The Robot I Didn't Expect to Build

>It needed to achieve the lifting limits recommended under the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health guidelines for human workers, which include repeatedly lifting 23-kg bins and reaching shelves 1.75 meters high. Digit is designed to perform tasks like these for 20 hours a day—something no human can do.

I think that rather underestimates what people can and have done (cue John Henry story).

I worked in an Amazon warehouse for two different stints:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EDC/comments/dmnuts/53mamazon_fulfi...

and it was rather like a gym membership which I couldn't skip out on (glances at exercise equipment cluttering living space) and during which I could ponder life choices and consequences while wishing there was a soundtrack/music.

That said, this sort of thing, LLMs/AIs and data centers, and so forth feel like a perfect storm leading up to singularity (as envisioned by some optimistic science fiction authors) or something far worse, cue Marshall Brain's novella "Manna":

https://karmak.org/archive/2003/12/manna/manna1.htm

I once again wonder why companies are building bipedal robots. Is it just for show?

If you want to build a general purpose industrial robot, surely a wheeled base with arms/hands is a better starting point. Cheaper, much easier to increase payload weight, and no risk of having it fall over onto someone.

If you want to build something which can navigate general terrain, then surely a robot dog is a better solution.

90% of use cases don't need both, and once you've solved building a general purpose industrial robot I promise you won't have trouble finding funding to add legs to it.

This is exactly why I didn't want to work for Agile when I was invited. This stuff is going to get crushed in the market by cheap AGVs and good systems integration.

It was very sad to watch the ambitions of excited robotics researchers turn towards making what are essentially digital slaves. I am not saying that manufacturing or logistics couldn't, or even shouldn't be automated. But the true factories and distribution centers of the future will have to fundamentally rethink what productivity and coordinated work looks like, including having a greater imagination about work and employment.

Mimicking the human form inelegantly is not going to cut it, let alone reduce labor costs. I am all for the research, but the dream of replacing bin pickers with humanoid robots is cynical and hopeless.

> When Digit detects an approaching human, the robot will lower itself to the floor and cut power to its motors. Agility believes this is the only near-term approach to verifiably reduce risk when the robot is working near people.

I did not intend for a picture of a robot in a factory environment to make me go awwww :[

Does it even need legs? For most of these factory use cases would it not be more efficient/cheaper to have a version that has wheels to get around?

This robot looks a lot more "unnatural" compared to the Chinese robots currently being used in everything from gymnastics to fighting matches. Many people I showed videos of those thought they made with A.I. To be honest I wasn't completely sure myself.

Also, I wonder if (as in the case of XGO) it isn't easier to just automate the moving of crates onto the conveyor belt instead of using a robot picking them up and hauling them there.

> filling the need for labor in jobs that are too physically stressful or too dull for humans to want to do

That's a disturbing sentence. Most jobs are "dull". Peolpe work not to fill their otherwise empty existence, but in order to earn money. Dullness could be solved by making the tasks less dull, or empowering employees (even if the term has been abused).

The sentence is also dishonest. Businesses want robots to save costs and increase profits, not to make their employees happier.

Can anyone explain that if we had this more than 10 years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ2bqz3HPJE

we are still struggling with making a robot walk?

Very beautifully written.

TIL that I should not confuse „ Agility Robotics“ and „Agile Robots“.

Both build humanoids, but apart from that the companies are quite different.

Are these kind of robots even economically viable? I've seen them doing work that would generally pay like $3/h. And human after a week is significantly faster.

Interesting that he pivoted to something more akin to a human in the later versions. And I feel akin is an interesting word here. Kin selection is well-studied aspect of how genes work at population scale; and I wonder if by just having human-like traits like in the direction your knees bend, helps make robots more agreeable to us. And the UX of full submission as a human approaches, however the optics, seems to be a pretty strong way to indicate to the human user of a non-threatening environment in their control. I should be able to clearly see if something isn't as it should be if the humanoid fails to do this upon approach and take precautions.