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by serf 257 days ago
the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy. it's like positing about the future of robotics by looking at a sumo bot.

what it IS , however, is a remarkable achievement of commoditization; getting a toy like that with those kind of motors would have been prohibitively expensive anywhere else in the world; but much like the Chinese 20k EV, it's not really a reliable marker for the actual future; in fact bottomed out pricing is more-so an indicator of the phase of industrialization that country is in.
1 comments
timschmidt 257 days ago
> the unitree r1 is effectively a useless toy

Only because it's not yet attached to a reasonable AI, which is my point. It's not going to do any heavy lifting, but it could easily do basic house chores like cleaning up, folding laundry, etc if it were. The actuators and body platform are there, and economies of scale already at work.

I guess some folks just can't or won't put 2 and 2 together to predict the near future.

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bchasknga 257 days ago
Your reasonable AI cannot resolve the fact that its arm can only lift 2KG.

I am impressed by Unitree, but the problem that needs to be solved here is not just better software. Better hardware needs to come down in cost and weight to make the generalized robot argument more convincing.

There is still a long way to go for a humanoid to be a reasonable product, and that's not just a software issue.

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timschmidt 254 days ago
> its arm can only lift 2KG

That covers more than 90% of the objects in my home, and most people's.

> the problem that needs to be solved here is not just better software. Better hardware needs to come down in cost and weight

I disagree. Software seems to be the main limitation to me at the moment. Bigger motors and batteries are readily available on the market already. Software is advancing rapidly, and seems to me will quickly be up to the task (i.e. within a few years), but at the moment is still the domain of research projects.

> There is still a long way to go for a humanoid to be a reasonable product

Whether or not you think it's a reasonable product, it's clearly already an available one which is already selling in volume. As with all things, future versions will be more capable.

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