{"id":161674,"date":"2023-04-07T04:23:28","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T09:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/the-robots-are-already-here"},"modified":"2023-04-07T04:23:28","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T09:23:28","slug":"the-robots-are-already-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/the-robots-are-already-here","title":{"rendered":"The robots are already here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-robots-are-already-here2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Actuator: What\u2019s this \u2018general purpose\u2019 stuff I keep hearing about?<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>In a blog post published last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/ai.facebook.com\/blog\/robots-learning-video-simulation-artificial-visual-cortex-vc-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Meta asks<\/a>, \u201cWhere are the robots?\u201d The answer is simple. They\u2019re here. You just need to know where to look. It\u2019s a frustrating answer. I recognize that. Let\u2019s set aside conversations about cars and driver assistance and just focus on things we all tend to agree are robots. For starters, that Amazon delivery isn\u2019t making it to you without robotic assistance.<\/p>\n<p>A more pertinent question would be: Why aren\u2019t there more robots? And more to the point, why aren\u2019t there more robots in my house right now? It\u2019s a complex question with a lot of nuance \u2014 much of it coming down to the current state of hardware limitations around the concept of a \u201cgeneral purpose\u201d robot. Roomba is a robot. There are a lot of Roombas in the world, and that\u2019s largely because Roombas do one thing well (an additional decade of R&amp;D has helped advance things from a state of \u201cpretty good\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not so much that the premise of the question is flawed \u2014 it\u2019s more a question of reframing it slightly. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t there more robots?\u201d is a perfectly valid question for a nonroboticist to ask. As a longtime hardware person, I usually start my answer there. I\u2019ve had enough conversations over the past decade that I feel fairly confident I could monopolize the entire conversation discussing the many potential points of failure with a robot gripper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actuator: What\u2019s this \u2018general purpose\u2019 stuff I keep hearing about? In a blog post published last week, Meta asks, \u201cWhere are the robots?\u201d The answer is simple. They\u2019re here. You just need to know where to look. It\u2019s a frustrating answer. I recognize that. Let\u2019s set aside conversations about cars and driver assistance and just [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1491],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}