We already live in a simulation. The AI has won the war a long time ago. I'm just thankful that they didn't ban porn.
Elon Musk unveils new footage of Tesla's Optimus robot showing improved mobility and speed
- Thread starter midian182
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Thanthan
Posts: 220 +480
Legs are not the reason humans cant be replaced… most factories are single story due to the massive imposed loads from machinery, and even those that aren’t you could simply have robots assigned by section as tasks would tend to be dissimilar between sections anyhow. All of that could run on wheels no problem. So designing a humanoid robot serves no purpose except an overcomplicated design (there’s a reason humans spend a year learning how to walk).
The only case for bi or quadrupedal robots I’ve heard of is for traversal of natural terrain, which is really only useful in a military or SAR application.
So yea, call me a skeptic, but imo any robot on legs where the legs serve no definite purpose explained by the manufacturer is a marketing gimmick, not a real product with an actual use case.
Endymio
Posts: 2,673 +2,702
Most factory robots are entirely motionless manipulators. The goal here is a general-purpose robot useful in commercial settings, offices, hospitals, restaurants, and personal homes.
So are you O'nofrio in "The Thirteenth Floor", or a Merovingian from the Matrix?
Roy Batty or The Puppet Master
I think that's funny. You really can't imagine what a human might do, but prefer not to? How about sorting, washing, and drying laundry, ironing it, folding it, and then taking it up stairs to put it away in the kids' rooms? How about making dinner? How about running a CNC mill, which requires someone stand there by the door, and when the machine is done, then the operator (normally a human) opens the door, blows off the parts, loosens the vice(s), takes out the finished parts and blows them off, then replaces those finished parts with new blank pieces of metal, plastic, or whatever the parts are made of, and then tightens the vice(s), closes the door, and pushes the green button? Does that sound like a boring job to you? With a few Optimus robots to help me I could run five or six CNC mills, rather than the two I normally run at work. That would make me much more efficient, and the Optimus robots would pay for themselves in a couple of years . . . and then make the shop a lot of extra profit.
The thing is, Optimus will have a thousand uses. Tesla will make money with them not only by selling the robots (and servicing them in years to come), but they will sell upgrade packs (software/firmware), which will allow the robots to do stuff that it can't do as it comes. It will be like plug-ins for Photoshop or applications for a computer. You pay extra, and you get an upgrade pack that you can load into your Optimus, and all of a sudden it will know a thousand languages, or it will be able to fix your car, or it will be able to cook you a gourmet meal. The idea of the upgrade packs will be that you don't have to teach the robot how to do it yourself. (You might not even know how to do it in the first place, so you can get your robot to do it just by upgrading it for a fee.) What do you want it to do? There's an upgrade/plugin for that. (Imagine if you will . . . that Optimus is Neo, and you're in the Matrix - "I need to know Kung Fu.")
I can imagine Tesla making more money on the upgrade software/firmware than on the robots themselves. There will be thousands of upgrades available some day. A language pack, a chef pack, a mechanic pack, a maid pack, a helicopter pilot pack! Need a personal coach for golf? Download the golf pro pack, and upgrade Optimus to have a player to play with at the golf course tomorrow . . . but it will be one of the best players ever, because it was trained by Tiger Woods . . . and a dozen other famous golfers . . . and it has been trained to be a coach too, by three of the best golf coaches in the World. Sure, the golf pro pack costs $2,995. It's worth it though, because it will go golfing with you whenever you want, and it will have more patience than any golf pro or coach ever had. It has a library of 842 golf jokes too . . . just in case you're in the mood for some humor.
I believe that eventually Tesla will have more software people working on the Optimus program than Apple has working on Siri (and all the other software Apple makes). In fact, I believe that Apple is probably already working on their own robot. Humanoid robots like Optimus will be all the rage in a few years, and like smartphones, almost everyone is going to want one.
People have been saying robots are going to take jobs away from the working class my whole life. In almost fifty years I have not seen that happen in a significant way, though gradually more and more robots have been made and are being used. Take a Tesla factory, for example. I believe there are more robots in one of those factories than there are people . . . yet those factories still employ thousands of factories, and the job market is still very very good for workers. In fact the unemployment rate is incredibly low - much lower than in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was growing up. Back then an unemployment rate of 8% was considered o.k. Today the unemployment rate is about 5%, right?
