The Consumer Robotics Innovator's Dilemma, Apple, and Vehicles Revisited
The Consumer Robotics Innovator's Dilemma, Apple, and Vehicles Revisited
The Tragedies of Reality in Robotics and Rodney Brook's Three Laws of Robotics
Leaky abstractions and reality not hardware as friction. Google Research Scientist, Alex Irpan, recently wrote a post ‘The Tragedies of Reality’ that is doing the rounds on the heels of Benjie Holson’s ‘Mythical Non-Roboticist’ and it’s very good at explaining why robotics is already working on all the things that currently make LLMs tricky. Basically, reality.
The reason robot learning progress is slower is because it’s very hard to do anything without tackling the hard problems.
The hard problems of robotics are not unique to robotics.
There’s a saying that “all robot demos lie”, and people are discovering all LLM demos lie too. I think this is fundamentally impossible to avoid, because of the limitations of human attention. What’s important is evaluating the type, size, and importance of the lie. Did they show how it could generalize? Did they mention how cherry-picked the examples were? These questions become more complicated once you connect reality into the mix. Sure, Messi’s looked like a good player so far, but “can he do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke”?
Since this post, Alex Irpan has moved from Robotics into AI Safety, which makes a lot of sense.
Rodney Brooks released his Three Laws of Robotics, which generally speaking I completely agree with. These Three Laws are designed for robot builders. The 5 Laws of Robotics that I’ve proposed cover some general principles not covered here, if you want a more abstracted position.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned about robotics after working in the field for almost five decades. In honor of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, my two boyhood go-to science fiction writers, I’m calling them my three laws of robotics.
The visual appearance of a robot makes a promise about what it can do and how smart it is. It needs to deliver or slightly overdeliver on that promise or it will not be accepted.
When robots and people coexist in the same spaces, the robots must not take away from people’s agency, particularly when the robots are failing, as inevitably they will at times.
Technologies for robots need 10+ years of steady improvement beyond lab demos of the target tasks to mature to low cost and to have their limitations characterized well enough that they can deliver 99.9 percent of the time. Every 10 more years gets another 9 in reliability.
Below I explain each of these laws in more detail. But in a related post here are my three laws of artificial intelligence.
Robot Expo Opportunities through SVR
2024 SVR Robotics Investment Forum - Oct/Nov (date & venue coming this week!) - startup showcase and 1:1 investor matchmaking
2025 & 2026 CES Eureka Park pavilion - for startups <5yrs - interested?
2025 Turkey Poland tour for manufacturing startups with DOC
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Autonomous Vehicles - Cars
Another great post is ‘Whymo’ Vincent Vanhoucke’s description of his move from Google to Waymo.
This comes at an interesting time as the Federal Government decides to rethink Vehicle to Vehicle Communications with the release of a V2X Roadmap. (Here’s an overview of V2V)
In robotics, autonomous driving included, the long tail of difficulty is increasingly more about common sense reasoning than about low-level planning and control. It is about a deep understanding of the situation and reasoning not just about geometry, but about the semantics of a scene, which in a multi-agent scenario includes other agents’ actions. Much of it is also about scaling: every order of magnitude you grow your usage, every new context you bring your autonomous system into, brings you to the very edge of your generalization capabilities. In that sense, my favorite grand challenges in perception, semantic understanding and reasoning have not aged a bit. But what is different today is that with large multimodal models we have new tools at our disposal to address them.
These are the most rapidly growing AV startups around according to CrustData.
𝗪𝗮𝘆𝘃𝗲: AI self-driving cars
Cofounders: Alex Kendall, Amar Shah
𝗣𝗵𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗔𝗜: Car safety software
Cofounders: Hyunggi Cho, Chan Kyu Lee
𝗢𝘅𝗮: Self-driving vehicle technology
Cofounders: Paul Newman, Ingmar Posner
𝗦𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱: Autonomous driving systems
Cofounders: Yimin Li, Junwei Bao
𝗣𝗹𝘂𝘀: Self-driving truck technology
Cofounders: Shawn Kerrigan, David Liu
𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗺𝗰𝗮𝗿 𝗩𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺: Computer vision for cars
Cofounders: Xi Wang 王曦, Ruoyu Wang, 谢晓靓
𝗪𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗲: Self-driving passenger vehicles
Cofounders: Tony Han, Yan Li
𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀: AI for autonomous vehicles
Founder: Igal Raichelgauz
𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗼𝗻 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀: Edge AI for cars
Founder: Dr. Kai Yu
𝗠𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮 𝗔𝗜: Scalable self-driving software
Founder: Xudong Cao
More information about the cancellation of the VIPER Moon Mission and how much that’s really going to cost us!
