Yet another Hacker News

233 points xnx 4 days ago 59 comments

Main thread: Gemini 4 Argon - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50073879

onlyrealcuzzo 4 days ago | parent

Assuming that models continue to get 90% more efficient every 18 months, and assuming that hardware continues to get 2x more powerful per watt every 2 years...

Aren't we still like a decade away from an Argon model being able to run on battery power for any reasonable amount of time that would fit on a robot that isn't the size of a school bus?

Add on another couple of years for the speed to get to what it likely needs to be to be generally useful instead of narrowly useful?

I mean - I guess we're maybe 5-7 years away from a reasonably priced robot you could plug into the wall like an old vacuum cleaner (that runs on this type of tech).

f6v 4 days ago | parent

I'm naive, but wouldn't industrial applications be enabled by this anyway? You'll have in-house inference hardware that a robot can talk to via local network.

Also, your model probably doesn't need like a lot of its knowledge to control a robot.

onlyrealcuzzo 4 days ago | parent

That's only bringing up the horizon maybe 1 year. At industrial scale - I guess something like an Amazon warehouse could start to be interesting with a local datacenter IN the warehouse within 2-3 years.

From a cost perspective, I just can't imagine that heavily, heavily specialized models wouldn't crush a general model, though - which Amazon already does.

ForHackernews 3 days ago | parent

Everyone thinks specialized models are the ticket, except then they aren't: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

jacquesm 3 days ago | parent

I wonder to what degree that holds up for very limited domains. You have to balance model size, power budget and cost which is a completely different ballgame than looking at a stationary server with a near infinite power budget and where the costs can be amortized over much larger numbers of hits.

Robotics tends to be at the worst possible intersection point of all three of those: limited power budget, relatively small model size and cheap enough to be affordable when embedded into an appliance.

StevenWaterman 3 days ago | parent

Kitchen appliances run Linux now. I think the economies of scale might win regardless

yorwba 3 days ago | parent

Training specialized models for every task is a "general method leveraging computation" in the sense of the Bitter Lesson. Making the best possible model for each task is guaranteed to be at least as good as making one model and using it for everything, and often it'll be better.

whiplash451 4 days ago | parent

And? 5-7 years is nothing at the scale of our modern society and the outcome of what you describe could be enormous.

onlyrealcuzzo 4 days ago | parent

I don't disagree.

It just seems like jumping the shark a little bit.

It's basically completely unviable for a few years still.

altcognito 4 days ago | parent

It's viable today via network.

I don't think it's viable in the sense that they are still in a demo stage.

Also, I would assume these models are going to get bigger before they get smaller (but they will get smaller over the long run)

onlyrealcuzzo 4 days ago | parent

> It's viable today via network.

For a set of tasks that almost no one would use a robot for...

XenophileJKO 4 days ago | parent

I think for 95%+ of applications.. you just need a link to a data center anywhere.

My assumption is the hardware will have one/several smaller models running on it for locomotion, balance, etc.

Then the hardware "phones home" for decision making and planning.

Essentially the planning doesn't need to be close to the device as long as the local models can handle some part of the plan execution and make sure the robot doesn't fall over. The latency shouldn't be an issue. In fact more powerful centralized compute quickly creates an advantage over slower local compute in terms of end to end planning.

jacquesm 3 days ago | parent

I can see some liability issues with that approach.

mediaman 3 days ago | parent

Liability issues will exist regardless of whether compute is on-device or central.

However, if the robot is in a contained environment like a home, there is less third party liability than for something like vehicles. Not none, of course, but less. And when you can get your arms around third party liability, first party liability can be better controlled by contractual agreements.

In general I expect on-device motor execution will allow it to safely come to a stop or enter a safe position if it loses the link to the execution planning cloud model.

Marha01 4 days ago | parent

> Aren't we still like a decade away from an Argon model being able to run on battery power for any reasonable amount of time that would fit on a robot that isn't the size of a school bus?

