alt Hacker NewsThe sad part though: What even has Honda done with their humanoid robotics research? I remember being starry-eyed, excited as a kid to see ASIMO and all the amazing things it was doing. Past a couple hardware revisions they basically just let the thing rot out to die and it hurts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X23jNzL3wuE
This commercial still holds a lot of spirit and heart to it. I really wish we could tap progress on the shoulder and ask for more forwards again...
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They've done nothing. Because there was nothing to do, back then.
Humanoid robotics wasn't a hardware problem back then, and isn't a hardware problem today. It was, and is, an AI problem at its core. You can make a humanoid robot, but you can't make it do useful things.
This is what's changing today. AI tech is actually advancing enough that "useful humanoid robots" might be within reach.
All those car companies use A LOT of robotics, automation, and simulation to build cars. They just don't seek for an autonomous sentient humanoids as means to it.
They all have their own predecessors to things like NVIDIA Isaac used for things like worker toolpath planning or for absorbing worker height variances. They just don't use artificial robots with those systems, but use human laborers.
Anyone with even workshop level knowledge or experience in robotics knows we are minimum one whole decade away from humanoids building cars, let alone economically, and there's not going to be much first mover dominance advantages carrying over from doing pre-viability humanoids.
And so they just, keep raking in money from robotics assisted and hand built hybrid cars. Some more some less.