"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?""Oh.
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If these people watched ants more they wouldn't be so blithe about robots.
I watched an ant carry a feather 15 times* longer than her body up a wall into a crack since she was enjoying chewing on the end and didn't want to share with other ants.
It would put every human gymnast to shame. It makes every robot look like a joke.
But that's millions of years of adaption.
I do think we'll make progress, but it will be hard work. Not magic.
*it was more like just 6 times, but still
much of the world probably mistakes "magic" for "someone else did all the hard work".
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@dingodog19 @futurebird @mxchara or looked at the cost of even a single stepper motor
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@clew @Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
(To be clear, I love robotics, it is the best job, even better than crazy radio shit)The problem is that any fix requires fixing multiple levels at once, and those levels are in different, often warring disciplines.
For instance, if you find a vendor underspecced a motor brake (they always do) now you need to reduce the length of limbs, the available torques in software, the available currents in power management, oh right that changes which constraints bind the constraint solver so I hope the controller software has hopped on to renormalizing Jacobians an' shit, also wake up the contract lawyer, negotiate building access for the vendor's technicians, and probably 3D-print some little stop widgets as well to clip onto the motor to backstop any broken brake springs, but maybe those can wait until overnight. Also the new constants for the balance controller to avoid stressing that motor cause the robot to make lots of quick stomping steps, annoying the tenants below your lab because the vibration aerated their anaerobes or something, so your landlord is also on the phone now.
Realistically no individual person in this job _can_ be a specialist in only one area; everyone needs to know enough of everything to at least talk to each other. That sort of hyper-generalist workplace is an absolute trip to work in. And it isn't going to get solved by "AI" in short-to-medium time, although several parts of it will become moderately simpler or cheaper.
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird This is one of those posts where the comment thread turns into a wonderful read about a tangially related topic, in this case robotics.
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If these people watched ants more they wouldn't be so blithe about robots.
I watched an ant carry a feather 15 times* longer than her body up a wall into a crack since she was enjoying chewing on the end and didn't want to share with other ants.
It would put every human gymnast to shame. It makes every robot look like a joke.
But that's millions of years of adaption.
I do think we'll make progress, but it will be hard work. Not magic.
*it was more like just 6 times, but still
@futurebird @nagaram that and the square-cube law
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If these people watched ants more they wouldn't be so blithe about robots.
I watched an ant carry a feather 15 times* longer than her body up a wall into a crack since she was enjoying chewing on the end and didn't want to share with other ants.
It would put every human gymnast to shame. It makes every robot look like a joke.
But that's millions of years of adaption.
I do think we'll make progress, but it will be hard work. Not magic.
*it was more like just 6 times, but still
@futurebird @nagaram off topic, but now whenever I watch a character on Archer say “do you want ants? because that’s how you get ants,” I think of you
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"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird a sad but relevant point is that taking care of people is so much harder than injuring them, and even our injuring robots are not that great.
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I had a little note in my calendar because this conversation was two years ago.
@futurebird tangentially, i bet that any person who believes in developing fully robotized bedpan changers with the current technology never had to care for the bedridden people.
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@futurebird tangentially, i bet that any person who believes in developing fully robotized bedpan changers with the current technology never had to care for the bedridden people.
There’s the tech solutionist who invented leaded gas, became bedbound, invented a movement harness, and died strangled in it, right?
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"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird I want my robots to be soft robotics so when they bump into me they don't kill me, but that brings a whole new world of robotic challenges, but robotic octopus tentacles would be neat :~)
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."@futurebird I'm sorry, but I just pictured a robot trying to shove a phone into an elderly person's mouth while saying, "Here's your toast, enjoy." Given the current state of LLM hallucinations, that could easily happen.
-
"How will an LLM change the bedpans in the nursing home?"
"Oh. Robots. Obviously."
"... So, you'd say the greatest obstacle to robot home assistance is... what? Software?"
"Ah. I see why you are skeptical. But you have not considered that the LLM will also design better robots."
"Really? That sounds amazing. Can we do it right now?"
"Two years."
"Oh."
"..."
