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points by tootie 4 days ago | 0 comments

The desire for humanoid robots is purely aesthetic and almost certainly suboptimal. Ceiling mounted is actually a much more plausible option. Next most likely is something more like R2D2. A rolling garbage can with an arbitrary number of specialized appendages. Humanoids seem like a real dead end to me.

[–] kevin_thibedeau 4 days ago

Their benefit is they can operate in any space designed for a human without custom modification. No wires to get in the way with an assistant robot that interacts with the existing built world.

[–] tootie 4 days ago

We've built zillions of machines to automate tasks previously done by humans (or animals) and how many times did we design something based on humans work? Roughly zeroish? People used to do laundry with wash basin and a river, now it's a metal cube. People wash dishes with a sponge and a towel but the machine is a metal cube. People would cook over burning wood and now it's a metal cube.

[–] Forgeties79 4 days ago

The difference is this humanoid is meant to be a bespoke “does everything” robot. The others are very purpose-built/particular. And with good reason of course, an “everything humanoid” is beyond a moonshot in 2026

[–] jdironman 4 days ago

seems to me like the problem isn't the machines it's the last mile and preferences of humans

[–] imtringued 4 days ago

Yes, but if you're willing to wait for the robots to become humanoid, the original task doesn't seem to be important or urgent enough to build said robot.

[–] regularfry 4 days ago

What you're missing about the attraction of humanoid robots is that you can, software permitting, drop them into an existing factory and entirely replace the human workforce without retooling. They might only be good for a single generation, but they're ideal for that purpose.

[–] bryanlarsen 4 days ago

Much smaller robots will co-exist in a world with humans a lot more smoothly than anything human shaped & sized.

[–] blm126 4 days ago

I'm not so sure. If you could rebuild every human space and tool from scratch, you are probably right. However, we live in buildings filled with stairs. We've got tall cabinets with things tucked in them. We've got lawn mowers and snow blowers and leaf blowers and cars. Making a humanoid robot is a much harder problem if you want a cool demo. If you actually want to deploy robots in billions of homes, it might just be the only answer.

[–] makeitdouble 4 days ago

Rebuilding and replacing tools doesn't sound that big of an issue to be honest.

I'm starting from the assumption the vast majority of people won't want a robot in their home, even just on principle. Then most people will not need it to do every possible action an human does.

For the remaining people in the target, having adapted/compatible cabinets or furniture is probably less of an issue. If someone requires assistance for instance, they'll probably also don't want hard to access shelves or crazy weird stairs.

The same way people have started choosing furniture that can accommodate a roomba(RIP irobot), we'll adjust our newer homes to whatever makes sense when we get the next wave of home robots.

[–] Gasp0de 4 days ago

Why wouldn't everyone want a robot that does all your chores, given that it is affordable? Everyone I know uses a washing machine. Do you wash your clothes by hand?

[–] makeitdouble 3 days ago

For better or worse, there is a fundamental difference between a tool that does a specific task under command (e.g. a washing machine), nothing else, never by itself, and a general purpose machine with some autonomy (a "robot") .

Many people will want full control over what happens in their house, and potentially feel unsafe having things that move on their own. Where's the line is for "full control" will be personal.

[–] MisterMunchkin 4 days ago

That’s a flawed assumption. Everyone wants a live-in bangmaid. They’re just normally too expensive. If you could buy one for 30k, they would fly off the shelves.

[–] makeitdouble 4 days ago

Everyone wants a perfect robot at a low cost.

Except it won't happen, so the amount of people wanting a pretty flawed and compromised yet expensive robot will be pretty low.

[–] olelele 4 days ago

Sexist much?

[–] swiftcoder 4 days ago

While Hollywood may portray the whole fuckable-robot thing as a male-dominate field, reality suggests the reverse. It's mostly not males that the current generation of powertool-like sextoys are marketed to...

[–] derektank 4 days ago

Against which sex?

[–] tjoff 4 days ago

Just have to be compatible?

The xiaomi-robotics-1 concept is but one that seems very doable and very near term.

https://robotics.xiaomi.com/xiaomi-robotics-1.html

[–] kovarr 4 days ago

If the end-goal is robot maid, aka cooks and cleans for a household, it at minimum needs to handle stairs and uneven ground like gardens.

Something to get the laundry from each room, wash, dry, fold, put away.

Cut and cook ingredients then do the dishes.

Mow the lawn, water the plants and do basic weeding etc.

Maybe even climb a ladder to empty the gutters / clean windows.

A non-humanoid will never be able to accomplish that without dedicated implements.

[–] tjoff 4 days ago

No it does not. And the type depicted will do all of that except ladders (ridiculous) with small modifications.

I really look forward to that, even if the first versions can't clean the gutters...

[–] kovarr 3 days ago

The type depicted has one inch castor wheels lol?

It won't be going up stairs or over lawns.

It won't be dusting into the corners of rooms.

If the end goal is something that can do everything a human can do, it'll have to bare the form of a human.

