This is an excellent write-up and has successfully changed my opinion on something I think will prove critical in the near future: I always laughed at humanoid robots, assuming they were being built for "comfort" reasons. I now realise this is almost certainly the most reliable way to solve the general robot problem - not just for the reasons the OP lays out, but because the whole world is already built for human-shaped agents anyway.
Is the issue also a lack of available sensor data?
Our own nerves produce a huge amount of data. Our eyes and balance also contribute to a very rich picture to enable movement and kinematics. This is all fused into usable feedback.
Arms on fixed axis with disconnected vision feel like we are still very far away from true robot training.
I read once analysing EEG (brain electrical activity) data is like standing outside a football stadium and trying to understand what the coach is saying from the roars of the crowd.
The feed back loop is getting reduced by those new ways of training, simulation and video generation with realistic physics is kind of changing the game.
Our own nerves produce a huge amount of data. Our eyes and balance also contribute to a very rich picture to enable movement and kinematics. This is all fused into usable feedback.
Arms on fixed axis with disconnected vision feel like we are still very far away from true robot training.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y8aq_ofEVs&pp=ygUKbnZpZGlhI...
PS: It's sad that robotic does not seems to get a lot of traction on HN :(
- https://www.nvidia.com/fr-fr/ai/cosmos/
- https://dreamzero0.github.io/
- https://generalistai.com/blog/gen-1.5