Ask HN: Creating a consumer humanoid robot – suggestions for apps?

Have you got any videos/photos of the teddy at the current state, the photos on the site look like renders?

killallhumans.exe

Best of luck!

Have you looked / interacted with Pepper and Nao robots? In my experience, Aldebaran Robotics tried hard to go down the "lifelike robot" route, and the issues they encountered are real and hard problems.

A big problem with body control was lack of touch / impact feedback. Do you have plans to integrate sensors on the robot's 'skin'?

Modern ML based perception is expensive (audio, visual, NLP, etc). Modern ML-based full-body planning even more so. Do you intend to go down a hand-crafted route for walking, gestures, grasping, or do you intend to do it all with ML?

For hells sake be careful of the security! Every so often someone makes a teddy shaped thing and they end up being picked up for being able to get remote video or audio from kids.

Oh my goodness that bear looks like a walking nightmare. Black soul-less eyes, gangly arms and legs.

> How does Teddy respect my privacy? > You can tell Teddy to go to sleep, and in that mode the camera is off. Teddy will only wake up when you ask him to.

Oh good. So it is always listening. That's great. At least the form advertises the function.

Who are the people behind this project? There’s no information about the company building this, no privacy policy/tos on the website. Looks like a scam the way it is right now.

$3000. For a teddy bear. How delicate is it, and how easy will it be to repair?

App ideas:

Diagnostics and Repair: to it can help you take itself apart and put itself back together.

BearSwarm/BeoBaer: connect multiple Bear together into a cooperative unit

Bear8s: load balance those units!

WarBear: If these work and only cost $3000 a pop, you can expect the Army to want some.

This is definitely not the first consumer humanoid robot even if you constrain it to robots that can actually walk on two legs. It's important to mention because if you think it is, you might have missed all the things you might learn studying successes and failures.

walk around and randomly vaccinate people passing by!

Add a smoke detector and a carbon monoxide detector. The Smokey Bear!

"mood-tracking the owner and trying to influence his mood through AI"

It would actually be interesting to know how to interpret the usage of AI in the context of GDPR. Since the purpose of the processing must be pre-determined, yet with AI the data collected may be used for a purpose determined by the AI. Also "mood-tracking" will certainly fall under article 9 - special categories. You might end up in a situation where you have to delete all previous data and renew the consent every time someone installs a new "app".

I think a story telling feature would be really great, especially one that could incorporate individuals’ names and characteristics. It would be great if it could dynamically generate The stories, but that’s a more difficult proposition.

"I for one welcome our new uncanny overlords"

> What would you build on top of it?

I'd go for something big and heavy...

A self destruct app

When studying a foreign language unless you live near where the language is spoken, it's extremely hard to practice. Even online it's hard to find someone who doesn't disappear after the first chat and you almost certainly live in different timezones. It occurred to me how useful it'd be to have a little robot to practice with. Something I could sit on my desk, with a language model, that I could try out conversations with. It'd also be convenient if you're not super confident in the language yet since a robot can't judge. I imagine it would end up as a killer app paired with a robotic bear that children can use. You might even be able to sell to the education sector.

Btw, like others have said, it's a bit creepy looking. I didn't realize someone could make a teddy bear and somehow make it look cold and murderous but bravo. If you're going to make a teddy bear, at least make it look soft and cuddly. And give the eyes some life to them please

The ability to walk stairs made for it's size and navigate a room in 3d for example to push a button on the printer. Oh and a modern day equivalent of SHRDLU it with a bear.

App idea: programmable-by-kids (dance) movements

Interesting product, I personally am quite invested in getting humanoids into the hands of people. But I am quite sceptical... Note that everything here is computer generated (nothing here is real). Essentially this is a page of promises.

> Teddy’s Intelligence comes from a GPT conversational model and its custom-developed skills.

It's not going to be the sort of intelligence people are expecting, GPT is still just an algorithm mimicking understanding. You need to manage expectations better.

> Teddy’s freedom of movement comes from its 13 reactive Servo Motors with 19 DOFs.

In the picture it shows the robot holding a bottle. It won't do this very easily at all, especially a smooth bottle.

> Teddy’s Empathy comes from mood-tracking the owner and trying to influence his mood through AI.

Handy-wavy use of empathy - this has not yet been solved.

> We now want to develop some basic apps for Teddy. What would you build on top of it?

Unfortunately you will never get this thing to walk on all surfaces reliably. Bipedal walking is exceptionally difficult and your robot is going to fall over - a lot. Those Dynamixel motors will give out really quickly (the large gears). Your customers are not going to continue paying $100 a month after the first month when this thing breaks.

And this is the least of your worries. There are problems I am sure you are yet to even consider. For example, this thing weighs 2.3kg (5lbs). The motors need to at least be 15kg/cm (I'm guessing AX12). Their stall current will be upwards of 1A. 10 servos in stall condition (legs trapped for example) could be drawing 10A. But you can switch off the motors under special conditions? Then you need to handle back EMF (which will fry all of your motors). This thing is potentially a fire hazard.

My recommendation is to pivot towards a teddy puppy. Walking is easier (larger numbers of ground contacts), less motors (cheaper), less expectation of intelligence, etc. You can save on production costs and ship with a cheaper SBC, smaller battery (dog walk motions can be more efficient), reduce the cost of your platform and get more of your monthly instalments before the thing requires maintenance.

What about an app store that can sell the suggestions in this thread?

I'm curious about your pricing. The $100 is the price? Or that's the deposit? It shows that the robot is $3000 or $100 for 36 months. So "And you can now pre-order him for $100." which initially reads like that's the price, is actually just a deposit? Is that correct? I think you need to clarify the language around that.

I'm sure you couldn't offer the robot for $100, but does everybody you're trying to interest understand that.

I was also commenting on the "first humanoid" statement, so with these issues, I'd suggest you spend a bit of time working on your language and marketing and making sure you're being clear. Don't let little issues like this destroy your credibility and harm your product.

You can be clear AND get interest.

I hope my comments aren't coming across as negative, that's not the point, the point is to try to help because these are some issues that I find are destroying your credibility with me.

Looks like the stuff of my nightmares. I love it.

Which GPT are you using with Teddy? When do you expect you will have the first live demo videos? What do you use for conversational technology - STT/TTS, NLU?

Also, if you could please share your social media so that I can follow your progress. Thank you.

One tip: don't use superlatives like "the first" on HN. It's a trope of marketing rhetoric which will turn off this audience. Even if you are the first, you should make more modest claims and let the audience figure it out for themselves.