Robotics

November 23rd 2024




1. Robotics needs a beefy base model for manipulating the world. 2. Not obvious to me the tradeoff between general purpose (mobile hand can manipulate things) vs. better special purpose tools (e.g. a washing mashine that can also hang and fold clothes, a food processor that also chops vegetables). General purpose robotics is very hard and will require a lot of training and compute. Because it needs a model of the world. And there’s no getting around it. Manipulating the world requires a ton of compute, both to understand how the world can be manipulated, and how to actually manipulate it.

Most likely situation is that advancements in computer vision and manipulation will yield more special purpose robotics that will go in a very specific environment that will replace human workers. But general purpose will take a very long time.

What do I even want out of robotics. I want to be able to automate human labor. Because I think it’s not fair that I don’t have to do it, but others do.

Like, can I make a robot fix a car?