[noahmbarr]

Let’s see if this is the time for industrial robots,

Boston Dynamica: Majority Owner: Hyundai Motor Group (80%) Minority Owner: SoftBank (20%)

[Zigurd]

Factories already buy over $25 billion worth of industrial robots every year. Humanoid robots are neither going to displace specialized industrial robots, nor are they going to be particularly useful since industrial robots can lift entire car chassis, or perform precision work that would be impossible for a robot that can walk around. Surgical robots are neither humanoid, nor are they equipped with human like hands, for very good reasons. I don't know where people get the idea that humanoid robots are the dawn of the robot era. It's a blind alley, a dead end, impractical, un-competitive with specialized robots, and dangerous.

[observationist]

We've shaped the world to be useful to humans with tools used by and for humans. It's going to be very advantageous to have generally capable humanoid robotic platforms that can take advantage of all of the shortcuts and hacks and efficiencies we tailored to ourselves.

If we get there, and I think we are there now, then the worst case scenario is having to tediously implement the hundreds of thousands of little tasks and skills needed to be effective for a particular job.

The best case scenario is we run training videos for AI that gets cloned to fleets, and then you can deploy the equivalent of robotic Amish carpenters to build housing, or robotic warehouse operators, and you're paying a tenth of the cost with a hundredth of the hassle for the same work output as a human, and the efficiency and effectiveness only go up year over year, while human labor has more or less peaked.

I'd rather have a fleet of general purpose robots which I can put to any use within the human repertoire than technically more efficient and cheaper specialty robots that only perform singular tasks in an assembly line.

[baq]

Humanoid robots have advantages industrial robots don’t: they fit where humans fit and can use tools humans use. They’ll fold your proverbial laundry with nothing more than their robot hands, then they’ll unpack your dishwasher and mow your lawn.

[jrwoodruff]

There's still plenty of assembly work being done by humans in automotive factories. Maybe it's not humanoid robots, but quadruped robots or something with more human-like agility. [Microfactories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNqmvIuzbR4) are an interesting shift in automotive manufacturing that could take advantage of these more dexterous and mobile robot form factors.

[DennisP]

Generally, you want specialized robots only for tasks that can keep the robots busy most of the time. If you have a variety of low-volume tasks, you can't fill your factory with specialized robots for all of them. You need more general-purpose workers that can do all those different things. Right now those workers are humans. That's where humanoid robots could fill a role.

[whatever1]

Even if specialized robots were at parity with specialized people (they are not in dimensions like dexterity), the big thing missing is the flexibility. You can on the fly change the production process, humans will be able to accommodate the changes (not at perfect speed, but still). For specialized robots you need stop and reprogram them.

[stevenhuang]

> It's a blind alley, a dead end, impractical, un-competitive with specialized robots, and dangerous.

What a shocking lack of imagination. Do you seriously think in a hundred years you'll still hold this opinion?

[techsystems]

>Let’s see if this is the time for industrial robots

This is a bit unclear to me. Is this implying that it hasn't been the time for industrial robots?