
Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design - mcspecter
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/hello-robots-stretch-mobile-manipulator
======
spyckie2
Things it can't do:

\- go up stairs

\- get up after a fall / reset itself

\- pick up heavy objects

\- precise motion (so no cooking)

\- interact with buttons or touch screens (so laundry might be hard)

The one use case I think it might be worth it is if the robot can take a room
full of toys and return everything back to where it belongs. Kind of like a
one click, reset this room. If it can help me keep organized and clean around
the house that would be a big win. Also, if it can help me detect which
clothes are still wearable and which I should probably wash, that'd be nice.

I'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the
house, even if it involves a lot of customization and setup. Imagine leaving
your groceries next to the fridge and coming back to a perfectly organized
fridge. Or letting your kids play in the play room and then the robot comes in
and puts all the toys back. Or if you just tend to leave stuff out (throw your
clothes on the floor or forget to return stuff), the robot can put it back.

I think that's a legit use case.

~~~
espadrine
> _I 'd gladly pay 5k for a robot that can auto-organize my stuff around the
> house_

The main equation for general-use household robots is: can it beat human
fares?

A good weekly cleaner (4 hours) is about €22/h in Paris, or €4.5k/year.

Let’s say your robot lives 4 years, similar to your computer (which seems
fair, since it is one, and an abused one at that). Since you amortize its
price over 4 years, its initial cost must be below €18.3k ($21k) with human-
quality-parity.

Personally, though, I would bet on dedicated, single-purpose robots, working
together through wireless communication. Simpler to build, less costly, easier
to replace. One small wheeled quadcopter for cleaning surfaces, one wheeled
laundry box to carry it to the washing machine, one arm attached to the
washing machine to put it in, etc.

~~~
leetcrew
a human cleaner isn't really a perfect substitute for a robot. people might
feel uncomfortable with having a human worker in their house for a variety of
reasons. most people I know actually clean their whole house before the
cleaning service shows up. you don't have to feel guilt/embarrassment at the
state of your house when the robot starts working. I could imagine a lot of
people might be willing to pay a premium for this, even if the robot doesn't
do as good of a job.

~~~
Noos
There's something darkly funny about people so embarrassed to have a cleaning
person in their house, that they create a solution that would put most
cleaning people out of a job.

The knowledge workers automate jobs away, leading pundits to say the future
for low-skilled workers is to provide boutique services for the upper class.
The end being that the upper class is too ashamed to actually consume those
services if it means looking at a person...well, that's sort of a delicious
irony, isn't it?

~~~
jamesrcole
I have never hired a cleaner, but I imagine there are also people who are
uncomfortable having strangers in their house and handling their things.

I have also heard about people getting cleaners who initially do a good job,
but whose work quality degrades over time. You wouldn't have that problem with
a robot.

~~~
callalex
Until it gets a million software updates to add “features” that are really
just ploys to slow the device down and encourage you to upgrade ;)

------
gexla
Kids' chores 2000: Take out the trash, 2 minutes.

Kid's chores 2020: Up until 3AM programming the robot to take out the trash.
Purchased the robot two weeks ago. Kid only moves to go to sleep. Trash is
building up. No other chores are getting done. Chores dashboard is flashing
red. Take out trash sprint way overdue.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Calvin and Hobbes already did this plotline
[https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2014/09/01](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2014/09/01)

~~~
piinbinary
"It's only work if someone makes you do it"

how true

------
mleonhard
In 2014, I was at Google and went to an open house event at the Google
robotics lab in SF. The people I met there were nice. I almost applied for a
job there. Then I looked up the person who would have been my boss. He was
scowling in his Google profile photo. His LinkedIn showed him as founder of a
robotics company, with no mention of Google. He obviously wanted to be the CEO
of a robotics company, not a director in Google.

Google acquired many robotics companies in 2013. I believe most of the
acquired companies' leaders had contracts requiring them to stay at Google for
4 years.