Sooner or later, the models will stop improving. After that happens, the best models will be etched into model-specific ASICs with weights fixed in mask ROM (like Taalas is already doing), which will result in massive, at least order of magnitude inference efficiency increase.

fassssst 3 days ago | parent

That doesn’t help the RAM situation

aurareturn 3 days ago | parent

They said the same thing for transistor density in new chip nodes. It took 40 years of doubling every 2 years to finally hit a wall.

And although the industry hit a wall in density/area, they switched to scaling in 3D or glueing chiplets together. Moore's Law is still working if you change the definition to transistors/integrated circuit.

SideQuark 3 days ago | parent

Transistors doubled for so long, but pretty much no other technology has come close, so it’s not like going to improve for very long, which is far more common. Transistors only did it due to a quirk in physics, that of electrons being long lasting, super tiny, and fairly controllable. We’re out of such particles to make another set of leaps.

For data bound things, there’s also fundamental laws of information theory, far stronger than physics theories, since they’re theorems about math. And LLMs can only compress knowledge so far, and we’re about at it now.

xnx 3 days ago | parent

Probably not many applications require the full AI compute to be local on device (Self-driving cars and military applications come to mind).

jacquesm 3 days ago | parent

You can already run top of the line models on something that isn't the size of a school bus. The couple of KW you need to run them are the bigger problem, though on very high end hardware you might get double the efficiency.

Robots stand-alone AI do not really benefit from things like batch mode so you want to keep your LLM as high level as possible and your robot's subsystems as autonomous as possible, very light coupling between the two, definitely nothing time-critical. And that's the challenge: in robotics almost everything is time critical.

martythemaniak 4 days ago | parent

I'm a robotics noob currently building a prototype of a snow sweeping robot (www.frost-e.com) using my own design and I'm encouraged to see similar work coming from real places. Namely:

- Zero shot control using a visual harness and action primitives. I've seen this from a few other places as well (https://tml.stanford.edu/homebody/) and it's essentially having a generalist LLM command a robot via a set of predefined actions. Many robots and many tasks can probably be done with this approach, since not everything needs super intricate 6DoF arms or dexterity

- simulation bring-ups: I have a pipeline that takes in satellite imagery and reconstructs the lots and houses in a 3D environment and snows on it so that my virtual robot can learn to clean. With these latest models, you can probably create a higher fidelity digital twin more directly.

- self-improvement: These models (Argon, Astra, etc) can't operate the robot itself, but would be able to create data to distill into smaller models you can actually utilize.

jrflo 3 days ago | parent

Is that an AI generated product demo video? Because I personally would not sign up for a $1000/mo service if the main demo video isn't even real...

martythemaniak 3 days ago | parent

Of course (the watermark is in the lower right), it's just a visualization. I'm spending my money buying parts for the prototype instead of professional renders.

jrflo 3 days ago | parent

You need to disclose that more clearly, at first glance I thought your actual prototype was pictured in the video until I noticed the snow just magically disappeared. I didn't even notice the watermark, and even if I had I wouldn't know that the random 4-pointed star meant "AI Generated Video".

I'd much rather see videos of a prototype than a fictional video that has no bearing on how the thing actually works. Especially since you list pricing on your website, making visitors think it's a currently-operating business.

tenuousemphasis 3 days ago | parent

Enshittification right from the start...

ChrisClark 3 days ago | parent

What video are you looking at, because I can't see any AI generated ones

himata4113 3 days ago | parent

We're going to end up with a factory to build factories that build factories... you could call one such concept factorio!

