[Judgmentality]

So you're paying someone to operate your robot on top of the cost of the robot?

I'm very skeptical, even if this technology worked flawlessly, that this would scale towards a profitable business. I understand that not every robot would require 24x7 human assistance, but still - this is a very optimistic business model.

Robotics has always been in competition with minimum wage labor. How long could you hire a maid before making a return on the cost of the robot? And that's assuming the robot isn't worse, which it is pretty much guaranteed to be.

[corysama]

Their thesis is that you cannot get the training data for a robot in the home from a lab or a simulation. You have to actually put a robot in real homes with all their messy details.

But, how to do that safely? First they build a robot with low gear ratios, low weight, pinch points covered. So, if it literally falls on you it’s low risk.

Then they have humans teleoperating it in first-person VR with 1:1 hand control.

The more times humans do any particular task through the robot, the more the robot learns to do that task in real world situations.

It’s the most thoughtful plan for robotics I’ve seen yet by far.

https://youtu.be/2ccPTpDq05A

[Judgmentality]

Considering the slew of warehouse automation robotics companies I've watched fail, trying to do much simpler tasks in highly controlled environments where they can be surrounded only by trained individuals, "ambitious" would be an understatement.

I get what they're trying to do. I'm pointing out that it's probably an order of magnitude harder to do than many other things that have consistently failed. This is like Elmo coming along and saying The Boring Machine will replace cars and trains. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the space and how to disrupt it while selling ambitious ideas under the guise of being clever.

[noduerme]

In fact, they have openings for robot operators on their jobs page:

https://www.1x.tech/open-positions/android-operator-mountain...

[pzo]

Teleoperation could be useful with geo arbitrage. Whats the cost difference of hiring welder, plumber, cook, maid, taxi driver, security guard, receptionist in US comparing to LATAM or SEA countries? You could pay someone 3x market price of those cheap countries and probably still this would be 2-3x cheaper than in US. I think this is still a huge market even if those robots won't be autonomous.

[numpad0]

> geo arbitrage

.