Did Google delay the progress of robotic technology by 4 years?

The VC model obviously helps enable human progress in many situations. But
surely not all situations. How can we know when the VC model will be a net
loss for humanity?

I'm glad to see those folks moving on and following their dreams.

~~~
koheripbal
Given the net number of massive companies that emerged from VCs, this is
obviously not true.

~~~
regularfry
It doesn't tell us anything one way or the other. That's survivorship bias
talking.

~~~
koheripbal
Your sample is wrong. We are comparing the number of successful new companies
that came out of VC vs the number of successful new companies that came
without VC.

...and it's easily obvious that almost _all_ of the new large tech companies
emerged from VC.

~~~
regularfry
No, that's what you are doing. What I'm doing is comparing the number of
successful companies that came out _given that the VC system exists_ versus a
situation where it doesn't. We don't know how many potentially successful
companies haven't been started, or got strangled in the crib, because of the
dynamics of the VC ecosystem and the fact that it exists.

Also it's an error of remarkable proportions to assume that "massive company"
is synonymous with "net positive to humanity", _particularly_ in tech.

------
Animats
Nice. Certainly more affordable than the huge Willow Garage machine, although
that could fold laundry. This thing will probably be showing up in robot
research labs. If they sold a reasonable number it could be much cheaper.

The arm is not very rigid. Notice there's a barcode target on the end effector
base (the "wrist") where the camera can see it. So the system can compensate
for some bend. That's in some ways better than building a super-rigid
structure.

I'm surprised there isn't a camera or two out at the end of the arm, for fine
positioning. Cell phone camera parts are so cheap now that's a no-brainer.

------
semi_good
> ex googler

Does this mean we get lots of hype and an inferior product that is eventually
phased out an replaced by an acquisition built by non-google engineers?

~~~
koheripbal
I'm going to just start putting that on all my PR. Ex-Googler. No one is going
to check, and if it biases the opinions of idiots... so be it...

~~~
mav3rick
The sooner you're exposed as a fraud the better. So please definitely use it
:)

~~~
koheripbal
The reality is that unless you're well known - no one cares if you lie about
this stuff.

~~~
mav3rick
Please go ahead and do it.

------
nick0garvey
The idea of it being controlled by a remote person makes me feel like a new
breed of gig-jobs could be around the corner.

Buy a robot, and pay someone remotely to do your housekeeping for you. The
housekeeper could even operate it from their smartphones.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Why remote? There's plenty of people nearby you can hire that can do the job
better, faster, and cheaper.

The only downside is that you've got a real person in your house, but honestly
if that's a hangup then you need to suck it up and just do the work yourself.

~~~
tomp
(1) no "foreigner in my home" cleanliness issue - especially pertinent during
these dimes

(2) no "will the cleaner steal my golden watch / company's data" issue - you
can always just replay the video and see exactly what the operator was doing /
looking at

(3) ability to hire different people remotely - not just cleaners, but maybe
repairmen, doctors, chefs, ...

------
Jack000
I'm always surprised how much these things cost. A 3 axis CNC is basically a 3
degree-of-freedom robot, yet only costs a few hundred dollars. I think we'll
see mobile autonomous robots come into people's homes only after they:

\- fall to low thousands price range

\- do something useful (ie. not just a "social robot")

~~~
imtringued
I think you forgot a zero there. A 3 axis CNC mill usually costs a few
thousands of dollars. There are some crappy CNC engravers and dirt cheap 3D
printers but the rigidity requirements are so low that they are a completely
different class of machine.

~~~
Jack000
There is a pretty big range of prices. The cheap Chinese ones aren't
necessarily well built but they work fine for hobbyist stuff.

Motors, motor controllers + motion system are cheap enough for affordable home
robots I think. The problem is automating actual tasks with the limitations of
the motor controls.

~~~
asd4
Unfortunately the controls problem gets much harder in a non-rigid system. Now
you have to solve autonomy AND overcome poor sensing and manipulation.

