alt Hacker NewsWhy does Hyundai need "general purpose" bots, do they want to create a robot civilization? They don't need a robot to "do everything", they need robots to efficiently make cars. What do you even mean "do everything? Does it need to take the bus home and make love to its robot wife, walk its robot dog around the block? It doesn't need legs, you have drunk the koolaid, snap out of it. AGI isn't around the corner and your fantasy robot world isn't real.
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Perhaps the gap in the discussion is that Hyundai Motor Group is a big chaebol and seemingly is involved in many things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Motor_Group
Considering that, either of two things would be sufficient for them to make general purpose robots:
* It will be one of their numerous business lines and provide substitutable labor for the others, not all of which are in car construction
* Considering they are in things from credit cards to railways to steel, they would like to add a new product line of selling robots to other customers
None of this is outrageously out of line. Various companies start with some business lines and end up with others. This is particularly common in Korea where Samsung wasn't always a semiconductor company. Hyundai themselves were in construction first. Closer to home, Amex was a logistics company. These things happen. Perhaps you are familiar with Softbank which was a PC software publisher and is now an investment company.
I see two different things going on. First, there's some market for humanoid robots, and Hyundai is spending a small amount of its R&D budget exploring the options.
Second, I have to imagine that there are spillover effects for their other robots. Being able to make legs that are nimble is good for the ability to make grabber arms for industrial robots. So even if the humanoid product line goes nowhere, they could end up with better material handlers.