I think someone should make a game based on this concept.

dpe82 3 days ago | parent

Some of us have been working on precisely that for a while; preparing for when the models are ready. And they're getting close!

foota 3 days ago | parent

Hah, I had basically the idea your company is based on :) It's a neat thing to try out, it makes me hopeful for the future.

strstr 3 days ago | parent

Does that make us the Biters?

himata4113 3 days ago | parent

We've always have been. The engineer is simply a misaligned AI that views all humans as unintelligent creatures on the planet.

comandillos 3 days ago | parent

I am very new to robots and recently decided to go crazy and buy a humanoid from Unitree. I've spent a while building some tools in order to integrate LLMs with vision capabilities that can control the robot motion in a simple manner... and while I saw Opus and Astra crashing against tables, beds and surfaces (yeah, my LIDAR data isn't being used yet), Argon 4 takes a lot of precautions to avoid crashing against walls and other objects! I told my robot to go to a table, and the guy started walking slowly to the table, started steering at it and described the objects in it. Pretty scary for being something I've vibecoded in a matter of hours at home...

Hardwired8976 3 days ago | parent

Being new to a hobby and spending 30k on a robot is crazy, props to your wealth.

mediaman 3 days ago | parent

There are a lot of guys with garages that have a $40k CNC mill in it. If you've got the money -- and in America, a LOT of people have the money -- $30k to be able to experiment with a fairly open platform that may play, as a category, a pivotable role in humanity for the next 15+ years is not very crazy.

New trucks optioned out cost $80k+ and plenty of people pay for that without having much justification of any kind for it.

Shalomboy 3 days ago | parent

> New trucks optioned out cost $80k+ and plenty of people pay for that without having much justification of any kind for it.

In the US, certain purchase categories make taking on debt to cover upfront costs trivially easy. Open robotics platforms are not one of those categories, while automobiles are.

hdjrudni 2 days ago | parent

Automobiles as a whole, yes. Spending $30k+ more than you needed to for a luxury or big honker, no.

vikramkr 3 days ago | parent

Cars are different because there's an industry that provides financing and leasing options to make it very easy to spend beyond your means

ModernMech 3 days ago | parent

It's a misallocation of resources. Actual roboticists can go their entire careers without touching hardware like that, and if they want it they have to spend years writing grants to get ONE to split between three other researchers and a dozen grad students.

Meanwhile a guy who made a fortune in tech optimizing ad placements (not saying that's OP) can pick one up on a lark, and as you said it usually ends up in the garage next to other expensive toys like an $80k truck or autonomous Tesla. Also the $80k trucks are a great example because they're more of a status symbol, just like the robots will be.

redanddead 2 days ago | parent

I still don’t understand why ads are so profitable. Seems to be one of the few real business models

SR2Z 1 day ago | parent

Of course they used go their whole careers without seeing these robots, they've only been around for three years and used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

These days, $30k is cheap enough for a university lab and so a lot of them have picked up these models.

dyauspitr 3 days ago | parent

How much was it?

comandillos 3 days ago | parent

Around 5.9k euros in Germany for the R1 Pro.

It's 1.23 and weights ~30kg. Even though only the R1 Edu can be in theory programmed, it can be easily modded to enable SSH and root access to deploy custom movement policies and interact with the different on-board daemons to control the movements, grab the video data, etc.

I bought a second-hand Intel DeepSense camera and plugged it on one of the spare USB ports available in the main board to have 3D sensing (even though I really need to play a bit more with it). Right now I am playing with MuJoCo for RL training of new policies, integration with VLAs like NVIDIA Isaac GR00T and integration with LLMs.

I have to say its being a wild ride, and despite the small size of the robot, I have already injured myself with it when playing with the walking policies (If you activate a policy while its hanging, it starts literally kicking and punching you...) I cannot image those owning with the bigger brother of it, the G1...

dyauspitr 3 days ago | parent

Thank you, that’s insanely cheap. I might consider getting one.

comandillos 3 days ago | parent

As a tip from an owner... if you are planning to play around, maybe even the robot dog (Go2) can be a good start and comes with a LIDAR preinstalled. When humanoid robots enter into zero-torque / damping mode, it's 30 kg falling to the floor. I know it might sound stupid, but I didn't realize how heavy and scary this is, at least for me, once you have it in front of you.

nh2 3 days ago | parent

Put stones into a desktop PC until it weighs 30kg and drop it from 1.20 m height while its running, onto your parquet, a couple times, I guess, to know if you and whoever lives with or below you is up to robotics testing?

itissid 3 days ago | parent

Do you think the R1 you got can actually be taught to clean dishes and put them in a dishwasher in their specific sections? I see it doing so in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1JIyXM5qGw

comandillos 3 days ago | parent

The one in that video is the G1, which is a bit taller and comes with more sensors, but there's a trick and it is the dexterous hands, which can easily cost 10k each.