------
zwischenzug
That's funny. Just yesterday I wrote a blog post that mentioned telerobotics
[1], as I've become interested in how the global economy has changed since
1990.

The book I was reading that inspired it (which I thoroughly recommend) [2]
talked about how telerobotics was going to help break down the last of three
constraints on globalisation: moving people.

The other two are: cost of movement of goods (1st modern industrial
revolution); and the cost of moving knowledge (the 2nd modern revolution,
since 1990).

One of the things argued is that cleaners and dog walkers (for example) can't
be moved, so a paradox of high skills economies is that certain low-skill jobs
become more valuable.

$20K is getting frighteningly close to start making it more economical to have
someone operate such a cleaning machine remotely from a low cost area than
hiring a local cleaner. Skilled operators could even (with the help of AI?)
operate dozens of these at once. Or they could do the 'easy' stuff, and get a
'proper' local cleaner in once in a while to do the tricky bits or a deep
clean.

Interesting times.

[1] - [https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/13/why-do-we-have-dev-
rels-...](https://zwischenzugs.com/2020/07/13/why-do-we-have-dev-rels-now/)

[2] - [https://www.amazon.com/Great-Convergence-Information-
Technol...](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Convergence-Information-Technology-
Globalization/dp/0674237846)

~~~
zurfer
That's an interesting train of thought, but I hope it is not the future. The
world population is still growing. Labour is still the biggest wealth
distribution system for most people. To eliminate "low-skill" jobs seems like
an inhumane way forward. It will likely increase inequality.

Also to take your example: walking a dog can also be considered a high-skill
job. Sure you don't need a degree, but you need empathy and kindness. Pretty
hard to teach to some people.

------
Traubenfuchs
Alternative title: "Startup offers one armed, remote controlled 20.000$ robot
on wheels with limited autonomous capabilities"

What's the use case besides novelty purposes? Who is supposed to buy this?
Solely quadriplegic people come to mind but even that is a stretch and it's
far too expensive. This is lightyears away from being a useful consumer object
like a vacuum robot. If this is peak robotics, it is very disappointing.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Research; as the article states, it's a research platform. It's up to hackers
and stuff to come up with ways to use this platform.

~~~
thinkingemote
Hackers with a spare 20K?

~~~
macrolime
Research labs

------
PedroBatista
From a customer and person outside the SV Chocolate Factory bubble perspective
this is a $18K Roomba with coat stand.

~~~
michannne
Silicon Valley never ceases to amaze me with how willing they are to overpay
for underperformance with the promise of future overachievement

~~~
mlboss
Silicon Valley is like a casino lot of bets going on but in the end the house
always wins.

------
anthonybennis
The potential here is amazing. It's very early days, but this is the first
Robot I've seen that makes me think home assistant robotics is technically and
financially feasible. It does not need to be consumer priced from day one as
there are many high value scenarios that could benefit from this robot. For
example, home care in Europe costs governments millions every year. Even
remotely controlled by a carer would be an application for today.

~~~
Traster
I would love to be as positive as you. Let's say minimum wage is $15 an hour,
what task do you think this robot could do, and how many hours of labour will
it save? I don't want to be overly negative, but to honest the way it comes
across to me is they've taken a roomba, glued a stick on top of it, zip tied a
hoover onto it, and invented a slow, bad roomba.

------
Qu3tzal
In the demo video, for every basic task it needs some setup by a human (see
how they fixed stuff on the stretchable arm for every action other than
picking-up something) and all the interesting tasks were teleoperated.

I don't care about teleoperation, for a home robot I want automation.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
That reminds me of a book I read as a kid: "My Trip to Alpha I" by Alfred
Slote [0].

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3201020-my-trip-to-
alpha...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3201020-my-trip-to-alpha-i)

------
ragebol
Mobile base with a long stick on top, camera on top of the stick and arm
moving up and down the the stick: I'd say that's a proven design featured in
many custom-built robots for RoboCup@Home.

