Apptronik has a totally different approach to building humanoid robots
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 พ.ค. 2024
- Who will win the race to have the world’s first usable general purpose humanoid robot?
I thought I knew all the companies making general purpose robots:
- Tesla
- Sanctuary AI
- Figure AI
- Fourier Intelligence
- Agility Robotics
- Boston Dynamics
I was wrong ... there’s probably a bunch I don’t know. But one that popped up as interesting is Apptronik. They’re based in Austin TX, they're partnering with NASA, and they're building Apollo, a 5’8” 160-pound robot.
In this TechFirst, we chat with CEO Jeff Cardenas. And we learn that he has a completely different approach to building a humanoid robot than probably every other robotic company out there. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I think that some of the first footage in this video is CGI but wasn’t identified as such. That is something that needs to be carefully with to avoid charges of deception. Later footage seems legit but after seeing the CGI it is hard to trust what I’m seeing.
As for legs, they are great when the bot has the brains to learn how to use them instead of having them programmed. Until they legitimately learn how to walk they can’t really be deployed as “walking” and should be kept wheeled for practical applications.
It’s a great project. I just hope they watch how their promotional simulation footage is identified as opposed to their demonstration footage.
Yes, you're 100% right. I should have labeled it.
Yes, the feet are "clipping" thru the floor in the wide warehouse shots where it moves at "human speed." Def CGI. Also true that hardware is not the bottleneck for robotics, and never has been. *a fast wheeled platform could do all of these demo tasks for less cost and complexity, so it's not even a good sales pitch (just a way to find the "must purchase" market).
I haven't seen any videos of androids that are functional off camera or without a carefully programed script. "It can be done" is about as close to lying as it gets. No one can tell you if they are financially practical. Especially when the longer it goes the more the electric car market looks like a big scam.
It could all be cgi
Agreed on the AI generated video, the feet seem to twist mote like a human. Its probably an overlay of a robot onto an human. Its feet in a robot are not able to accomplish those motions and that fluid.
Listening to Jeff was really interesting. How he praised Boston dynamics a competitor shows real class and integrity. Class act
CGI. Come on, you need to label this or put a permanent comment on the video or change the original description.
Is it 😢
I always watch the feet in these videos. 😂 But yeah, an animation tag would’ve been appreciated.
The bald guy & the headset guy looked quite real to me...😂
You mean to label the CGI shots? Clearly some of these are real footage of the android
The tech race is sparking up. Seeing all these companies working as fast as they can to produce the best a.i, robots, vr, ar, self driving cars etc… what a time to be alive. Lets hope that all these things become common place by the end of this decade.
you feel more alive just before your death
becareful what you wish for...AI + robots
can & will compete with humans for resources (energy)
Thanks for covering this
Jeff Cardenas' voice is memerizing.
That on top on a fascinating product and an exciting background story
I found the same. He reminds me of someone, but I can’t put my finger on it.
This company understands the best way to build useful robots. I would love to own or use one of them for app development. Years ago, a design philosophy called SAFE (Simple, Appropriate, Functional, and Economical) was taught. It works. Apollo developers show that their products will be worth investing in. Thanks for telling us about them.
or common sense
It does not matter who wins the race to the first humanoid robot, The marker is too big room for a lot of makers, Apollos use of replaceable batteries are the way to go but the real winner will be the company that can produce to massive scale at the lowest cost. My money is on Tesla but many others will prosper especially if the have specialized robots that are strong in certain tasks.
Looks great! nothing between the ears like my current setup, no paradigm shift required 😁
Wonderfully insightful interview. Open, informative and, quietly, inspiring. Much to reflect on. Can relate to all the points raised, from experience working with my NAO6. That little humanoid shows what an achievement the Alderbaran company made with bipedal robots. Apollo is taking things to a whole new level looking ahead, managing modularity and software enhancement. Great!
Very interesting talk, thank you for sharing!
Very interesting conversation. Thanks.
3:58 this is CGI, robot food go in to floor. I think is should be label what is CGI and what is reality and what is autonomous and what is remote and what is scripted.
yes, you're right
Cost of manufacturing may go way down, but you can bet the corporations won’t pass that savings onto workers or consumers.
why not called them Androids? Isn't that what they are?
yep, you're right
android (n.) A robot with a human appearance. I suspect robots which could pass as human (at some distance at first, but skinned, clothed, all facial features) will be reserved for the android label. Like wristwatch vs. stopwatch. The former becomes a “watch”.
@@csmarkhamwe know these things from sci-fi. All manner of robot styles have been called androids. Including human looking ones like Data from Star Trek. But also others that are humanoid, but not really human looking.