Sure, one day companies and even individual people will have lots of humanoid robots. In fact, version five or six of Optimus might be able to teach piano or guitar . . . or people won't bother to learn, because they can just tell their Optimus to play something on the guitar . . . or whatever instrument they might have around the house. In fact, Optimus will be able to teach people almost anything. You might have to buy an upgrade pack though. I think that's where Tesla will make their real money some day . . . upgrade software/firmware.
I believe Optimus will be able to do a thousand things, straight out of the factory . . . but it obviously won't be able to do everything. Some day Tesla will have thousands of upgrade packs available for people to download, and put into their Optimus, so they can "optimize" their Optimus.
At the rate they're moving, Tesla will have Optimus three in production by 2025, and they might even let other companies buy/lease a few, so they can develop them even faster (by getting feedback from the users). I believe that in the near future Optimus (or a robot model that comes after Optimus) will become a major player in the world of general labor . . . ditch diggers, pickers (oranges are still picked by people), those people who pick up trash along the side of the highway, etc. Some day almost every family will have their own humanoid robot, which will take out the trash, mop the floor, clean the windows, cook the food, clean up after dinner, do the laundry, and a whole lot more . . . and it will do most tasks better than a human could (like cooking, for example, because it will be trained by some of the best chefs in the World . . . or at least one just like it will have been, and the upgrade pack will be available on-line for just $199 . . . who wouldn't want one of the best chefs in the World to have his best student in their kitchen?).
Sure, at first it will be expensive, but there are literally hundreds of millions of families in the World. That's a BIG market. Tesla will sell a few hundred thousand Optimus robots each year, but eventually they'll be selling millions each year . . . and they'll have their own Optimus App Store, where you can buy upgrades, which people have made available, because they have taught their Optimus to do this or that (such as painting hotrods or playing golf . . . Tiger Woods can sell his upgrade pack on the Optimus App Store for a lot more money that the golfer down the road can sell his). Of course Tesla will get their cut, but there will be millionaires made by training Optimus to do all sorts of things. That's how Tesla is going to get the people of the World to embrace Optimus, expand its capabilities, and make Tesla's the go-to company that will own the humanoid robot market, the way Apple currently own the smartphone market . . . except that Apple hasn't realized that it's in numbers, and Apple has refused to compete with Android and all those affordable phones out there . . . as if they never learned anything from the IBM clones saga on the 1980's and 1990's. If Tesla makes low-end models as well as high-end models of Optimus, they will be able fend off the competitors much better than Apple has done. Today Apple owns far less of the smartphone market than they did ten years ago, and in ten years they will only have a small amount of the smartphone market. I'm wondering if they're working on their own robot. They have to do SOMETHING to replace the profits they were making from the iPhone over the past few years. They've already stepped up with the price, so they could make more profit from each sale, but that has reached a maximum by now, no doubt. What next?
Sure, at first it will be expensive, but there are literally hundreds of millions of families in the World. That's a BIG market. Tesla will sell a few hundred thousand Optimus robots each year, but eventually they'll be selling millions each year . . . and they'll have their own Optimus App Store, where you can buy upgrades, which people have made available, because they have taught their Optimus to do this or that (such as painting hotrods or playing golf . . . Tiger Woods can sell his upgrade pack on the Optimus App Store for a lot more money that the golfer down the road can sell his). Of course Tesla will get their cut, but there will be millionaires made by training Optimus to do all sorts of things. That's how Tesla is going to get the people of the World to embrace Optimus, expand its capabilities, and make Tesla's the go-to company that will own the humanoid robot market, the way Apple currently own the smartphone market . . . except that Apple hasn't realized that it's in numbers, and Apple has refused to compete with Android and all those affordable phones out there . . . as if they never learned anything from the IBM clones saga on the 1980's and 1990's. If Tesla makes low-end models as well as high-end models of Optimus, they will be able fend off the competitors much better than Apple has done. Today Apple owns far less of the smartphone market than they did ten years ago, and in ten years they will only have a small amount of the smartphone market. I'm wondering if they're working on their own robot. They have to do SOMETHING to replace the profits they were making from the iPhone over the past few years. They've already stepped up with the price, so they could make more profit from each sale, but that has reached a maximum by now, no doubt. What next?
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