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Figure 03, our 3rd generation humanoid robot

(www.figure.ai)
392 points lairv | 1 comments | 09 Oct 25 13:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.198s | source
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sksksk ◴[09 Oct 25 14:21 UTC] No.45528098[source]▶
The use cases in their videos are interesting, I suppose the world we live in is build for humans, so it makes sense to build a robot that is human shaped. So we don't need to buy new washing machines and redesign our house to get a robot maid.

The hotel reception use case seems ridiculous though, if you get rid of a human receptionist, you lose the human element of the check in process, which people like. If you're getting rid of the human and losing all the benefits of that, then just replace it with a kiosk (or mobile check in), which will do a far better job than a robot.

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1. andrewrn ◴[09 Oct 25 20:30 UTC] No.45532716[source]▶
I was recently thinking about this dynamic about human-oriented vs efficiency-oriented innovation. We haven't really hesitated (in, I'd argue, the majority of cases) to pick efficiency over human-friendliness. This seems like it will be a big reckoning as robotics arrives. The argument for humanoids is that the world is built for humans, but as robotics start to be capable of completing tasks end-to-end, then suddenly there is no reason to keep the space human-friendly, and humanoids kinda lose their value.

An illustrative example is a warehouse. They're still partly designed for humans because they're not fully automated, but the need to make them human-friendly will disappear soon.