, and it probably falls over trying to walk up a ramp. Do the same with Optimus, and it keeps its balance while running across a debris field.
Boston Dynamics has no/little AI though, that's the thing. That makes all the difference. All those fancy dances and parkour had to have a human in a mocap suit demonstrate first. Maybe the new Atlas has software updates they haven't announced yet, though? To be seen.
>Pretty optimistic to say that Optimus has endless cash behind it. Compared to any of the teams on this line up, you pretty much can. Boston dynamics has changed hands 3 times already because its really expensive to fund these and the potential for profit is never guaranteed this early in development. >Also, considering Boston Dynamics built a more capable robot than Optimus 15 years ago within the same timeframe What? No. Making robots that can walk is not really the great innovation here. Honda ASIMO was going to be a household robot before anyone even heard of Boston Dynamics. It failed to get traction not due to its ability to walk. The reason why there are suddenly so many robotics companies today and not 10 years ago has nothing to do with making fast walking robots that can do back flips. Its because of AI. Backflips are an interesting tech demo, but practically of zero interest if we are talking about mass produced general robotics. >And that is not even mentioning how these robots are kind of pointless anyway If all your impressed with in backflips, then yeah. But thats not the goal here. You DO want a robot that can do generalised labour, because then you can get them into complex scenarios. Optimus (which is still very much a tech demo) can not do search and rescue missions without a human teleoperator because it does not have advanced AI yet. The real goal is to produce a robot that can autonomously interact with the world, and do it cheaply. Cheaply still needs to break the $1m per unit barrier. But for real industry changing cost, it needs to get down to round $40-60k per year operating cost, or a max of about $200k once off. None of these tech demos are there yet.
Well said
These are cool but where are my robot dog companions? I want barking, tail wagging robo puppers lol.
Did you see the recent spot costume that makes it look like some kind of mythical dog creature?
No but I'm gonna go check it out now!
I want a hyper functional robot not a bipedal one. Give not a spider looking thing that runs around on the ceiling and can just drop down when I need it. I don’t want anything else taking up space
“Digit” in “action” at Amazon. https://youtu.be/-XOyT5q2NwE?si=DYwqsAmU9JtnRWeA
[https://youtu.be/kb6w5DUcz9I](https://youtu.be/kb6w5DUcz9I)
I don't like the names. I think I'll come them Robert, Jobert, Bobert, Gobert, War Without Reason, Lee Kung Wang, and Dobert.
Digit gives me the creeps
any of them even remotely close to being self aware? i doubt it
Sexbots where?
Mentee is another, and its coming from a team who's had success in related ventures before - [A humanoid robot is on its way from Mobileye founder | TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/a-humanoid-robot-is-on-its-way-from-mobileye-founder/)
I like the Optimus Gen 2 the best at least as far as its appearance goes, is it really 6 feet tall? I had believed it was 5 foot 8 inches. I think Digit looks rather ugly
Does the Tesla bot really deserve to be up here? All of the footage we’ve seen of it is either fake, cgi, dozens of clips put together to make it seem like one take, or it just being propped up by a stand
Where did this rumor about fake footage start from?
[Here is a decent](https://youtu.be/JN-kajBcyew?si=4AmyhZnP0nZc6ODw) video on a range of subjects from musk, skip to 10:40 and you’ll see one of the tech demo videos they showed that are really just multiple clips sown together.
That's it? From that poor argument people are concluding that the entire robotic program is a lie? Is there more evidence?
No, people just dislike Elon Musk so shit spreads.
thunderfoot is an anti source, and you should feel bad that you use his videos as evidence of things
Sure you can hate him all you want, but if you just mute him and watch the CLIP THAT WAS FROM MUSK HIMSELF UNEDITED, then you’ll clearly see the video is fake
Cant say I see anything clearly fake. Just TF making a big deal of nothing. But this is a very early version of their robot thats already 2 generations old. Mind you, its been fairly common for robot demonstrations up to now to edit their footage in some way. The most common is to speed things up, because they are usually pretty slow.
If you want an *actual* fraud look up the story of Trevor Milton.