"..."
"What do you mean. 'oh'?"
"Nothing. I'm... I'm so excited. For the robots. Like you said."
"You're mocking me."
"No. I would never."From what I understand, one problem of robotics is indeed software, as in understanding and implementing real-time coordination of complex movements (things that are obvious to us because we don't even think about it).
And AI is indeed a path considered to bring promising results (I mean, considered by people who are actually working on it, not just by bullshit-peddlers). -
@clew @Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
(To be clear, I love robotics, it is the best job, even better than crazy radio shit)The problem is that any fix requires fixing multiple levels at once, and those levels are in different, often warring disciplines.
For instance, if you find a vendor underspecced a motor brake (they always do) now you need to reduce the length of limbs, the available torques in software, the available currents in power management, oh right that changes which constraints bind the constraint solver so I hope the controller software has hopped on to renormalizing Jacobians an' shit, also wake up the contract lawyer, negotiate building access for the vendor's technicians, and probably 3D-print some little stop widgets as well to clip onto the motor to backstop any broken brake springs, but maybe those can wait until overnight. Also the new constants for the balance controller to avoid stressing that motor cause the robot to make lots of quick stomping steps, annoying the tenants below your lab because the vibration aerated their anaerobes or something, so your landlord is also on the phone now.
Realistically no individual person in this job _can_ be a specialist in only one area; everyone needs to know enough of everything to at least talk to each other. That sort of hyper-generalist workplace is an absolute trip to work in. And it isn't going to get solved by "AI" in short-to-medium time, although several parts of it will become moderately simpler or cheaper.
@nonnihil @clew @futurebird @mxchara And I work at the autonomous behavior layer, where I just kind of assume magic is happening to keep it upright while I figure out what control signals I need to send to get it to step backwards without falling over so it can open a door. But every time something goes wrong with my behavior, there needs to be a meeting with the rest of the team to figure out which thing is either (a) not working or (b) working precisely as intended but someone made an assumption that wasn't true and now I have to decide whether not stomping is more important than opening a door or not. And every behavior introduces the same fractal interdependencies into the system as a whole, and half the stuff is only partially documented, so I end up digging into some code a grad student wrote fifteen years ago to figure out why a sensor produces this weird artifact on the third Tuesday of the month (and it turns out it's because there's a lab meeting on the third Monday so people work late and the robot battery starts a bit less full on Tuesday).
Humanoids are the worst for almost everything. Give me R2-D2 any day.
-
I had a little note in my calendar because this conversation was two years ago.
@futurebird I've been wondering about the history of how all these amazing home robots started appearing
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@clew @Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
(To be clear, I love robotics, it is the best job, even better than crazy radio shit)The problem is that any fix requires fixing multiple levels at once, and those levels are in different, often warring disciplines.
For instance, if you find a vendor underspecced a motor brake (they always do) now you need to reduce the length of limbs, the available torques in software, the available currents in power management, oh right that changes which constraints bind the constraint solver so I hope the controller software has hopped on to renormalizing Jacobians an' shit, also wake up the contract lawyer, negotiate building access for the vendor's technicians, and probably 3D-print some little stop widgets as well to clip onto the motor to backstop any broken brake springs, but maybe those can wait until overnight. Also the new constants for the balance controller to avoid stressing that motor cause the robot to make lots of quick stomping steps, annoying the tenants below your lab because the vibration aerated their anaerobes or something, so your landlord is also on the phone now.
Realistically no individual person in this job _can_ be a specialist in only one area; everyone needs to know enough of everything to at least talk to each other. That sort of hyper-generalist workplace is an absolute trip to work in. And it isn't going to get solved by "AI" in short-to-medium time, although several parts of it will become moderately simpler or cheaper.