So google won’t sue them for brand and trademark infringement
Because deal with it. That's why.
I for one welcome our robot overlords.
Clearwater was in it ages ago dunno if they're still about? Was designing a seeing eye dog a coupla years back. Was aiming for a 5k price point.
“Why do we spend more time at work than with our families?”
Because no matter how high our productivity becomes, there will always be some worth slogging for. “Men toil to fill their cursed bellies”. Maybe food will become extremely cheap but there will always be something we need and people won’t want to give us for free without compensation for their efforts.
Exactly. The main one is housing. Nobody wants their kids to grow up in a crappy place, so then the race is on to see who can outbid each other to get the best properties in the best cities. People will pay millions for a normal family sized home these days, and it will only get worse. And people will keep working harder and longer to rank higher in this fight for scarce property.
Sure, but the subset of "things you are required to do on pain of homelessness or hunger, that you wouldn't do if you weren't being compensated for them" can go away. Most people's passions, what they're good at, and what's optimally economically useful for them to do don't align.
Note that I'm not making a pro-socialist point if that's what you're afraid of, one can have markets with massive ongoing deflation of goods prices. Already one can use many internet resources for free without needing it to be subsidized by government, simply out of one private citizen or group of citizen's desire to _or_ because there is a business model that enables it (youtube itself, social media platforms, F2P games, etc). In such a world, simply owning something that doesn't deflate relative to goods & services (like a bitcoin or an IP) would be functionally identical to UBI for that person.
Initial clips look like straight up CGI?
Because it is.
The part where we see the robot walk, from 3:39, you can see its feet sinking into the floor now and then. That doesn't happen in real factories. So that is CGI indeed and is misleading if Apptronik claims that this video shows us how far they are developing usable humanoid robot tech. I hope that such was not their intention.
Robots need to exist, work and be effective in a Human-oriented and structured world. It should be able to handle just about any condition that a human might face or have to deal with. Picking up various objects, using tools, navigating steps and stairs, hills, inclines, debris, etc.
None of these companies are saying exactly how they got humanoids walking so quickly, something that was a huge problem up until about maybe 5-6 years ago... well it should be quite obvious that mocap suits are being used to train walking straight away rather than spending months (or years...) studying all the kinematics and trying to assemble a series of programmed motions into (walking) gates. What this means is that the veil has been lifted, it also means humanoids will be coming, but I still think the successes will be with those that supply affordable kits and parts rather than just finished robots, so again China wins the day with things like actuators and motor drivers. Interesting times ahead...
Great interview!
So hands are too difficult for him, and cognitive intelligence is also too difficult. So unless they can drop in Santuary's hands and Covariant's brain, its going to be leagues behind the other humanoid robots...
Lowkey I thought the title was being sarcastic at first 😂
I think the short hour work week is a psychological limitation:
People will work to achieve more than others...until they can't work more because of physiological/health limitations.
I think hydraulics are better than electric actuators. With hydraulics you only need one motor to build pressure. With actuators you need one motor per actuator.
Each joint needs to regulate pressure...with a solenoid.
Hydraulics are binary. You can control them incrementally but the general rule is you can't really do fine control with them like walking, balancing and delicate manipulation.
Actuators are more precise and less dangerous, hydraulics carry a lot of pressure
I believe in combinations of actuators for different use cases. But I also believe that they know what they're doing 😅
Wow, awesome and informative interview. I imagine Apollo riding on a rover on the moon to go build something! You and Elon should collaborate.
CGI or Not they are on a mission to develop a Gold Rush for automated system that could revolutionize the manufacturing industry 🍒
Dexterous hands and finger movement is exactly what Tesla is focusing on and succeeding at right now
4:00 that is clearly Cgi
Apollo is pretty impressive! I'm excited about a "ChatGPT moment" in robotics. However I believe it will come from a Chinese tech company, at least in terms of price/performance because China has both advanced technological progress and massive manufacturing capacity for things like robots.
Do they really actually innovate in any industry though?
@@mjt1517 I think in key areas for robotics China has a strong position. For example the robot dog Unitree Go2 is fairly advanced yet very low cost.
20:00 I want to build my robot factory in Mexico for low labor costs. What no roots at the robot factory?
Hope this isn't CGI. I found it somewhat irritating that you decided it was necessary to make fun of Tesla. Especially since they are eons ahead of this company. I'm actually happy to see that there are now almost 20 companies that have the same or closely the same functionality as you have just shown us. How many years did it take you? I'm sure you each will locate a niche to fulfill.
