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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.

Interesting post and great reference to [1] about why laundry hits a sweet spot of capability.

Interestingly the repeated critiques in the article are about sensor richness: primarily force feedback and tactility, which indicates lacking hardware. Software only robotics has a long and fraught history, but it really feels to me that current industrial hardware could be driven more intelligently without much change. No doubt the "ideal" robot for any given task requires developments in both.

I'm also curious about safety, since generally capable mechanisms need a multilayered safety stack that includes semantics, and cobot certification is likely not enough anymore. Examples: feeding someone the wrong pill, pouring a glass of water into electronics, cutting vegetables vs fingers.

[1] https://substack.com/redirect/82d94852-76b6-4b0d-8595-86e46a...

Hey Hacker News. Curious if folks feel like I'm missing categories of challenge.

Platinum Medal: Complete a gold medal task in the presence of multiple children between the ages of 3 and 8. The children must remain safe throughout (and after) the entire process.

Can I say something: could you all please stop inserting contaminated tool back into a jar of food? You use a clean tool to take out the amount you eat, and that's it.

You can put it back if the tool had touched nothing but: air, the food in the jar, and your hand at the operating end. Otherwise, that butter knife stays on your dish for the rest of the meal. The exception would be if you cleaned the tool, like bare minimum by wiping with a brand new piece of tissue paper(but that's kind of wasteful).

Is that an outrageous ask? I know it's probably not a huge deal, like free water and such, and my techniques are that of total amateur being never professionally involved in medical and/or bio science fields, but just, how can you stand possible breadcrumbs IN THE JAR!?

> If you sit down and write out what you might want a robot to do for you: a lot of tasks end up being kind of wet.

yes, but i thought this wasn't that kind of article.

I don't know, for me it looks like the demo robot already does it quite well.

A wonderful article, truly insightful. But it feels more like a series of challenges than the Olympics. This is the Humanoid Robot Olympics held in China earlier this year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y-tElcmJVE Instead of focusing on individual technical, it requires completing comprehensive movement tasks. For example, long-distance running tests battery managment and durable of joint, while boxing tests flexibility and coordination. Many participating teams or manufacturers, after failing, return to tackle the specific issues they encountered. This process drives the progress of the entire industry. In my view, this is worthy of being called an Olympic Game—in both form and spirit.

Think about how fast progress is being made now. When I was a kid in the early 2000s we would see some basic robot progress on movements (almost always from Boston Dynamics or sometimes China) and we thought it was incredible. Robot dogs running was amazing and five or so years later a backflip blew our minds. Those robots were specially designed and didn't look humanoid. Now we have bi-pedal humanoid robots and they walk and move fairly capably - even able to get up after falls. Now within the last year I have seen them learn Kung Fu, become really fast at getting up, become resistant to being knocked down by quite a lot of force, and now even doing tasks like those shown here.

Just imagine 2050 if the progress continues at this rate. I am both excited and really scared.

Super super platinum: a gently-padded humanoid robot that can successfully put on a silver body suit.

Is someone building synthetic skin?

Like, just a piece of silicone with a few sensors, pressure, heat, etc. that you can "glove" around a robot.

Rather than teaching your robot to fold inside-out clothes, you should teach it to attack people who put their clothes in the hamper inside out.

This is amazing!!

Great post! Now somebody with the connections just needs to make it happen. For event five, slippery when wet, you should definitely include drying your hands on a towel, as it serves an important hygienic function.

What are your thoughts on this? Where do we stand?

https://substack.com/@isitpropaganda/note/c-167073531?utm_so...