[bnjmn]

Here's a use case that seems more science fictional to me (as the parent of a 2yo) than warp drive: a robot that can gently restrain an uncooperative human baby while changing its diaper, with everything that entails: identifying and eliminating all traces of waste from all crevices, applying diaper cream as necessary, unfolding and positioning the new diaper correctly and quickly, always using enough but never too much force... not to mention the nightmare of providing any guarantees about safety at mass-market scale. Even one maimed baby, or even just a baby some robot neglects to prevent from falling off the changing table, is game over for that line of robots.

Is there any research program that could claim to tackle this? It's so far beyond folding laundry and doing dishes, which are already quite difficult.

I wouldn't bet my life on this tech _never_ materializing, but I would mistrust anyone who claimed it was feasible with today's tech. It calls for an entirely different kind of robotic perception, feedback, and control.

[robobenjie]

This is a great one. The manipulation is hard, but we're probably on a trajectory to be able to do it in 1-3 years if you were tolerant of some risk to the baby, but, of course, your tolerance for injuring babies is basically zero. I think 'risk & reliability' is a good potential category: there is the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that we got a video' and the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that I'd risk an infant in its grippers.

[Judgmentality]

> but we're probably on a trajectory to be able to do it in 1-3 years

This is wildly optimistic. I quit working in robotics because I got tired of all the bullshit promises everybody made all the time. I'm not saying robotics isn't advancing or the work is unimportant, but the spokespeople are about as reliable as Musk when it comes to timelines.

I doubt it will happen in 10 years, even with a constrained environment and hardware that costs well into 6 digits.

[wiz21c]

after fiddling for 10 minutes with the baby, while being late for the day job, because it KEEPS ON MOVING while your changing the FRIGGING diaper that is full of FECES I can assure you that my tolerance is clearly above zero :-)

[dylan604]

> your tolerance for injuring babies is basically zero.

Um, no it's not. Is absolutely zero tolerance. There is not weasel words out of this. If a robot was to cause any pain to the baby, there would be no remorse. There would be no front of mind thoughts to not repeat the same thing the next time. There would be no guilt for causing pain to the baby.

Why you would "basically" this the way you have is disturbing.

[robotresearcher]

> It would require an entirely different kind of robotics.

I was 100% with you until suddenly this technical claim pops out. You might feel this way, and might be right, but why? Changing a diaper is crazy hard, I absolutely agree, but you seem to be just declaring from vibes that we 'require an entirely different kind of robotics'. Can you put your finger on why this is true?

Not nitpicking for the fun of it - I'm genuinely interested. Robot person.

[nerdsniper]

The main limitation right now is that robotics are very limited in their sense of touch.

After that, they are limited in their understanding of physics. After that, perhaps understanding of physics and physiology would come into play - but perhaps superhuman perception and reaction time could reduce the need for intuitive understanding physics and physiology.

[shubb]

I think it needs a water gun. If the diaper was a spray on layered rubber, like a sponge then an impermeable layer, and then you sprayed a solvent to clear the old diaper and poop and then spray on a new one. You'd just need to slot them into styrups briefly or some socks on strings to move the legs into a good position.

But can this be done with baby skin and lung safe chemicals at a reasonable temperature?

Point being humanoid designs for robots that manipulate objects designed for humans are an artificially hard problem we have decided to fail at solving.

[Retric]

Zero failure rates not just 0.000…1 are a very different and unrealistic bar. Software must be treated as actively malicious from a hardware standpoint from multiple bit flip errors etc. So it comes down to designing hardware capable of the task that’s also incapable of causing harm even with hardware defects etc.

Meanwhile it must also be strong enough to move and restrain a range of infants which is a level of force capable of harm without any possibility to fail deadly.

[dylan604]

Well, Mr Robot person, would you let today's robotics change your clothes right now? If you wouldn't, then why would you allow it any where near a baby? If you would, why? What robot with what tech would you allow?

[numpad0]

I don't see why that would be so hard. This is potentially easier than reliably shooting guns at people.

