Emergence of the Humanoid Robot

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Humanoid Robots Are Coming of Age

By Wired, May 25, 2023

Eight years ago, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency organized a painful-to-watch contest that involved robots slowly struggling (and often failing) to perform a series of human tasks, including opening doors, operating power tools, and driving golf carts. Clips of them fumbling and stumbling through the Darpa Robotics Challenge soon went viral.

Today the descendants of those hapless robots are a lot more capable and graceful. Several startups are developing humanoids that they claim could, in just a few years, find employment in warehouses and factories.

From Wired

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First General Purpose Humanoid Robot

Precise definition somewhat fluid.

Figure Promises First General Purpose Humanoid Robot The startup’s team includes robotics veterans from IHMC, Boston Dynamics, and Tesla  Evan Ackerman  

Today, a robotics startup called Figure is unveiling “the world’s first commercially viable general purpose humanoid robot,” called Figure 01. Shown in the rendering above, Figure 01 does not yet exist, but according to this morning’s press release, it will “have the ability to think, learn, and interact with its environment and is designed for initial deployment into the workforce to address labor shortages and over time lead the way in eliminating the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs.” Which sounds great, when (or if) it happens.

We are generally skeptical of announcements like these, where a company comes out of stealth with ambitious promises and some impressive renderings but little actual hardware to demonstrate along with them. What caught our eye in Figure’s case is their exceptionally qualified robotics team, led by CTO Jerry Pratt. Pratt spent 20 years at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), where he led the team that took second place at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. Working with DRC Atlas, NASA’s Valkyrie, and most recently Nadia, IHMC has established itself as a leader in robot design and control. And if anyone is going to take a useful humanoid robot from an engineering concept to commercial reality, these are the folks to do it.

Figure was founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock, who also founded Archer Aviation, which has successfully built and is currently flight testing a commercial passenger eVTOL aircraft. Figure was self-funded at the start, but is closing a Series A in the near future. Over the past year, the company has hired more than 40 engineers from institutions that include IHMC, Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Waymo, and Google X, most of whom have significant prior experience with humanoid robots or other autonomous systems.  .. 

Tesla Humanoid Robotics

 Was asked to comment on this, on status, direction and effort involved.  Pointers? 

Tesla is borrowing Autopilot team for Optimus humanoid robot project  in Electric

Fred Lambert - Sep. 20th 2022 3:14 am PT

The CEO has said that the Tesla Bot project has become a priority.

Tesla’s approach to selling Autopilot, and now its Full Self-Driving (FSD) package features before they are ready, is creating some pressure to deliver, but Tesla has missed several timelines already.

CEO Elon Musk has talked about Tesla turning its fleet into 1 million “robotaxi” vehicles by the end of the year, but the goal has now changed to expanding its FSD Beta program, which is still far from being able to perform a robotaxi service.

Many customers are getting impatient to the point that some have filed a class action lawsuit against Tesla over its claims about Autopilot and the FSD package.

Some were also worried that Tesla was spreading itself thin when adding its Optimus humanoid robot project to its plate, and Musk even said that the robot has become a “top priority” at Tesla.

Tesla planned to leverage its work on computer vision for self-driving to use in the robot, which raised concerns considering the automaker has yet to deliver on its self-driving promises despite selling the feature to customers.

Now when an owner asked Musk about a fix in Autopilot on Twitter last night, the CEO seems to suggest that it would have to wait because the Autopilot team is working on Optimus:

Note, Autopilot/AI team is also working on Optimus and (actually smart) summon/autopark, which have end of month deadlines., The deadline at the end of the month for Optimus is the Tesla AI Day 2, during which the company is expected to unveil its first working prototype of the robot.

Tesla apparently also plans to unveil an updated version of its “Smart Summon” and Autopark features at the vent.  Is Tesla spreading itself too thin with this robot project? Should Tesla focus on delivering on its self-driving promises? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.