The Age of (humanoid) Robots
Powered by the current AI revolution we are going to see more and more robots entering our daily lives. But not the cringe ones we've seen at some restaurants. Let's dive in.
👋 Hello! I’m Linus, and welcome to this 🔓 open edition 🔓 of my weekly newsletter. Each week, I delve into all things AI, answering your questions, writing op-eds, and creating AI tutorials.
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The TLDR;
Robot Names are linked to videos of each robot, and company names are linked to corresponding websites. To save you a bunch of time.
I hope you enjoy spending some time here and get a good baseline of whats currently going on in the land of (humanoid) robotics.
The Age of (humanoid) Robots
By no stretch of the imagination is this a new field. We have all grown accustom too men with hockey sticks trying to beat robots. This has all literally gone on for decades. I vividly remember how extremely amazed I was about the ASIMO robot from Honda a little over 13 years ago. But ASIMO is older than that. It started as a research project back in 1986.
To say that Honda was early to the humanoid game is an understatement. Actually it’s insane that the robotics industry seemingly have been standing still since ASIMO got unveiled 13 years ago.
When you look at the early videos of him running, walking, interacting, it was already super impressive back then. Not downplaying any of the current companies, but the somewhat older me is a bit disappointed in how long it has taken us to get here.
Today, with the wave of AI washing all over all faucets of our world, humanoid robots are getting better and better at understanding the world around them, interact with us humans in a more natural way and more importantly getting cheaper and faster to manufacture at scale. We’re simply at the precipice of something absolutely gigantic in proportions compared to anything that came before it.
A few days ago Boston Dynamics said goodbye to the Atlas HD robot, and thanked it for its services. Then just 1 day later they unveiled the new Atlas robot, and its one of a kind, omnidirectional upper torso, legs and head. If you playback the video below a few times, you can see that not only can it turn its torso 180 degrees, it can also invert its legs, and point them backwards or forwards, making it basically omni-directional with far more degrees of freedom than a human ever could.
It will be interesting to keep tabs on the new Atlas, and see if it sports the same abilities when it comes to parkour and lifting heavy gear as its predecessor.
Tesla Optimus
We also just got a new video from Tesla showcasing some of what Optimus has been up too. Showed it to my 4 year old, and she asked why it was moving so slow 😉 – the younger generation will not thing this is odd at all. For them this is as normal as television is to many of us.
What are you most excited about when it comes to robotics and more so even humanoids? Let me know in the comments or just reply to this email.
Startup Dad Pod
I was recently on the startup dad pod, where I spent an hour talking about male fertility, time delusion, the gameboy and artificial intelligence. Enjoy.
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Impressive and stunning what is happening right now in the area of humanoid robots.
Any idea why that happens right now after a long time without real progress?
Does AGI need a body? 😜
I love this stuff so much. Our future keeps getting more exciting.
P.S. Unrelated, but I just skipped ahead and watched the section of your interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIJDVGUQrJ0&t=787s and appreciated it.