[–] gf000 4 days ago

Why not just robo-dog? They can go pretty much everywhere a human can. You just add a strange neck/arm thingy as head and it can do pretty much everything. It's not accident that that became one of the best known robots.

[–] pulvinar 4 days ago

Yes, once they can be made to quietly jump on to a counter, like a cat.

[–] bryanlarsen 4 days ago

They need a way to get onto counters, climb stairs, manipulate objects, et cetera. But all of the necessary capabilities do not need to be self-contained. Humans achieve their amazing flexibility through tool use, and so will robots. And in many cases those tools will be other robots. One robot could boost another onto the counter and then they both could get out of the way, unlike a robot large enough to reach up to the counter.

[–] mrandish 4 days ago

> once they can be made to quietly jump on to a counter, like a cat.

That would be cool. But also a little scary if it has an onboard AI which, based on it's embodiment, decides to develop a cat-like personality. Pretty sure if my cat had a better world model and long-horizon planning, it would kill me in my sleep.

[–] solyin 4 days ago

Why? If you're dead, then it stops getting food and pets. If you're dead, it'll eat your face off if your neighbors don't break in first because of the smell.

[–] mrandish 4 days ago

> almost certainly suboptimal.

I agree from an engineering and cost perspective that matching the embodiment, degrees of freedom and performance to the use case tends to be optimal. But entertainment, fun and inspiration can also be economically valuable use cases - even if less common.

That said, there are use cases which require navigating environments built for humans and the adaptive flexibility to perform unpredictable tasks as a human proxy. And those robots will probably be broadly humanoid shaped.

[–] solyin 4 days ago

Ish. Millions of years of evolution and other than snakes and their ilk, land-faring animals have legs. So bipedal with wheels on the feet is maybe optimal. The optimal number of arms I think is three. No "head" is strictly necessary. The interesting question is how do you train a three armed robot when there are few three armed people?

[–] embedding-shape 4 days ago

> The desire for humanoid robots is purely aesthetic and almost certainly suboptimal

Based on what? Do you think humans evolved into what we are based purely on aesthetic? Of course it may be suboptimal, but given enough time and ingenuity, so could literally everything be. Not sure that should stop anyone.

[–] victorbjorklund 4 days ago

Humans are def not designed optimally to live and work in a modern house or office. Don’t confuse “survived better than other animals in the Savannah 200 000 years ago” with modern env.

[–] embedding-shape 4 days ago

> Humans are def not designed optimally to live and work in a modern house or office

Agreed, those were designed by humans (mostly) for humans. I don't think we as a species "adapt to things" so much anymore, and instead we adapt our environment to us.

[–] Jtarii 4 days ago

>Do you think humans evolved into what we are based purely on aesthetic

A modern house is a very different environment to the savannas of Africa.

[–] antupis 4 days ago

I think something like https://fi.roborock.com/products/roborock-saros-z70 but just doing stuff with picking would more than enough.

[–] hathawsh 4 days ago

We might be at the beginning of a golden age for inventors. Robots of all shapes and sizes, with highly variable price points and specialization. Still, the first challenge for R2D2 is probably stairs.

[–] chamomeal 4 days ago

It’ll be like phones. All kinds of whacky fun designs, before converging on a single black rectangle. Robots will all be flat black rectangles

[–] Sohcahtoa82 4 days ago

Interstellar really got it right with TARS then.

[–] arbuge 4 days ago

How does R2D2 climb stebs?

[–] swiftcoder 4 days ago

Slowly. He canonically can climb stairs though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W_2yY8in5M

[–] runamuck 4 days ago

ED 209 Can't.

[–] Joel_Mckay 4 days ago

Well if your legs trunnions were coffee cup lids, than stairs would pose an issue too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFMJ514lz5w

The ED 209 is still cool, and only outclassed on screen by the T-800. =3

[–] fnord77 4 days ago

same way Daleks do

[–] Gasp0de 4 days ago

My entire house is designed for humanoids. Stairs, door handles, step ladders to get onto the attic. I wonder how R2D2 would walk up stairs. Gas thrusters?

[–] swiftcoder 4 days ago

R2D2 canonically can climb stairs in his 3-leg travel mode (due to technical limitations in the original series props, it's not entirely clear when he transitions between 2-leg resting mode and 3-leg travel mode)

[–] ATMLOTTOBEER 4 days ago

They are a dead end: humanoid robots are a stopgap while we redesign affordances to be automation-first

[–] Marha01 4 days ago

The big benefit of humanoids is that they can be trained from captured human actions (egocentric datasets made by humans).

[–] komodo99 4 days ago

> captured human actions

Or just some dude on remote. (Get in the robot, Shinji!)

[–] jephs 4 days ago

Do we really have to capture the humans? Legal says that introduces a whole slew of issues.

[–] numpad0 4 days ago

I don't think that's true. It's actually my layperson pet peeve that none of hype humanoids have the right anatomy to be a humanoid, most of them are bipedal dogs.

[–] onlyrealcuzzo 4 days ago

> Humanoids seem like a real dead end to me.

We built the world for us, not for the most sensible robot.

So for generalized solutions, a good biped will have some advantages.