This has some potential.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I just don't know why it's costing 20K. Maybe because it's not mass-produced?

------
tuna-piano
It's so obvious what is needed to help these take off: an app/skill store with
an easy development environment. Would assume the order goes something like
this:

$20k robot -> robot app/skill store -> Killer apps??? -> More volume ->... $3k
robot -> More apps/skills -> $1k robot -> Everyone has one.

------
mistrial9
Contrarian point of view -- (edit) this clever device overall takes too much
capital and solves no real problem, meanwhile pressing and urgent problems
needing tech, remain unaddressed, year after year.

For centuries, real, physical actions in home life were improved with (mainly
mechanical) devices subject to patent. The industrial revolution provides vast
flows of consumer goods. Finance prospered (mainly) with loans, interest, and
selling inventions like these, on large markets.

Fast forward 100+ years. Daily life is unimaginably easy, due to mass market
goods for cheap, standardized living and generally, massive energy use.
Markets constantly create products designed to be profitable given some game
rules. Yet, there are diminishing returns. Vast, serious, ok yes _urgent_
challenges face individuals and society, right now, and have been known for
several decades.

An analogy might be the stunning success of mathematics in physics over the
last 100+ years, sends multiple other soft sciences scouring math for certain
curves or constants, because it worked for physics. Repeatedly, social science
for example, is subject to physics-like curves and constants, searching for
computable understanding, which is probably not appropriate to the endeavor.

The market is scouring product space, using formulas from long ago, to make
the "killer" product. They say it here in the comments. This is to make money
for people who are already very wealthy, using formulas that include massive
diminishing returns (huge capital, you bet), and basically solve no real
problem. Labor is over-abundant in modern times. People are living in
isolation in Western Cities, and this is an isolation device. A very modest
arrangement with a living person who needs work to earn money in the city,
would solve the "problem" here, and requires no capital.

I suggest these talented, funded inventors look more deeply at the real
ecosystem we are faced with overall, and get off of the gerbil wheel of get-
rich personal consumption devices, because overall, societal survival actually
does depend on tech right now.

~~~
SrslyJosh
> get-rich personal consumption devices

I guess you don't have any disabled friends/family.

~~~
mistrial9
oddly, you are completely incorrect

------
panabee
this is very cool. could anyone help break down the costs?

specifically:

1\. what are the most expensive parts, and how fast is technology advancing
(or costs declining) on those parts?

2\. what scale is necessary for a comparable robot to retail for < $1000?

~~~
sbierwagen
1) Most expensive individual third-party components would be all the servos
together, then the computer, then the realsense, then the lidar. All the
custom body panels and custom cut carbon fiber extrusions are expensive now,
cheap when scaled.

2) 5,000 - 50,000? Right now it's about twice as expensive per kilo as a
Lamborghini Aventador, and they only made ~4,000 of those. It needs to be 18x
cheaper to hit your price target, and that wouldn't be impossible at scale. A
big chunk of the price tag is generous margin (because they don't know how
many they'll sell) and paying for the software, which amortizes well. Those
costs go away at scale, but then you need to spin up tech support and a repair
department. I do tech support for educational robots, and I can tell you it's
not... simple, or profitable.

Getting to that number would be hard. The design of the robot is _wonderfully_
simple, (great! delightful!) but it's too easy to clone: the only complicated
bit is the telescoping arm. Everything else is open source or commodity parts
off the shelf. If they actually do sell a thousand of these, the Chinese will
rush in and eat their margin. I hope either they have patents and some
aggressive lawyers, or friends high up in the Biden administration, because if
the design is successful, their company won't survive international
competition.

