alt Hacker NewsThe comments here are focusing on the "awkward transition" from dancing to static, but that's the most honest part of the demo.
We’ve been spoiled by 10 years of highly choreographed, multi-take Boston Dynamics sizzle reels. What we just saw was the transition from R&D Showpiece to Factory Tool.
The "awkwardness" is what actual deployment looks like.
It’s electric (no hydraulic leaks).
It has 56 DoF (redundancy for complex assembly).
It’s being deployed in Georgia now, not in "3 months maybe."
Tesla is shipping Optimus Sub-Primes. Hyundai is shipping a boring, reliable, high-torque worker. I’ll take the boring static model that actually has a spec sheet over another backflip video any day.
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This is exactly what I've been waiting for since Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics. Super exciting news.
I also wish Tesla and Figure all the best, of course. More competition in this space will ultimately benefit all of us.
I didn't find it boring. You didn't think how it could Exocist spin it's head 360 degrees and unpack itself like a contortionist cool?
> Tesla is shipping Optimus Sub-Primes. Hyundai is shipping a boring, reliable, high-torque worker. I’ll take the boring static model that actually has a spec sheet over another backflip video any day.
We don't actually know how boring or reliable it is.
But the key here is really the mind. Atlas looks strictly worse for a given task than any other kind of robot. Its only advantage is the touted lower training costs. It's very unclear how that really measures up. You can see a robot do cool stuff on stage and imagine it must be great, but the only thing that really matters for manufacturing is whether they can lower the training cost for new tasks to much less than what other static non-humanoid robot manufacturers make.
There it seems dubious. They only seem to talk about and demonstrate one task, engine part sequencing. It appears to be just a pick and place task. It's not obvious why existing robots can't do it well. They make general claims about how it's often not worth automating a task, because it changes too quickly or it costs too much to program a robot. Sure. But that's a statement about the quality of AI not the form of the robot.
Existing pick place machines work great and can handle messy real world noise like objects being in random positions and places. They are much, much faster than a humanoid robot will be, and much cheaper. So what's Atlas' advantage on the factory floor?
https://www.fanucamerica.com/solutions/applications/picking-...