this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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Cool tech, but what's the intended use case for the end product? Or is there no use case until it's as good as a human?
At the moment it still looks like a technology demonstrator, but with what we saw in this video there are a small percentage of jobs it could likely do today replacing human workers.
My guess is that the task we saw it doing is actually a human job today. The objects being moved from rack to rack were plastic engine covers. The racks are labeled with "Engine covers". That is WAY too specific to be random. My guess is that they worked/are working with an automotive assembly company to identify tasks that humans do today that a robot could do tomorrow. The auto company likely provided the engine cover parts as well as the racks and described the parameters for the job.
Even if you look at the Boston Dynamics robot and say that a human could do that faster/cheaper/better, consider that the robot works 24/7 with no sick days, vacations, or family emergencies. From a purely business perspective, the robot could be a game-changer for the better. From a societal view, this will have serious negative consequences to the people that our society will need to evolve to change for the better.
The point with factory work is that you don’t need half of what this robot can do if you change the plan of the factory a bit.
So no I don’t think the idea here is for standard factory work.
You're changing the problem that is being solved. The CURRENT work process is to use a human with all the benefits and detriments of a human. The idea would be to drop one of these Atlas robots in without changing the work or work environment. Perhaps there is a more efficient human doing the work from 8am-5pm and only some work needed from 5pm-8am. An Atlas robot would be perfect use case here. You don't have to redesign the work or the environment for a human or robot to switch out to do the same work.
What you're describing is changing the nature of the task or the environment to optimize for a robot.
Boston Dynamics already has that robot. Its called Handle:
As you can see, its a wheeled robot with an arm, but this robot couldn't do the task that the Atlas robot can in the video because it doesn't have the fine motor control or fingers to grasp the engine covers, nor does Handle have the ability to deal with those soft pliable racks where Atlas is placing the covers.
Yep, it's no more than a stress test for a robot to keep it's balance in motion, coupled with some partnership and a nice PR showcase of what it can do in a humanized scenario that we meatbags can relate to.
Moving stuff in a predictable fashion is easily done with forklift\suction cup robots on rails that can ride floors and climb shelves while being powered from the line 100% of time. Iirc Boston Dynamics did such robots too. Making robots carry stuff around on legs sounds like a c/crazyideas material.
What they can do then though is use this amount of R&D to build a robot that does need all of that. From automatic surgery machines to rescue scouts and, yes, killbots. Both rough terrain and sensitive tasks need a self-regulating system to orchestrate the motion in all these motors right.