~~~
janekm
The telescoping arm is cute, and provides benefits for reaching into
constrained spaces like a washing machine, but in the first clones it would
likely be replaced with the standard "cylindrical" (e.g. industrial robot
style) arm. Hard to imagine that they could have gotten a patent on "robot arm
on Segway". The elevator part though?

~~~
sbierwagen
A conventional arm? Oh no thank you. Heavier, need a motor out on the elbow
joint with another expensive low-backlash gearbox, mast has to be heavier to
support the off-axis torque loads, grasp trajectories have another DOF or two.
Skip that, please. And it's not like conventional arms are even _cheap!_ If
you could buy a decent 1.5 kilo payload arm for less than $5k, you'd have a
whole different argument.

From the way the telescoping arm moves, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it's
driven by a flex-tape linear actuator. Pretty cheap, lets you put the heavy
motor right next to the mast, no precision bearings, backlash not so much a
problem.

The whole package really is a great design, I'm a big fan. You can tell
Edsinger has been using robots out in the real world, with regular people
beating them up.

------
seebetter
I'd like to buy one and try to have it build a robot like itself. Would I be
able to sell them? Maybe now but not the version in 2040.

------
nobbis
For comparison, here's the PR1 from 12 years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyHWkQcin7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyHWkQcin7I)

------
gojomo
I'm looking forward to the day a small home robot can do the dishes, in the
sink – replacing a dishwasher machine. This looks like a small step in that
direction.

~~~
mNovak
Wondering what the benefit of a dishwashing robot is? Better off just wishing
for a more convenient / compact dishwasher, I think.

~~~
yongjik
It takes me an inordinate amount of time to place objects into the dishwasher
so that it doesn't have 50% wasted space. Also if you eat East Asian dishes
you will have tons of sticky bits of rice, and a dishwasher never seems to be
able to scrub them. (Maybe it will if I run it extra hot, but then it will
damage plastic lids. You can't win.)

------
dt3ft
I see this being used by low cost remote operators to cleanup your room or do
your laundry. Autonomy is still a gimmick, but imagine if you can pay
$50/month so that a reliable remote operator (entire armies of call centres
will turn into remote robot operators) swipes every surface with a cloth?

------
brutus1213
A lot of excellent discussion here. A few years back at CES, I saw the concept
of an appliance that will automatically fold your laundry. It was amazing to
see (yet IMO a hoax). I maintain a robust and cheap solution to make the bed
or fold laundry could be a game changer.

------
0xFFFFFFFA
The main thing I see missing in these comments is the approach from the other
end. There will be a tipping point where appliance makers design small
features to make their products “robot friendly.” Like making openings larger,
buttons larger and otherwise easier for cheaper robots to interact with. And
it will create a feedback loop where robots get more popular because they can
do more in a robot enabled home, and because they are more popular they get
better, and because they are better they get more popular.

Let’s be honest, the roomba sucks, so It’s not really a counter argument.

Once there is a robot that is useful and also seen as a status symbol, that’s
when the feedback loop will begin.

------
russellbeattie
"As of right now, Stretch is very much a research platform."

That was buried way too low in the article for most HN commenters to bother
getting to. Maybe this fact will help refocus the conversation from what this
thing can't do to what it might be able to with some more work. Personally, I
think it looks innovative. Adding a relatively inexpensive telescoping arm and
some LiDAR to a Roomba could be another evolutionary step forward in home
robotics.

I can _easily_ imagine wiring this thing up to Alexa and asking it to go get
me a drink from the fridge. That alone would be worth a few hundred bucks when
it becomes a commercial product.

~~~
Someone
That’s the journalist’s fault. The manufacturer’s site is clear about it.
[https://hello-robot.com/product](https://hello-robot.com/product):

    
    
        Stretch™ Research Edition
        A new kind of robot.
        […]
        A Robot for Researchers by Researchers
    

I couldn’t find specs on typical battery life (would likely vary a lot, but
still, any indicator would help) but it has an 18Ah battery (ballpark “3
laptops”), an Intel i5-8259U, 16GB of RAM and a 480GB SSD.

