Futurology

2515 readers

147 users here now

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1X will test humanoid robots in 'a few hundred' homes in 2025 | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] MajorHavoc 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

While Neo Gamma uses AI to walk and balance, the robot is not fully capable of autonomous movements today. To make in-home tests possible, Børnich says 1X is “bootstrapping the process” by relying on teleoperators — humans in remote locations that can view Neo Gamma’s cameras and sensors in real time, and take control of its limbs.

So yhis is a non-functional product.

Being able to walk autonomously is normally done with a lot of difficult math, which it sounds like they don't have the talent on staff to code.

Be sure to get your venture capital dollars in soon, because that's all this is here for.

Also, it's comforting to know that creepy robot face will initially be remote controlled by a rotating series of low paid total strangers. And by initially, we mean always (as in the case of Amazon checkout.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I mean, it's more than just the math. Math can do it on perfectly flat, clear ground in an open area. Trained AI combined carefully with math can do better, but even the most cutting edge walkers have trouble with tangling.

[–] MajorHavoc 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah. Which I'm sure is what they're officially selling. That's fair. Long term, walking robots are likely only going to succeed thanks to learning algorithms.

I find it suspicious that this company is touting their AI enhancement while admitting their product can't be trusted to navigate an apartment alone.

Personally, I would select homes with simple layouts, before conceding to constant monitoring, if I could. But I couldn't do that if my mix of math and AI was outright bad, and it couldn't handle it...

To me, this smells like over-promising and hoping new AI algorithms outpace their promises.

And having a remote operator just looks like a lot like a classic mechanical turk scam.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, that was just a nitpick. Sorry, this looks like a scam otherwise; I should have been clearer about that.

Aside from getting your clients sci-fi rocks off, why would you even go with humanoid legs? Some basic wheel-leg combination that can climb stairs would make way more sense in an indoor context. And that's not even getting into the non-robot maid ways to automatically water plants and vacuum, which are the two cited tasks it can do.