Given that some of the more famous demos were by Honda and Tesla, you might be forgiven for thinking you need pockets as deep as a car company to get into humanoid robotics — and maybe that was true once, but now Asimov v1 is here. It doesn’t have a positronic brain, and you’ll have to code in the Three Laws for yourself, but at least you have the freedom to, because Asimov is open source.
It’s not exactly cheap: the kit version comes with a target price of $15,000 USD, but they do provide the Bill of Materials on the GitHub repository so you can try and hunt down some deals. Still, compared to the millions poured into these sorts of robots in the early days, we have to consider it accessible. With 25 total degrees of freedom, you’ll have to source a lot of actuators, but at least the onboard compute will be easy to get. Rather than begging CERN for spare positrons, you’ only need a Raspberry 5 and a Radaxa CM5.
No word on if this robot can write a symphony — though we’ve seen software that can — and its 5 kg personal best for squats and 18 kg single-arm lat raises aren’t going to impress the bros at the gym. But hey, at least now you have someone to shake your chair for sim gaming. If you’re wondering what the deal with these androids is, well, so were we.
Just what we need. A bunch of easy to hack foreign robots that are humanoid shaped and left powered on all day waiting for there owners instruction.
their*
Ugh…why?
Factually correct? Yes.
Helpful to the community, or anyone else, in any possible way? No.
Get a hobby. Go hack something. Take a walk in natural light and a breath of air that wasn’t moved by a motor, fanbreather.
Actually I appreciate corrections if I make a grammatical mistake, it helps one to not come off as a fool in the future.
Of course you seem to revel in being identified as a fool (or ass if you will), so it’s all perplexing to you, I get it.
Takes all kinds I suppose.
$15K BOM is more than buy it now free shipping ready to use Unitree G1
These guys for 13k a pop?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/unitree-robot-exploit
Dude found a local priviledge escalation giving you root on the thing and you complain?
BOM, aka just parts alone is more than whole put together unit. You could buy G1, replace processing unit (or root it using that LOCAL exploit) and save ton of money and time.
Humanoid robots with worm-able wireless exploits.
Nothing terrible could ever happen with that. Whats was that movie with
Oh sweet! Now finally someone will realize how great and cool are robots then how insane is to leave closed source phoning home ones free to roam in our houses.
Don’t get me wrong, robots are cool and all but… why would anyone to buy a human-sized humanoid robot? Developing the software for such a beast is literally a full-time job.
I think a big part of the appeal of an open source humanoid robot is that the work of making software for such a beast becomes divided by an entire community of developers.
Teach one to load the washing machine, without washing the cat from next door and they all learn it. We think phones, camera doorbells and robotic vacuum cleaners are bad for sharing our personal lives. It wouldn’t take long before someone takes it to the bedroom let alone puts a weapon in it’s hands.
I dread the day when thousands of those things come running over the next hill, perhaps not today but sooner than we’d all like to think.
Well the robot-dog ones are already done with arms, they tested a grenade launcher on one but they are also actively in use with machine guns on them I hear.
Problem (or advantage in this case) with the humanoid ones is that they really can’t hold items well, they’d drop a gun and shoot the owner.
And of course there are hundred of thousand of drones, that kill people in the thousands, and some of them are at least partially autonomous.
Thousands of robots cleaning the streets.
Thousands of robots doing all the shitty jobs no one really wants
Thousands of robots working the fields.
Thousands of robot doctors and nurses.
Thousands of acres of solar panels fueling the humanoid robots, the robot cars, the robot trucks, The robot tractors/seeders/threshers, the cell cultured meat labs, The modified yeast based dairy labs,
Once weve moved past the billion/trillionaire vampire capitalism phase of social development, what reason will anyone have to deploy robot death troopers?
Fear dystopia or dream of post capitalistic utopia.
None of that list will come to past when you are talking humanoid robots, except the military ones.
Now obviously we already use non-humanoid robots for many decades, and it’s fine, but often enough we do not because humans need jobs to keep them thinking they are useful, and/or because humans are cheaper.
I’m always thinking when they show a factory where the entire production and canning/bottling is done by machines and then at the end some people are standing all day shoving the things in boxes. And it makes me think they must know they could automate that without any issue too, so their job is a bit of a joke, but they need money, but making money being a joke.. it seems odd.
Makes you think that basic income idea might be better, but then you see what unpleasant idiocy many people get into when they have free time and nothing to keep their ego in check, and then you think the having people perform joke jobs has merit too. And then you think to yourself ‘man you are being cynical and uppity, think about something else, it’s not your concern anyway’.