------
heikkilevanto
Already now this looks like a very useful tool for a person who is bound to a
wheelchair. It can easily reach things at different heights, including floor
level, which is hard from a wheelchair. Its base is smaller than a wheelchair,
so it can get into narrower spaces. Such person probably has an open, level,
and uncluttered floor plan already, which works well for the robot.
Accessories, such as the vacuum cleaner, can be installed by the operator
(after the robot fetches them). Autonomy is great when it works, but even slow
teleoperation is better than having to have a helper around 24/7.

------
tmikaeld
Seems very slow, guess robotics really is hard.

~~~
beisner
We know how to make fast robots, we know how to make safe robots, and we know
how to make useful robots. But we do not know how to make fast, safe, useful
robots. A faster robot would need to be heavier to do the same work.

Any robot that can move as fast as a human and perform similar work to a human
will need to be close to as strong/heavy as a human. And humans can kill each
other with their bare hands; we just know not to. A Kuka LBR iiwa can only
lift 7-14kg, but could easily accidentally kill/maim someone with common
payloads of that mass.

Obviously there's also some slowness w.r.t. the actual control here (i.e.
safety pauses, planning latency, etc.), but it's a tall order to build any
kind of home robot - especially one that has such a large workspace - that is
intelligent enough to be both fast and safe.

~~~
tmikaeld
That's a very good point, which I guess can't really be solved since we'd
always have to trust the software in one way or another.

------
kwhitefoot
> he hopes to see the robot deployed in home environments,

It will need bigger wheels or legs then because it would be stuck in one room
in my house because of the thresholds at each doorway and the rugs and
carpets.

And my house has three stories so I would need three of them because it can't
climb stairs.

It's getting tiresome to read crap like this because while it _might_ work in
a dwelling purpose built for it it is guaranteed useless in most dwellings
occupied by real people right now.

~~~
birdyrooster
With three stories you can afford three robots. Imagine being the operator
waiting for these things to go up and down stairs, that sucks.

------
thisisbrians
I admire the hard work that surely went into this, but I have to say: as a
former robotics hobbyist, I'm extremely unimpressed with the weight, cost, and
limited capabilities of this thing. And that impression is based on the
technology we had over a decade ago. With access to a few machine tools and a
3d printer, I'd bet an equally capable prototype would cost no more than a few
hundred dollars. No wonder almost no one has a robot in their home.

~~~
tmpz22
Ya but did you know the founder used to work at google?

------
m12k
I think this should be looked at similarly to e-readers that came before
Kindle or smartphones from before the iPhone. It's not 'there' yet, but it
shows the directions things can go, and can help pave the way toward something
that deserves mass adoption. Bringing down the price is a big step, so more
people can try it out and maybe even discover a niche where it's already 'good
enough' for some task.

------
wintorez
Obviously the design is not perfect, but I think this is a step in the right
direction, as in, a robot does not have to be a bipedal humanoid to be useful.

------
emmanueloga_
This is quite literally a USD 18,000 "reacher" [1].

I remember a reacher being a pretty successful present last time I played
"white elephant gift exchange" :-).

