[traverseda]

So the play here is obvious, use the teleoperation as training data for a more general purpose AI controller. You need that data to make a model in the first place.

What doesn't make sense to me is the cost. Yes, $8000 is probably low for this robot but it's a reasonable price range for something like this. The AI credits though? I know vision LLMs are not cheap, they're not going to run something like Llama3.2vision on every frame. Very curious about the embodied AI architecture that this is going to use, and how it can get cheap enough that it's not going to use $500/month in electricity every month.

[jubilanti]

The world of computer vision is much bigger than multimodal LLMs. You'd run an ensemble of specialized models for 3d mapping, object classification, path validation, and so on. On a raspberry pi 5 8gb you can run what you need to self drive an RC car on an obstacle track at 10 FPS.

[ACCount37]

Today, a lot of it is just integrated VLAs. End to end backprop covers a multitude of sins - a single integrated model stack in cross-attention beats "an ensemble of specialized models".

[Balgair]

The cost is really tough to pin down, yeah.

The way one of their employees told me it to me as like a dishwasher.

Of course the dishwasher should be more expensive. When you add up the hours in labor saved and multiply by the hourly median wage, you get something in the $50k to $100k range.

But it's essentially just a sprinkler.

Ain't no one going to to pay the cost of a new BMW for a dishwasher.

Same thing here for the laundro-bots. Their competition isn't against the time saved for a person to do it themselves. The competition is a maid that does your whole house for $70.

[bigfishrunning]

> Of course the dishwasher should be more expensive. When you add up the hours in labor saved and multiply by the hourly median wage, you get something in the $50k to $100k range.

Except most dishwashers aren't competing against people washing dishes by hand and making the hourly median wage, they're competing against other dishwashers

[shellfishgene]

It may actually be cheaper to have the robot remotely operated all the time from some low cost country...

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Very curious about the embodied AI architecture that this is going to use, and how it can get cheap enough that it's not going to use $500/month in electricity every month.

In practice most of the costs would be the teleoperation costs rather than AI inference.

[yalogin]

8k is cheap if laundry is fully offloaded but will a regular consumer spend 8k on a device that is not proven? I guess there is a subset of consumers that this automatically targets/caters to.

[yladiz]

At what point is it actually cheaper? Laundry isn't that expensive to do yourself, or to outsource if you really don't want to do it yourself.

[phil21]

I'd pay $8k tomorrow for a bot that would 100% do my laundry. That means collecting it from the various dirty clothes hampers throughout the house, bringing it to the washer and dryer, operating the washer/dryer, folding and putting clothes on hangers, and putting them back into the dresser and hung up in closets.

For a bot that just automates an in-house laundry service that washes and folds? Not very interesting since it might save maybe 60% of the time, but practically zero percent of the mental overhead.

This seems like a step towards that I suppose. My house isn't configured to make it an option even if it was a fully-baked product, but if these ever get to the point of actually working without remote teleoperation I'd certainly be in the market.

[ryandrake]

Unless I was physically disabled, elderly, or otherwise unable to do my own laundry, I couldn't even fathom paying a robot (or a maid) to do it. I can maybe understand it if you don't have a clothes washer, and had to wash your clothes manually in the sink or tub or something, but with a washing machine, the machine is already doing 95% of the work! The rest is not difficult or time-consuming. Laundry isn't heavy, and it doesn't take specialized skill or concentration to put them in the machine, start it, or remove them. Not saying your wrong for wanting something like this, but just observing how different people can be with their priorities.

[hed]

We have many kids and well, laundry is omnipresent. I would absolutely pay multiples of this to make the problem go away.

[jstummbillig]

> but with a washing machine, the machine is already doing 95% of the work!

Not sure how literal you were here or if it's more a feeling thing to you: My washing machine takes 1-2 hours per run. I don't believe you (or anyone else) can do all other attached work in 5 Minutes, or anywhere close to it.

[AlecSchueler]

You're defining work as a function only of time, but effort should also be calculated in.

[Planktonne]

If you didn't have a washing machine, it would probably take more than 2 hours, and definitely take far more effort.

[phil21]

It's way less about the time of doing the thing, and much more about the mental overhead of having to remember to do the thing. And needing to do the thing at very inconvenient times because I forgot to do the thing or lacked motivation when I should have done the thing.