” because humans are cheaper.”
And thats the dynamic that will change once humanoid robots have matured in design and implementation. The Teslabot costs less to buy than most workers earn in a year. 1 human works 8 hours a day. 1 robot could work 3 shifts a day with a cord or hotswap battery packs.
“Now obviously we already use non-humanoid robots for many decades, and it’s fine, but often enough we do not because humans need jobs to keep them thinking they are useful,”
No business owner has ever chosen to avoid automation because people need jobs. The decision not to automate processes always comes down to initial cost of implementation exceeding annual cost of manual labor.
The world will change. Its not a matter of if, its a matter of when, and how.
As robots become cheaper and more capable human labor will become less and less common. Whether that means depopulation, or a shift to socialist systems of distribution, or something entirely different remains to be seen. But the change is coming.
“No business owner has ever chosen to avoid automation because people need jobs. ”
That’s simply not true, proven by actual reality rather than theory.
Even in the US.
As for Musk’s robot, I think you might be too naïve if you think that thing could work in a factory, and even if you found something that it could do I don’t think it would last more than a few months.
Musk likes to exaggerate and predict things that are more based on optimism and hope than what you can actually expect to see.
In some way it’s a power but it’s also a flaw, such excessive optimism.
In 2016 Oregon passed a law increasing the minimum wage in Portland from $9.25 to $14.75 over 6 years. They then passed a law continuing its climb. In July of this year it will hit $16.80 I worked for a company that employed 25 people, none of which were making minimum wage, in a warehouse packaging products manually. Within one year of the law being passed the packaging staff had shrunk to 6 operators, 2 each on 3 shifts, doing several times the volume at a fraction of the cost. It didnt require humanoid robots, It just required the annual cost of labor to increase enough to justify the upfront expense of implementing 1950s technology (blister packaging). The company knew their volume would eventually demand the change over. The law being passed just necessitated its early adoption.
“As for Musk’s robot, I think you might be too naïve if you think that thing could work in a factory,”
Its not just Tesla, there are a dozen companies with humanoid robots that are increasing in capability and decreasing in expense.
BMW deployed Figure 02 robots to handle sheet metal positioning, component manufacturing, and high-voltage battery assembly. Their initial test run in South Carolina had the robots work 11-month3 on the active X3 assembly line. During this time, they worked 10-hour shifts, five days a week, and accumulated over 1,250 hours of runtime. The robots loaded over 90,000 sheet-metal parts and helped produce more than 30,000 BMW X3 vehicles. The data collected at BMW directly feeds into the development of Figure 03 for wider-scale industrial deployment.
Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics and is actively integrating the next-generation Atlas humanoid robot into its global manufacturing network, including its facility in Georgia.
Mercedes Benz has piloted the use of Apptronik’s Apollo humanoid robot in its factories to support human workers with physical, labor-intensive tasks.
BYD and NIO are actively testing and implementing humanoid robots (like UBTECH’s Walker S) in their assembly and logistics workshops.
Musk’s robot is the Model T of humanoid robots. If you think that humanoid robots will not rapidly advance over the next decade you might be the one who is too naive.
Oh, you are one of those types that watch NBC news and such and think it is related to reality rather than cutesy PR BS that they are repeating.
nm then.
To do as we’ve always done, learn. This is just the new platform to do so since computers are now commodities.
First person shooter by proxy.
An assassin builds a few…dresses them as homeless…invisible.
One arm with a fake hand is a barrel with red dot laser.
The assassin scatters these…finds out about a protest/motorcade route…then activates his proxies.
No one to arrest.
That’s all these little things are good for. Robotic arms are for factories…Waymo’s for taxis.
you do realize that bombs exist? are much much simpler, the use of which frequently result in arrest.
Also, humanoid bots are a long way away from passing as human, even homeless humans.
Your bad scifi plot is a long way from reality.
Meh, tell me when they release an open source Bender.
Kiss my shiney butt!
Start with this one, add an ethanol powered fuel cell, and port it to a 6502.
That needs hydraulics
The first rule of Robot Fight Club is you do not talk about Robot Fight Club. I can see a demolition derby scenario for these just beating the crap out of each other while guiding the audience through a roast Christmas dinner recipe lol.
Humanoid robots competing against each other in a full contact mashup of American Gladiators, and American Ninja Warriors.
Rockem Sockem Robot Ninja Wars! FTW