1: [https://www.amazon.com/Reacher-Foldable-Lightweight-
Reaching...](https://www.amazon.com/Reacher-Foldable-Lightweight-Reaching-
Extension/dp/B078RMCFWQ)

~~~
re
> “I had this idea that there are these assistive grabbers that people with
> disabilities use to grasp objects in the real world,” he told us. Kemp went
> on Amazon’s website and looked at the top 10 grabbers and the reviews from
> thousands of users. He then bought a bunch of different ones and started
> testing them. “This one [Stretch’s gripper], I almost didn’t order it, it
> was such a weird looking thing,” he says. “But it had great reviews on
> Amazon, and oh my gosh, it just blew away the other grabbers. And I was
> like, that’s it. It just works.”

There's a few "grabbers"/"reachers" that have a gripper that looks pretty
similar to the Stretch's; I'm not sure if there's an "original" that the
others are clones of:
[https://amzn.com/B07RR6N9C7](https://amzn.com/B07RR6N9C7)
[https://amzn.com/B0812B4TF1](https://amzn.com/B0812B4TF1)
[https://amzn.com/B01MAW25UW](https://amzn.com/B01MAW25UW)

------
netcan
For anyone in the space, how substantial is the "research robot" market?
What's realistic, hundreds of units, thousands?

------
SideburnsOfDoom
> The arm was “one of the most significant engineering challenges on the robot

There's not much to the robot besides the arm, so, um, yeah?

------
LargoLasskhyfv
But...is it cat compatible?

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_SfDru0m_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_SfDru0m_4)

------
baybal2
I'm not impressed. It is not a "grand engineering breakthrough" by any stretch
of imagination.

------
rdlecler1
Here’s a more practical example of this kind of design and the robots don’t
cost much more.

[https://scoutsomerville.com/wp-
content/uploads/MG_4809-1.jpg](https://scoutsomerville.com/wp-
content/uploads/MG_4809-1.jpg)

------
forgotmypw17
[http://archive.is/h0yap](http://archive.is/h0yap)

------
blueblisters
I can totally imagine this being Amazon's next big play. They already have a
decent in-house robotics team working on warehouse automation. Some of that
knowledge could be spun-off into a consumer robotics unit. Alphabet will be
left catching up again like with AWS and Echo.

------
numpad0
Looking like a 3D printer with camera gimbal attached to the carriage is
bolted atop a robot vacuum...

------
basicplus2
I prefer these...

[https://boingboing.net/2016/06/08/the-amazing-shitty-
robots-...](https://boingboing.net/2016/06/08/the-amazing-shitty-robots-
of.html)

------
deegles
Are any tele-robots used in agriculture? I could imagine using AI to get the
robot hands within a few inches of each piece of produce or a desired task and
then one operator could quickly swap between many robots.

~~~
cwkoss
I think some tractors have tele-operation capability, but the farmer typically
sits within them to monitor operations

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lnsru
Robots have a big problem - price tag. Research robot for $18k, Spot for $75k,
single robot arm moving stuff from A to B - $50k+. How many organizations can
afford that? No wonder, that robot adoption is extremely slow.

~~~
kelnos
If something like this succeeds to the point of mass production, I could
easily see the retail price been cut by 75% or more. That might be a big "if",
though.

I imagine a bit of the current price tag is "we want serious purchasers who
will be partners in the development of this device"; they don't want to build
them for people who will just dick around with it for a bit and then relegate
it to the corner of the room.

~~~
smolder
Yeah I don't think the world needs household robots that are disposable. I'd
expect them to be a similar investment to a high end car in the interest of a
lower total cost of ownership over long timeframes. It would ultimately be
very expensive to make wave upon wave of "cheap" high tech landfill fodder.

What I'd like to see is standardized interchangeable parts and configurable
software so we can spec robots to their tasks and benefit from reuse of parts
and code as much as possible.

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pgt
Something the Stretch bot gets right is that it doesn't trigger uncanny valley
revulsion like the torso-shaped PR2 does with its Terminator eyes. They
managed to make this bot feel like an appliance or a mobile coat hanger -
almost like an endearing doofus. I think this will be key to mass adoption.