This goes for any recurring chore in my life. I love to garden, but watering plants is hell to me after the novelty wears off. I fixed this by installing an automated irrigation system. I get to do the fun bits mostly on my schedule to wind down when I feel like it (pruning, harvesting, staring at plants) and didn't sign myself up for yet another daily chore to do.

My wife is the opposite. She thrives on "chores" or routine simple items like this. She absolutely loves doing laundry to an absurd degree - kind of a zen moment in the middle of her day she can quickly spend 10 minutes here and there to get done. Same goes for cooking. I enjoy planning and creating elaborate meals I've dialed into "perfection" but take me an entire Saturday to accomplish a few times a year. She loves spending 30 minutes in the kitchen most nights to wind down after work - but really hates "big" projects of any type.

I imagine it has a lot to do with executive function. I enjoy large one-off projects (e.g. designing and installing an over the top totally overkill irrigation system) that are eventually "done" but fall apart on repetitive simple things that never end and just reset to be done X hours all over again. I like to have my "mental slate" clean when I wake up for the day, and I find I accomplish far more when I can configure my life in such a way.

As such, this robot as-is would be somewhat useless to me as I'd have to remember to hang up the clothes or walk them up the stairs to put away or whatever even with it. I'd get very little advantage for the spend.

[ezconnect]

The washing machine is the one that needs redesign to incorporate folding.

[fragmede]

We can't even get to a washing machine that's also the dryer though. If it seems hard to get people to adopt even that new technology, then clothes folding is never gonna happen.

[keeganpoppen]

really? you cannot _fathom_ the idea of paying for a robot to do something you, yourself are already capable of doing? someone should tell all these car manufacturers and the like that their cost-benefit analyses of using robots for work humans can do are completely off!

[ryandrake]

I do have a car, but I wouldn't pay for a robot to pick me up, carry me to the car and then chauffeur me around, unless I was physically disabled.

Buying a machine to do difficult, complex, or strenuous work is one thing. Buying a machine to load and operate the other machine seems... different.

[snypher]

They're talking about a household chore and your post compares to an industrial production line. It's not like the Ford executives can walk into the laundry and assemble F-150s.

[no-name-here]

I take your point, but examples like a dishwasher or Roomba are the ones you should be using.

[f6v]

> machine is already doing 95% of the work!

See, I want 100% of the work to be done.

[Kirby64]

You’re not replacing the outsourcing it component though, you’re replacing a maid at home doing it for you. In home laundry services are a very different experience since you don’t have to also go pick up and drop off the laundry.

A service like that can be hundreds a month, so pay off period is on the order of years… which could be worth it.

[stickfigure]

...if the robot lasts years. Or the company, for that matter.

[stubish]

I doubt it will ever be cheaper than doing it yourself, like most things in life. The market is for people unable or unwilling to do it themselves.

Outsourcing can be difficult and expensive in many regions. The lack of an actual human might even be considered a benefit in some cases, such as nursing homes (although you have to weigh the benefits of human contact with the benefits of fewer humans spreading plagues).

[jimmygrapes]

Set price too low to be truly rare luxury show off item, but high enough that expendable income is necessary for first movers. Trade in kind by "gifting" to influencer types: the pop science tech nerd ones to legitimize it by scrutinizing current downsides, the effortlessly luxurious ones to establish it as a brand, and a few mom-core ones to seed the aspiration). Develop better versions from the initial data, drop prices a few times a year via holiday sale or via model deprecation, keep current model pricing high. Develop 3rd Gen and introduce "pro" tier. Very tried and true strategy (many step omissions of course) and imo they nailed the price point for initial show off. It's not really affordable for its market but it's also not unaffordable if you consider the costs of what it would replace if it turns out to work!

[prepend]

Tesla operates vehicles for $100/month. I’m guessing whatever cloud ai this thing needs is less complicated and less money.

[wat10000]

Tesla runs its stuff on ~150 watts of local compute that's bundled into the price of the car. The $99/month is just to rent the software.

[beAbU]

> So the play here is obvious, use the teleoperation as training data for a more general purpose AI controller.

Strong disagree: the play here is to use teleoperation, claim it's AI, make a shit-ton of money and cash out before the house of cards come tumbling down.