1.
This robot arm can do your tidying up.
TidyBot, a research “mobile manipulator” from Princeton, successfully puts away 85.0% of objects in real-world test scenarios.
It uses large language models to quickly learn preferences (e.g. shirts on the shelf vs in a drawer).
Instruction following used to be one of the great challenges for home robots. LLMs solved that problem at a stroke.
I have previously speculated about portable home robot arms…
From 2021:
it would pick up all the toys and tidy them away, shelve any books, and find the TV remote control and put it back in the regular place.
Or do the washing up. Or open my post.
From 2022:
Knead sourdough. Mix cocktails. Catch tiny house plant flies out of the air.
Or, having used my credit card to buy material, knowing that today’s AIs can already author web apps, build furniture: hey siri make me a table.
Why not? What gives?
2.
Here’s a very fast robot.
This robot hand will beat you at rock-paper-scissors 100% of the time.
It can recognise a competing hand gesture in 1 millisecond and move its own hand to make the winning gesture to complete at the same time.
At a certain point in the future, it will be cheaper for me to purchase a superhumanly quick catching robot to follow me around in case I drop my iPhone versus buying AppleCare in case of a shattered screen.
I wonder when the cost crossover point will be. Sooner than we imagine, I bet.
3.
A robot bedside lamp that walks like a spider (YouTube).
With this, you don’t have to be afraid when you leave your room to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Except for the fact that you are following a lamp carried by a scuttling ROBOT SPIDER I guess.
The robot is made by user @lanius_movie who is an individual inventor in Japan.
See also their robot spider laundry basket controlled by ChatGPT:
I have started an experiment where housekeeping robots work autonomously based on the conditions inside the home. When the washing machine finishes drying, the walking laundry basket goes ahead and waits in the laundry area. I’m letting ChatGPT handle the decision-making process.
I want this now?
Observations:
- That laundry basket video? 74 views. Their most popular vid, the spider bedside lamp: 5,130 views. That’s all. Frankly we deserve to live with domestic drudgery if we can’t pay attention to stuff like this.
- I can’t think of any of my home furnishings that wouldn’t be improved with (a) legs and (b) autonomy.
4.
Here’s a very slow robot for yard work.
In April, Nat Friedman posted on X:
Instead of leaf blowers, I want a quiet little robot that picks leaves up one at a time and puts them in a bag, at night while I’m sleeping.
By August, a small team had made it: here’s a video clip.
And that feels ideal?
Instead of noisy and quick and energy intensive…
…why shouldn’t a robot bask in the sun during the to charge its batteries, and quietly move around picking up leaves one by one all night?
Look, you lazy trillionaires.
Give me a robot that can defrag my home.
Let me point at any object and say where it should be instead.
That toy should be upstairs. Those shoes should be in the tub. Move any used crockery to where the dishwasher is. All t-shirts older than X years should be gathered for recycling.
Overnight, and while we’re out, the domestic defrag robot moves all the things to other rooms, upstairs and downstairs, and stacks like objects neatly.
It doesn’t move at all if anyone is present.
It doesn’t matter how unhurried it is. It has all the time in the world.
1.
This robot arm can do your tidying up.
TidyBot, a research “mobile manipulator” from Princeton, successfully puts away 85.0% of objects in real-world test scenarios.
It uses large language models to quickly learn preferences (e.g. shirts on the shelf vs in a drawer).
Instruction following used to be one of the great challenges for home robots. LLMs solved that problem at a stroke.
I have previously speculated about portable home robot arms…
From 2021:
Or do the washing up. Or open my post.
From 2022:
Or, having used my credit card to buy material, knowing that today’s AIs can already author web apps, build furniture:
Why not? What gives?
2.
Here’s a very fast robot.
This robot hand will beat you at rock-paper-scissors 100% of the time.
It can recognise a competing hand gesture in 1 millisecond and move its own hand to make the winning gesture to complete at the same time.
At a certain point in the future, it will be cheaper for me to purchase a superhumanly quick catching robot to follow me around in case I drop my iPhone versus buying AppleCare in case of a shattered screen.
I wonder when the cost crossover point will be. Sooner than we imagine, I bet.
3.
A robot bedside lamp that walks like a spider (YouTube).
Except for the fact that you are following a lamp carried by a scuttling ROBOT SPIDER I guess.
The robot is made by user @lanius_movie who is an individual inventor in Japan.
See also their robot spider laundry basket controlled by ChatGPT:
I want this now?
Observations:
4.
Here’s a very slow robot for yard work.
In April, Nat Friedman posted on X:
By August, a small team had made it: here’s a video clip.
And that feels ideal?
Instead of noisy and quick and energy intensive…
…why shouldn’t a robot bask in the sun during the to charge its batteries, and quietly move around picking up leaves one by one all night?
Look, you lazy trillionaires.
Give me a robot that can defrag my home.
Let me point at any object and say where it should be instead.
That toy should be upstairs. Those shoes should be in the tub. Move any used crockery to where the dishwasher is. All t-shirts older than X years should be gathered for recycling.
Overnight, and while we’re out, the domestic defrag robot moves all the things to other rooms, upstairs and downstairs, and stacks like objects neatly.
It doesn’t move at all if anyone is present.
It doesn’t matter how unhurried it is. It has all the time in the world.