The parts where the robots walk are CGI. We don't know what this company really is capable of. This is not good for their reputation. How can we trust them?
Its power. How will you charge that thing?
At the beginning they say the battery is swappable
@@OrniasDMFAnd u charge it with the power of John Cena? BS
Swap it for one that is already charged?
that isn't your only problem. Its cost and building or getting the SkelIon Battery to begin with.
I would bet they’ve already thought about all this.
Please 🥺 explain 😮
The first vid of robot removing boxes from a truck. Slow af. A forklift could unload so much faster than that
So...making hands is too difficult ?
For now. He said dexterous hands are.
I wonder why so many companies use humanoid form for general purpose robots without questioning it. It's not obvious to me that the perfect general purpose shape is humanoid. We evolved mainly to climb trees and to hunt, not to work in a factory. Who knows, maybe quadrupeds with 8 tentacles are more efficient? Any thoughts?
Would you rather face a human looking android in the coming apocalypse or an alien looking Cthulhu android? Choose carefully.
This is simple - the current world was built for humans. This is the most logical and financially smart form to deploy into factories and companies quickly without the restructuring of existing infrastructure. Also - a humanoid robot in the future can/will do multiple jobs throughout the day as needed by user.
Why do people keep on asking the same stupid question? We built this world for the human shape so naturally the ideal general robot will be humanoid.
@@MrNote-lz7lh well how about a third arm, huh? How would that not fit naturally into our world? The only stupid thing here is your disrespectful and close-minded remark.
@@mjt1517 Hahaha I guess if an ASI decides to annihilate us, it won't matter. Maybe death by a humanoid looking thing is more "humane" if anything ;)
Naive thinking about spreading wealth to those displaced by robots in the workplace. Corporations will simply demand higher profit margins for shareholders and the top brass.
If Alex Honnold had wheels he would of never been able to scale El Capitan...
🙂
wheels on legs. you're welcome
Where is Susan Calvin?
Imagine robots that could track your health’ like your sugar levels. It would be pretty easy because you would wear a sensor and this information is transmitted, to your phone. It could just as easily be transmitted to a robot that could track your sugar levels and your heart rate and remind you or even bring your medication to you once it senses a change.
You can’t get up off the couch to get your own medication?
Are they publicly traded yet?
So can it fire a gun at humans?
Why not let the robot walk over to the wall, plug itself in, then swap in a new battery, unplug and then get back to work.
Robot manufacturing will be interesting, as the finished robots come off the line they replace human workers at the same time, within months the factory is humanless lol
It can only lift 55lbs? That is a problem. I want 200 or 300 lbs of lift and carry capacity. Settle for 100 to 150 lbs. 55lbs is a no go.
I mean we've been able to build humanoids for decades. The development of the Ai tech is what is making the difference. This dude said nothing about Ai...
I know it's still a bit early but they look like they move really slow. A human can easily out work them right now. Won't they need to move faster so they can work faster? I don't think companies are going to want a robot that increases reduces the company speed by 60%
This part doesn't matter that much for a company. A robot that works 24/7 doesn't need to be as fast as a human worker which only works 8/5. Plus the robot can be much cheaper than paying a human worker to do the same. Being slow can also be fixed by having several robots working in parallel.
@@AirsoftKeksTVYou forgot about shifts, and limited work space. It's unlikely that simply having more robots working in parallel will work in most workplaces. Work shifts replace the human worker that went home at 5, with another one that shows up right as they leave. They need to double the speed of the robots.
@@enermaxstephens1051I work in a factory where this is being done right now, adding slow robots to replace faster humans. The working speed really doesn't matter that much as long as you don't create a bottleneck. And that isn't the case because although humans work fast, they usually don't work without breaks or getting distracted or doing unproductive side-tasks, so overall it is the same outcome.
So when the labor is all provided by robots, and human labor has little value, what will the majority of people do? Most of us do not have the mental skills of Galileo and Newton. Our work is our value.
Human-to-human services will remain, but probably not much else. But that is not soon, we still have 10-20 years or more, it takes time to build (and sell) an army of robots to the whole world - replacing all labor will require billions of robots.
I think we will need some form of UBI
What value would be of a product which was 100% made by a robots which are self assembled and self maintained with zero human intervention? No value at all, aka free product. Tho that transition towards it will be messy. UBI should be implemented at some point.
@@ZripasThe value in a product comes from a number of things. First, the raw materials to make the product are not free. Then the time and energy used in making the product are not free. And the transportation of the product to the user is not free. So the product has to cost something (not free).
Also, most products are NOT priced based on what they cost to make, but what they are able to do. If a robot can do everything at a job that you used to do, then the robot is "worth" whatever you were worth.