@nonnihil @clew @futurebird @mxchara You should check out the Engineering Reliable Autonomous Systems conference on May 28-29! (There's a virtual option to get access to all the talks, so you don't have to fly to Zagreb.)
https://2026.ieee-eras.org -
@nonnihil @clew @futurebird @mxchara And I work at the autonomous behavior layer, where I just kind of assume magic is happening to keep it upright while I figure out what control signals I need to send to get it to step backwards without falling over so it can open a door. But every time something goes wrong with my behavior, there needs to be a meeting with the rest of the team to figure out which thing is either (a) not working or (b) working precisely as intended but someone made an assumption that wasn't true and now I have to decide whether not stomping is more important than opening a door or not. And every behavior introduces the same fractal interdependencies into the system as a whole, and half the stuff is only partially documented, so I end up digging into some code a grad student wrote fifteen years ago to figure out why a sensor produces this weird artifact on the third Tuesday of the month (and it turns out it's because there's a lab meeting on the third Monday so people work late and the robot battery starts a bit less full on Tuesday).
Humanoids are the worst for almost everything. Give me R2-D2 any day.
@Robotistry @clew @futurebird @mxchara
Yeah, we suffer hard from the software model of independent boxes that abstract complexity, while robotics is the opposite of that at every point.(Also, for sensor artifacts, nobody ever has produced the special hell that is automotive radars. I'm wildly pro-radar but those things are designed to make engineers fight.)
My personal dream is for us to abandon humanoid/vertebrate-mimic body plans _and_ sharing floor real estate with humans and just start building ceiling squids. All humans will love tentacles coming out of the ceiling to help them!
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@Robotistry @clew @futurebird @mxchara
Yeah, we suffer hard from the software model of independent boxes that abstract complexity, while robotics is the opposite of that at every point.(Also, for sensor artifacts, nobody ever has produced the special hell that is automotive radars. I'm wildly pro-radar but those things are designed to make engineers fight.)
My personal dream is for us to abandon humanoid/vertebrate-mimic body plans _and_ sharing floor real estate with humans and just start building ceiling squids. All humans will love tentacles coming out of the ceiling to help them!
I have long felt that the upper corners of our boxy rooms are under-used. I was only going to put triangular lights in them, but clearly the lights would be more useful on tentacles.
(You know that briefly household appliances tapped into the gas lines that fueled ceiling gaslights, yes? Design precedent!)
-
@clew @Robotistry @futurebird @mxchara
(To be clear, I love robotics, it is the best job, even better than crazy radio shit)The problem is that any fix requires fixing multiple levels at once, and those levels are in different, often warring disciplines.
For instance, if you find a vendor underspecced a motor brake (they always do) now you need to reduce the length of limbs, the available torques in software, the available currents in power management, oh right that changes which constraints bind the constraint solver so I hope the controller software has hopped on to renormalizing Jacobians an' shit, also wake up the contract lawyer, negotiate building access for the vendor's technicians, and probably 3D-print some little stop widgets as well to clip onto the motor to backstop any broken brake springs, but maybe those can wait until overnight. Also the new constants for the balance controller to avoid stressing that motor cause the robot to make lots of quick stomping steps, annoying the tenants below your lab because the vibration aerated their anaerobes or something, so your landlord is also on the phone now.
Realistically no individual person in this job _can_ be a specialist in only one area; everyone needs to know enough of everything to at least talk to each other. That sort of hyper-generalist workplace is an absolute trip to work in. And it isn't going to get solved by "AI" in short-to-medium time, although several parts of it will become moderately simpler or cheaper.
“warring disciplines“: do these skirmishes make discipline boundaries seem more unavoidable, or more contingent?
-
I had a little note in my calendar because this conversation was two years ago.
@futurebird that is perfect punch line
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@Robotistry @clew @futurebird @mxchara
Yeah, we suffer hard from the software model of independent boxes that abstract complexity, while robotics is the opposite of that at every point.(Also, for sensor artifacts, nobody ever has produced the special hell that is automotive radars. I'm wildly pro-radar but those things are designed to make engineers fight.)
My personal dream is for us to abandon humanoid/vertebrate-mimic body plans _and_ sharing floor real estate with humans and just start building ceiling squids. All humans will love tentacles coming out of the ceiling to help them!
“we suffer hard from the software model of independent boxes that abstract complexity”
And SO DO PROGRAMMERS, amirite, haw! (Try the veal pen.)