Based on my very limited knowledge... if you would have dexterous hands with sensitivity on them you could theoretically train a VLA model to do that task, planned by a high-level model like Argon 4, that orchestrates everything. That would as well require in first place a VLA that has similar tasks in its training set and fine-tune it by means of recording hundreds of examples performing teleoperation of the robot hand and arms movements.

Not easy, but definitely getting more and more doable these days.

PS: Didn't spend 20k on hands for my 6k robot, but can confirm it has the cable harness to support them :D

MassiveOwl 3 days ago | parent

I'd like to do this too.

What's the latency like? Is the llm used to create an instruction set for the robot? How is it interrupted for reflex actions like controlling stumbling?

comandillos 3 days ago | parent

The LLM right now tells a much lower level neural network controlling the legs, arms and head what and how to move at a ~ 500Hz freq, which controls thing like the stumbling. All motor joints and IMU inputs are given to an ONNX-based RL-trained NN which then outputs motor movements (scary since its works well for the scenarios where its has been trained, but it goes in unexpected ways for untrained scenarios).

In any case latency is acceptable for navigation I guess, but avoiding moving obstacles is definitely a no-go right now.

TacticalCoder 3 days ago | parent

I'd love to play with this but something freaks me out: we heard no later than yesterday hackers ruining tens of millions of food by heating connected fridges in supermarket in France.

What happens when people decide to hack the Unitree robots and have them pick up knives and stab their owner and then go on a spree in the street?

Before people say: "But that's never going to happen, nobody would ever do that!" I'd like to state again the fact that people did just remotely hack fridges to ruin food.

"But ruining food for everybody is nothing, it's just kids playing around, people would never hack robots to hurt other humans!".

Is that what people really think?

Or do they think that "this time programmers managed to create secure software that cannot be hacked into"?

casey2 3 days ago | parent

Hacking into what exactly? It's entirely up to the user if they want to connect their robot to an insecure webserver control hub.

The difference between you and most professionals is that we don't play. Groceries weren't playing with their refrigerators, they were attacked, the government can find and punish or kill the criminals if they continue their pattern of failure to bring justice the world will move past them.

dyauspitr 3 days ago | parent

It’s mildly impressive, but Google should be wiping the floor with its competition with all the resources it has. This intelligence isn’t even as good as figure 3. Unitree robots are basically doing parkour while this thing has to be hung up by a hook.

b89kim 3 days ago | parent

Google already has a dedicated robotics line called 'Gemini Robotics,' which is designed to support multiple robots. And itt's important to distinguish that the Argon implementation targets a completely different set of tasks compared to those robotics-specific models. Similarly, Unitree's parkour model isn't designed for manipulation tasks.

alpineman 3 days ago | parent

Can we just not throw trash on the ground in the first place?

itissid 3 days ago | parent

Awesome, now only if i could get my hands two of those robotic hands and make myself my dish cleaning slave...

dr_dshiv 3 days ago | parent

Anyone try it with the SO101?

krzyk 3 days ago | parent

Is there something one could try out with not crazy costs? E.g. for $250? I've got some rpi 4 (and rpi zero w) laying around waiting to be used if that helps.

Seeing prices like 5k EUR is a bit too much for a hobby.

brohee 3 days ago | parent

MicroDuck, but unlikely to get it for Christmas https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/

krzyk 1 day ago | parent

This looks fun.

Unfortunately the price when including shipping and taxes is fro me 455 EUR, which is twice my budged :(