alt Hacker NewsAll my life I've loved robotics, so I was very eager to get things in the house, but my primary problem with humanoid robots is that they're very different from my Roomba-successor Dreame vacuum in a crucial way: they can fall. The Dreame can occupy the same space as my toddler, but the more industrial grade robotics machines cannot. The Unitree Sun Wukong is unbelievably impressive and I could completely imagine a world where it replaces humans in existing dangerous spaces without requiring the spaces themselves retooled. But in my house, perhaps the future will be like what these guys say and I'll have an Eka Claw on my kitchen counter and another by my washing machine, and so on.
In the classic example of old-guy-gets-surprised-by-new-tech, I bet people will find a way around the problem: but the thing has to be powerful to be fast, and if it's powerful it can hurt.
Who can tell. It was just prior to the pandemic when I was showing my wife talktotransformer.com and thinking about how much needs to be solved before it's useful. More fool am I HAHA!
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> in a crucial way: they can fall.
The question is do they fall and can't get back up
The main issue is how heavy duty they are, because they operate on lithium batteries you can't make them too heavy otherwise it burns battery. So these humanoid robots durability will be closely aligned with innovation in lithium battery tech, or having larger and expensive robots with lots of battery.
I think the focus has been on lowering mass so that they can move quickly with low kinetic energy.
Meanwhile the Roomba-successor robots that I've tried still get tangled up on our laptop charger cables and wedged under the coffee table.
I don't see a future with humanoid robots inside the house. We probably will have specialized robots for certain task like the roombas.
You won’t have an eka claw. You will have a humanoid. It’s a no brainer. You will get used to the “danger” just like we got used to the danger involved in driving a car or ceiling fans or propane home heating. Every year you’ll have a handful of injuries/deaths but eventually because of how useful they are no one will care and rightfully so.
All I want is a machine that I can drop ingredients in it and it can give me a delicious meal
And another that I can just drop all my clothes in, and have them washed and ironed for me.
Doesn't have to be a humanoid.