Letter to Congress: Refuse to authorize NASA’s cancellation of the VIPER Moon mission
On July 17, NASA announced the cancellation of the VIPER lunar rover after many years and nearly $500M of development. We, as the wider scientific community and members of the public, have organized this open letter to relevant US Representatives and Senators to ask them to oppose NASA's cancellation of the mission.
The text of the letter is here. By signing, you agree that your name, affiliation (optional), and district will be shared with the recipients of the letter. We may contact you via email with updates about the campaign. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the letter's organizers, Dr Benjamin Fernando (bfernan9@jh.edu) or Dr Parvathy Prem (parvathy.prem@gmail.com) who have organized this letter in a personal capacity.
Robot News
Do we really need Apple to reinvent an iPad on a robot arm? Particularly one that is taking hundreds of researchers to develop? (not that I’m against the full employment of robotics engineers)
But Revolve Robotics was selling them 14 years ago. I might even still have my Kubi somewhere in my boxes of old robots. It worked!
Robots cook Korean barbecue while this Bay Area food truck is driving - SF Chronicle
that was the real promise of Zume Pizza - robotic trucks cooking enroute!
A&K Robotics launches mobility pods at Vancouver airport - Robotics 24/7
Ikea expands its inventory drone fleet - TechCrunch
Are robots about to level up - Quanta Magazine
Researchers develop hair-thin battery to power tiny robots - TechCrunch
General Catalyst Invests $120 Million Into Startup Focused on U.S Manufacturing - WSJ
Advanced Manufacturing Startup Hadrian Acquires Datum Source - PRNewswire
This Seattle startup studio is leaning on its Amazon leadership chops to launch new companies - GeekWire
Mars Society gains foothold in AI, robotics and biotechnology to clear a path to space - GeekWire
Can’t believe this is the same Mars Society that I knew twenty plus years ago in Australia!
SoftBank, SK, LG and Hanwha to join AI startup fund - NikkeiAsia
Serve Robotics and ShakeShack Roll Out Autonomous Robot Delivery Via Uber Eats - CISION
Do Robots Love Their Customers? Automated Restaurants Face Human Issues - NYTimes
Pudu Robotics Takes Lead in Global Commercial Service Robotics Market - CISION
Amy’s Kitchen Boosts Yields and Production with Chef Robotics - Automation World
OLogic joins NVIDIA’s Partner Network to aid robotics, AI designers - The Robot Report
Robot Events
FIRA is back! October 22-24 Woodland CA
With AG ROBOTICS DISCOVERY TOUR Oct 17-21
🚀 hashtag#FIRAUSA24: Unveiling the Future of AgTech!
🧑🌾 FIRA USA event: October 22-24
🌟 Highlights:
• Unparalleled networking for farmers, manufacturers, and scientists
• In-field demos of cutting-edge autonomous solutions
• Business meetings and research discussions
• Focus on specialty crops: vegetables, vines, fruit, and nut trees
Don't miss this opportunity to shape the future of agriculture!
🔗 Register now: https://lnkd.in/eHJDFK3F
And some more robotics conferences:
CASE 2024 Puglia Italy 28 Aug - 1 Sep 2024
BioRob Heidelberg DE 1 Sep-Sep 4
Commercial UAV Expo : Sep 03 - Sep 05, 2024 . Las Vegas, United States of America
CLAWAR 2024 Kaiserslauten DE Sep 4 - Sep 6
IMTS Chicago IL Sep 9 - Sep 14
ACTUATE Summit : Sep 18, 2024 . San Francisco - use SVROBO for 25% off
ICRA@40 Rotterdam NL 23 Sep - 26 Sep
International Robot Safety Conference Cincinnati OH Oct 1 - Oct 3
A3’s Humanoids Memphis TN Oct 7
Autonomous Mobile Logistics Memphis TN Oct 8 - Oct 10
ANTS (Swarm robotics) 2024 : Oct 09 - Oct 11, 2024 . Konstanz, Germany
IROS 2024 AbuDhabi Oct 14 - Oct 18
RobOpsCon 2024 - Mountain View - Oct 15
ROSCon Odense DK Oct 21 - Oct 23
ROS Industrial Odense DK Oct 24 - Oct 25
ICSR+AI Odense DK Oct 24 - Oct 26
CORL Munich DE Nov 6 - Nov 9
IEEE Future of Telepresence Pasadena CA Nov 16 - Nov 17
Humanoids 2024 Nancy FR Nov 26 - Nov 28
IFRR - 40th - Long Beach CA Dec
2025
HRI 2025 Melbourne Australia March 4 - March 6
ProMat 2025 Chicago IL Mar 17 - Mar 20
ICRA 2025 Atlanta Georgia 17 May - 23 May 2025