On the other hand, those Boston Dynamics robo-dogs with their snakelike
extensions reminds me far too much of the Fido enemy (a.k.a. Parasite) from
Quake 2:
[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/quake/images/d/d2/Parasi...](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/quake/images/d/d2/Parasite.jpg/revision/latest/scale-
to-width-down/185?cb=20130427135231)

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colordrops
The base looks like the clearance is too low and wheels too small, but
otherwise a nice idea. I'd imagine you could replace the base with a quadruped
for better mobility.

~~~
andrewksl
Cross-breed Boston Dynamics' Spot?

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mikeruhl
People are complaining about what this can't do, but for the disabled, the
simple things it can do is going to be monumental. I see this as an amazing
tool for the disabled, not a "beer me bot" for the lazy.

EDIT: And I should add, I hope they market this to that severely underserved
market. If they only market it as a product for the rich to do simple tasks,
it will suffer Segway's fate. If they create a market for it in healthcare and
partner with those already in that space, this could be something big. It
would pay for itself for people who need 24/7 care, if it were reliable
enough.

~~~
koheripbal
For me the ability to do laundry alone is worth $$$. That is 90% of the reason
I have maid service (family of 5).

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karaterobot
Seems like progress in personal robotics has been incremental at best ever
since Paulie had that robot deliver him a drink way back in Rocky IV (1985).

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pplonski86
The link to hello robot github [https://github.com/hello-
robot](https://github.com/hello-robot)

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fit2rule
Could this be scaled down to the desktop to be used for pick and place
projects? If so, might be a revolutionary upgrade for the makers ..

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dzink
Re-enforcement learning would be fun on this one.

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choonway
imagine thousands of years ago, if you were very rich, you would stay away
from rivers because of the risk of flooding - but you still needed a source of
water - so you hire people to carry water from the streams to your home.

how would you automate that? by building robots to carry the water containers?
what is the optimal solution may not be the most obvious.

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ogre_codes
They dropped the ball on the demo. If they really wanted to blow me away
they'd have demonstrated the robot opening the fridge and bringing me a beer.

A bit more seriously, this is a research platform. Maybe in 5-10 years it'll
prove to be the seed of some interesting tech, but right now it's just a lab
experiment. If you buy this and expect it to do basic housework for you, you
are destined to be disappointed.

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biolurker1
I wonder why ex-faang company needs to be mentioned as a description of the
founder.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
Why not?

Most normal people would take that as a sign that the founder has already had
a sucessful career in tech, because "FAANG" don't hire mediocre workers. The
journalists knowing this trend, use this information to communicate this to
people, speaking in their language. (Also this language makes some sense as
well.) I don't see a problem.

~~~
driverdan
> because "FAANG" don't hire mediocre workers

Their propaganda is working well I see. Having a Stanford degree and being
able to answer CS questions (two things FAANG companies love) does not
guarantee you'll be a good worker.

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gridlockd
Out of curiosity, what kind of robot can you get out of Asia for $20,000?

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suyash
Design is either lacking or ugly (industrial) not suited for most homes.

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dvh
$18k

~~~
verroq
At $1.8k it would be amazing, at $18k it's a big stretch. I would buy it at
$1.8k.

~~~
snovv_crash
$1.8k buys you a mid-range bicycle. $2.5k buys you a high end laptop. Both of
those are made in millions. This is roughly a combo of the two.

So I'd guess that with sufficient volume this could get down to the $5k mark.

~~~
staz
and a iRobot Create 2 is $0.2k

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alpineidyll3
Someone should repost as soon as a 200$ Xiaomi clone is available.

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andy_ppp
My guess is that this will need two arms to do many things!

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slashblake
Great, now I can home from work!

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aj7
Utterly fails the site test, just like that gyroscopic scooter. And when it
comes to a robot, the sight test matters.

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jcun4128
Damn that's a price tag

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Robotbeat
Looks nice, but $20k??

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unclewalter
Shoes on the table!

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seanhunter
Feels like it would overbalance given how lightweight and tall it is - any
time it tried to pick anything up that was even slightly heavy it would just
fall over.

~~~
bArray
Detecting how heavy an object is would be possible - also those grippers will
simply not grasp something too heavy. Your big problem will be simply in not
detecting some object that coat-hangers it.

Let's not pretend a consumer model is even remotely ready though, these
scenarios are highly contrived. The goal at the current time is research, and
at that price point there are a few options available.