@@markschoenberger7825
Raw material price is based on the price you need to put into it to get it out of the ground, if all this is done by those same 100% self sustaining robots, then price is basically zero as you are not doing anything and you are not investing anything, you simply ordering end product and robots figures out how to make one.
And you still looking at it from the perspective of current end to end process. With robots there can be zero human interactions, you would simply "say" to robots "Build me a factory to make product X" and robots does it, from material gathering to making end product in that factory they built.
What we learned from the past, more automated process to make something, results into cheaper end product. This is why you are able to own everything you own today in comparison to people from 500 years ago where owning pair of shoes was a big deal.
We could go into nitpicking about end costs for the "buyer" and all that, but in general if product is made by someone who doesn't need to eat and can 100% self sustain and doesn't want/need money from you, then product would end up free. There might be some sort of regulations in how many of these products you can get, like preventing someone to getting hands on 500000 cars just for shits and giggles, but cost would be dramatically if not entirely driven down to zero.
Nvidia will provide the ai training for these robots
18:24 Interesting that a tech CEO is talking about being conservative and only doing what they know is working. That doesn’t sound like a great strategy. There’s new groundbreaking research almost every day in robotics+AI in various areas including dexterity, physical reasoning, proprioception , vision-based perception, VLA models etc. All these are exciting vectors of converging for a very capable humanoid that can have human-like dexterity and reasoning capabilities.
Tote-moving bot will not just be commoditized but also get cannibalized by smarter bots.
Two days ago, Tesla showed amazing dexterous manipulation with a humanoid for a long-horizon task using vision-centric system and some impressive balancing postures. They seem to have made more progress in 2 years than apptronik has made in 7 years.
Robotics+AI is evolving rapidly. Whoever stays at the edge of the technological sphere will win. There will be multiple winners but none with a conservative strategy.
How does one stay on the edge of a sphere...🧐
@@murc111 Culture of fast-paced engineering and innovation. This is a must-have for a tech company in an emerging domain. Simply hiring great people and throwing money at the problem isn't enough. There has to be an ingrained culture of fostering and catalyzing the talent to do their best. Tesla has achieved it with a combination of factors
1. Making high-stake decisions from first-principles and committing heavily on that decision isntead of hedging their bets. The teams are empowered with incentive structure and leader's autonomy to take completely ownership of their high-stake decisions.
2. No communications hierarchies or order. People are required to jump hierarchies or work with cross org people to get their work done. Check out Tesla's "Anti-handbook Handbook" for new hires.
3. Org incentives encourage failures. Failing > not doing.
4. Flat org structure. Eng directors and VPs report to Musk directly. Same way, there are no bloated mid-management structures just for the sake of it. The culture forces the orgs to be lean.
5. Ability to hire great people because of Tesla's merits in doing cool engineering work over the years. Tesla is either first or second most attractive place for engineering students to work at, as per Unversum surveys. .
how you know wether the most recent research is working according to purpose or not ? requires implementation, analysis, testing, debugging, .... much much work. it 's totally acceptable to rely on working components, to achieve a certain goal quickly and reliable. also hardware is not software, you cannot easily upload a different leg joint.
tesla is building on advancements by preceding companies.
@@danioldan4189 steps for using a compelling resreach are pretty obvious: initial assessment -> feasibility analysis -> prototype/PoC -> iterative refinement -> integration -> pilot -> production -> continuous improvement .
Hardware doesn't have to change to add more capabilities. Tesla released FSD in 2021 and all the cars since 2016 became capable of level 2 autonomy on city roads.
Same applies to robots. They'll keep adding skills and reasoning abilities with over the air updates over time. The Apptronik CEO talks about the same approach in this video too.
What everybody is missing (as far as I can tell) on the cost of robotic labour falling 'to near zero' is that the Govenrments will impose 'robot taxes' to make up for the shortfall in taxing human labour. Robots will not solve all our manufacturing and drudgery jobs because governments will tax the hell out of the robots.
Human hands will be a piece of cake for AGI…
Mexico has moved to the US.
Huh?
@NoidoDev
There are millions of people who are citizens of Mexico who are now living in the United States. Whole towns along the US Mexican border are now completely occupied by people who owe their oath of allegiance to Mexico. This process of slow occupation has accelerated during the Biden administration and no end is in sight.
Where does Tesla fit in ?
Why so humanoid? There are obvoius movements robots can do that humans can't, but nobody takes advantage. For example, wheels use less energy than walking. Also human bodys can't fully rotate or fold, robots could. Robots don't really even need a head.
