I’m curious how good current robots are compared to where they’d need to be to automate the biggest bottlenecks in further robot production. You say we start from 10,000/year, but is it plausible that all current robots are too clumsy/incapable for many key bottleneck tasks, and that getting to 10,000 sufficiently good robots produced per year might be a long path—e.g. it would take a decade+ for humans? Or are current robots close to sufficient with good enough software?
I also imagine that even taking current robot production processes, the gap between a WW2-era car factory and a WW2-era combat airplane factory might be much smaller than the gap between a car factory and a modern frontier robotics factory, I imagine they are a big step up in complexity.
My impression is that software has been the bottleneck here. Building a hand as dextrous as the human hand is difficult but doable (and has probably already been done, though only in very expensive prototypes); having the software to actually use that hand intelligently and deftly as a human would has not yet been done. But I’m not an expert. Power supply is different—humans can work all day on a few Big Macs, whereas robots will need to be charged, possibly charged frequently or even plugged in constantly. But that doesn’t seem like a significant obstacle.
Re: WW2 vs. modern: yeah idk. I don’t think the modern gap between cars and humanoid robots is that big. Tesla is making Optimus after all. Batteries, electronics, chips, electric motors, sensors… seems like the basic components are the same. And seems like the necessary tolerances are pretty similar; it’s not like you need a clean room to make one but not the other, and it’s not like you need hyperstrong-hyperlight exotic materials for one but not the other. In fact I can think of one very important, very expensive piece of equipment (the gigapress) that you need for cars but not for humanoid robots.
All of the above is for ‘minimum viable humanoid robots’ e.g. robots that can replace factory and construction workers. They might need to be plugged in to the wall often, they might wear out after a year, they might need to do some kinds of manipulations 2x slower due to having fatter fingers or something. But they don’t need to e.g. be capable of hiking for 48 hours in the wilderness and fording rivers all on the energy provided by a Big Mac. Nor do they need to be as strong-yet-lightweight as a human.
Individual humans can make pretty cool mechanical hands — see here. That strongly suggests that dexterous robot hands can make dexterous robot hands, enabling exponential growth even without spinning up new heavy machinery and production lines, I figure.
In the teleoperated robots category (which is what we should be talking about if we’re assuming away algorithm challenges!), Ugo might or might not be vaporware but they mention a price point below $10/day. There’s also the much more hardcore Sarcos Guardian XT (possibly discontinued??). Pricing is not very transparent, but I found a site that said you lease it for $5K/month, which isn’t bad considering how low the volumes are.
Here’s a nice video of a teleoperated robot vacuuming, making coffee, cleaning a table, emptying the dishwasher, washing & drying & folding & hanging laundry, making a bed, etc. They also have a video where it cooks a meal. Pretty impressive! It’s surprising how much you can do without sensitive fingers!
Their website lists a bill of materials for the teleoperated robot of ≈$30K, or ≈$20K if hypothetically there were an AGI teleoperating it (because you wouldn’t need the teleoperation UI parts, or on-board laptop). It’s a one-off made by students.
+1, and also you might be able to get away with being clumsy and slow in many cases as long as the software is smart enough to figure out a way to do the thing eventually.
I’m curious how good current robots are compared to where they’d need to be to automate the biggest bottlenecks in further robot production. You say we start from 10,000/year, but is it plausible that all current robots are too clumsy/incapable for many key bottleneck tasks, and that getting to 10,000 sufficiently good robots produced per year might be a long path—e.g. it would take a decade+ for humans? Or are current robots close to sufficient with good enough software?
I also imagine that even taking current robot production processes, the gap between a WW2-era car factory and a WW2-era combat airplane factory might be much smaller than the gap between a car factory and a modern frontier robotics factory, I imagine they are a big step up in complexity.
My impression is that software has been the bottleneck here. Building a hand as dextrous as the human hand is difficult but doable (and has probably already been done, though only in very expensive prototypes); having the software to actually use that hand intelligently and deftly as a human would has not yet been done. But I’m not an expert. Power supply is different—humans can work all day on a few Big Macs, whereas robots will need to be charged, possibly charged frequently or even plugged in constantly. But that doesn’t seem like a significant obstacle.
Re: WW2 vs. modern: yeah idk. I don’t think the modern gap between cars and humanoid robots is that big. Tesla is making Optimus after all. Batteries, electronics, chips, electric motors, sensors… seems like the basic components are the same. And seems like the necessary tolerances are pretty similar; it’s not like you need a clean room to make one but not the other, and it’s not like you need hyperstrong-hyperlight exotic materials for one but not the other. In fact I can think of one very important, very expensive piece of equipment (the gigapress) that you need for cars but not for humanoid robots.
All of the above is for ‘minimum viable humanoid robots’ e.g. robots that can replace factory and construction workers. They might need to be plugged in to the wall often, they might wear out after a year, they might need to do some kinds of manipulations 2x slower due to having fatter fingers or something. But they don’t need to e.g. be capable of hiking for 48 hours in the wilderness and fording rivers all on the energy provided by a Big Mac. Nor do they need to be as strong-yet-lightweight as a human.
Individual humans can make pretty cool mechanical hands — see here. That strongly suggests that dexterous robot hands can make dexterous robot hands, enabling exponential growth even without spinning up new heavy machinery and production lines, I figure.
In the teleoperated robots category (which is what we should be talking about if we’re assuming away algorithm challenges!), Ugo might or might not be vaporware but they mention a price point below $10/day. There’s also the much more hardcore Sarcos Guardian XT (possibly discontinued??). Pricing is not very transparent, but I found a site that said you lease it for $5K/month, which isn’t bad considering how low the volumes are.
Here’s a nice video of a teleoperated robot vacuuming, making coffee, cleaning a table, emptying the dishwasher, washing & drying & folding & hanging laundry, making a bed, etc. They also have a video where it cooks a meal. Pretty impressive! It’s surprising how much you can do without sensitive fingers!
Their website lists a bill of materials for the teleoperated robot of ≈$30K, or ≈$20K if hypothetically there were an AGI teleoperating it (because you wouldn’t need the teleoperation UI parts, or on-board laptop). It’s a one-off made by students.
+1, and also you might be able to get away with being clumsy and slow in many cases as long as the software is smart enough to figure out a way to do the thing eventually.