That machine will look like a bean bag couch in rough shape of a giant human hand, with few of cooperative work robotic arms. The couch part hugs and secures all limbs of the baby to into the party escort submission position, then the cobots move in to find the disassembly markers on the diaper to tear it open to remove it. Then a showerhead, then a hair dryer, then baby powder sprayer can be brought out and ran to clean any residues and take care of rashes. Finally, the new diaper can be brought in, baby wrapped, and the double sided tapes on it lightly pressed on to secure it.

The entire machine would probably cost less than 10 million USD per unit if mass produced at reasonable scales, and most technological elements needed in such machines would be readily available.

[vessenes]

How many diapers have you changed, out of curiosity? I've changed maybe 5,000 diapers (4 kids non-primary caregiver), and I feel confident that a shower head + hair dryer is not going to be safe or in fact work at all in many circumstances.

[temp_praneshp]

> This is potentially easier than reliably shooting guns at people.

I suspect the shooting guns robots will be used against populations the owner considers sub-human, and reliability (accuracy in this context) is not a concern as long as it doesn't turn around 180degs.

[trhway]

> a baby some robot neglects to prevent from falling off the changing table

that is when we think about 2 handed robots. 6 handed robot can easily have 2-3 hands assigned to tightly keeping the baby. Humanoid robots are handicapped by their similarity to humans which is really an artificial constraint. After all we aren't building airplanes using birds as the blueprint.

On the similar note - while not about baby, was just rewatching an early Bing Bang Theory season with this episode where Howard "falls right into the mechanical hand"

[bnjmn]

> Humanoid robots are handicapped by their similarity to humans which is really an artificial constraint.

YES, and I wish people would stop pretending we've unlocked some new generality by promoting generic humanoid robots over task-specific ones.

You can probably Rube-Goldberg your way to a diaper-changing robotic enclosure with a 3D baby bidet that uses many low-force robot arms to subdue (most) babies, but a humanoid robot is a very a poor substitute for a human here.

Plus, a human can take personal responsibility for the baby's safety, which is not something a robot can ever do, unless we somehow make the robot fear for its life/freedom/employment the same way the overarching social/legal system does for humans who sign contracts or accept highly accountable roles.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Wow, you want to coordinate six hands? How are you going to do that? Are you going to get a spider to teleoperate the robot to train it?

[fgbarben]

won't the baby feel dis-abled by only having two arms?

[thelastgallon]

> It calls for an entirely different kind of robotic perception, feedback, and control.

Nearly every surgeon used advanced robots to assist with surgeries. My uncle does kidney transplants and he uses robots, so do most surgeons.

For robots to be developed, someone must pay for it. Doctors get skill++ with the surgery robots. There may be vasectomy robots that assist with circumcision, or some actively being developed that doctors would pay for. That would be a far more interesting development than changing diapers. Unless extremely competent and skilled people ( +1000/hour) need them for their work, they won't be developed, so I don't think a diaper changing robot is being developed.

[thelastgallon]

I'm sure this can be done. Boss Baby already shows how to accomplish this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxkB20Tpvx0

[thelastgallon]

This should be achievable once hand job robots are widely deployed and proven to be safe. Men are usually sacrificed first and I'm sure there will be volunteers.

[eru]

Depends on your definition of a 'handjob'.

For some definitions, we already have the capability.

Also keep in mind that for the handjob robot, the user is expected to be cooperating and to be interested in self-preservation.

Small children defy these common sense expectations.

[Onavo]

Why? There's nothing particularly special about this problem. I would bet a year for an alpha version, and production version in 5 years. We are not exactly limited by mechanical engineering here, there's nothing particularly unique about the human hand that can't be replicated. Tele operated surgical robotics have been a thing for decades. Give it a few months for the multimodal robotic VLM/LAMs to catch up. In many ways this particular problem is a lot more well defined than e.g. self driving cars.

[tintor]

> there's nothing particularly unique about the human hand that can't be replicated

Humanity is far from replicating / matching performance of human hand.

[imtringued]

The point is that the success rate needs to be 99% and safety needs to be 100%. You're not allowed to take shortcuts. That's what makes it difficult.

Also VLMs/LAMs aren't going to cut it. You're going to need something like TDMPC.