One thing I had noticed was that some robots seemed to have a similar walking pattern to president Biden.
If Apptronik wants to get more government funding in humanoid robots they might start looking at military applications of humanoid robots.
For if one considers the three d, dull, dangerous, and dirty a combat soldiers faces all three. And if one adds that fourth D, difficult, soldiers face many difficulties as well such as environmental exposure to heat and cold, emotional difficulties, and such.
And here the humanoid bot can serve as a front line soldier and those tasks may not be all that hard to do, march, carry a weapon, load it, aim it fire it, are the basics.
Now as for the stigma of making "killer robots" one would build these to follow rules of engagement (ROEs) such as move to position x and engage any enemy detected their that have an ID confidence great the C at position Y in a designated box of width and depth w and Z over for time t and then move to position Q and wait for new instructions.
And that is not all that difference form launching a missiles at a target only the bot could be more intelligent and not open fire given its ROEs are not met while there is no stopping a missile form hitting its target.
Plus a bot might have a tamperproof recorder that records its actions so that it can be verified that it followed its ROEs and what those were.
And in regard to the mobility and range of bots one can train it to say ride an e-unicycle to move about until it dismounts and goes on foot.
One might Google e - unicycles such as
Top 5 Best Electric Unicycles 2024 | Best Electric Unicycles 2024
Thus instead of the robot having wheels it can have legs which then can enable it to ride on e- unicycles or e bikes just as humans do thus both saving the battery life on the bots as well as moving really fast and taking advantage of those technologies that are already on the market but also be able to get of them and walk when that is needed.
And the impetus for the US to fund this is that one might think that China might be exploring doing the very same and that there may be a race there that the US may not want to fall too far behind and even may want to win.
But to get that funding you may need to employ your show me vs just tell me and thus demonstrate to the government just what a bot could do. And a such train one to ride a e unicycle might be a good start for in their minds they may see humanoid bots as some toy that can barely walk and not as a formidable fighting machine.
But as soon as the see a bot riding say at 30 mph over rough terrain then get off and walk that might provide them the epiphany to see the potential for combat use.
And BTW, one might call these ComBots, short for Combat Bots (and not killer bots). For the main reason to employ these is to save lives in combat by putting the bot in harms way vs having to employ a human to do so.
So one can think of a ComBot not as some super intelligent bot but rather something one step up from a guided missile in that rather than just flying to a target it can walk and or ride to the target with a degree of autonomy as to how it goes about doing that then rather than have a fuse it has an intelligent way to employ a weapon that (unlike its missile cousin) can not fire at all if there is no target or that its ROEs are not fully met.
Thus a ComBot is just a UGV with legs and arms with a high degree of autonomy and not some Hollywood killer bot on a killing rampage. But being humanoid it can put that combat solider out of a job, that job being to charge across a field to attack the enemy while getting shot at and instead having them human work from a more safe position much like those that control UAVs, and thus replace those humans from a very dangerous job that they might not mind at all in being replaced by a robot!
And the other advantage of a humanoid robot vs a human is they don't need food, water, or shelter just electricity and with replaceable batteries one deployed could have freshly charged batteries delivered to it such as by a UAV so that one might lie in the weeds for days in a sleep more and then get a fresh battery from a UAV and lie in the seeds for even more days with no need for food, rest, shelter, or relief from boredom and ready to go into action in a moment.
And as for deployment one can transport then in shipping containers to anywhere in the world ready to fight.
But to get the DoD excited enough to fund these there may be a need for someone to show them what these could do and not just tell them!
Way too long for YT comments.
Maybe the definition of human is 👋
Robot are still clunky, but sometime in the future they are formidable - and we are become fat, lazy and stoopid - thats where we end.
Another one that walks like it has shat itself. Why nobody tries something new? It has fingers but probably no haptic sensors, which kills dexterity. I hope it has ears, sound is so rich in information, but it does not appear to have.
click bait title
APPTRONIK do not appear to be different from any other robot company
no real new news except RAAS (ROBOTICS AS A SERVICE)
Won't the Mexican cartels become the lead manufacturer because of their economic and infrastructure advantages?
Hello Jaff Cardenas with your Apollo.
Why don't you get back to us again,
in say 15 to 20 years? So we can
seriously talk about your planned products.
This CGI video footage is BS and pisses me off.
Are you serious? Posting CGI and talking about real robots?
Where is CGI?
@@NoidoDev In the video for example at 3:41. The foot of the android is sinking in the floor. The whole video is fake.
These are CGI
No offense but I'm not sure anyone can explain how any of these things will save anyone any money.