The video titled “Boston Dynamics founder on Elon Musk and Optimus robot | Marc Raibert and Lex Fridman” provides valuable insights into the world of robotics and the competition in the field. In the video, Marc Raibert, the founder of Boston Dynamics, discusses his admiration for Elon Musk’s work with Optimus robot and his thoughts on competition in the robotics space.
Raibert expresses his admiration for Elon Musk as a technologist, citing Musk’s work with Tesla and SpaceX as impressive achievements in the industry. He acknowledges Musk’s ambition and resources as a driving force for innovation. Raibert also acknowledges other competitors in the robotics space, such as Figure and EP Tronic, while emphasizing the importance of realistic use cases and the challenges of making money in robotics.
The video provides an insightful look into the world of robotics, competition in the field, and the potential for future advancements in humanoid and legged robots. Raibert’s perspective offers valuable insights for anyone interested in the rapidly evolving field of robotics.
Overall, the video offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of robotics competition, with a focus on the potential for advancements in humanoid and legged robots. It provides valuable insights from an industry expert and offers valuable perspectives on the future of robotics technology.
Watch the video by Lex Clips
Video Transcript
Let me ask you about some competitors sure you’ve been uh complimentary of Elon and Tesla’s work on Optimus robot uh with this their humanoid robot what do you think of uh their efforts there with the humanoid robot you know I really admire uh Elon uh as a technologist I think that uh
What he did with Tesla was just totally mindboggling that he could go from this totally Niche area that you know less than 1% of anybody seemed to be interested to making it so that essentially every car company in the world is uh trying to do
What uh what he’s done so you got to give it to him then look at SpaceX you know he’s basically replaced NASA if you could that might be a little exaggeration but not by much um so you know you got to admire the guy and uh
You know I wouldn’t count him out for for anything you know I don’t think uh Optimus today is uh is where Atlas is for instance I don’t know it’s a little hard to compare them to the other uh companies uh you know I I I visited figure I think
They’re doing well and they have a good team uh I’ve visited EP tronic and I think they’re they have a good team and they’re doing well uh but Elon has a lot of resources he has a lot of ambition I like to take some credit for his
Ambition I think uh I think if I read between the lines it’s hard not to think that uh him seeing what Atlas is doing is a little bit of an inspiration I I hope so do you think Atlas and Optimus will will hang out at some point I would
Love to host that you know now that I’m not at Boston Dynamics you know I’m not officially connected I am on the board but I’m not officially connected I would love to host a uh robot meetups a ro up Meetup yeah does the AI Institute work with spots
And atlases is it focus on spots mostly right now as a platform we have a bunch of different robots we bought everything we could buy so we have uh uh spots uh I think we have a good siiz Fleet in them I don’t know how many it is but a good
Size Fleet we have a couple of animal robots um you know animal is a company founded by Marco hutter even though he’s not that involved anymore but we have a couple of those we have a bunch of arms like uh you know francas and uh us robotics uh because you know even
Though we have Ambitions to build stuff and we are bu starting to build stuff uh you know day one getting off the ground we just you know just bought stuff and uh I love this like robot playr you’ve built you can come over and take a look
If you want that’s great so it’s like all these kinds of robots legged arms it doesn’t feel that much like well there’s some areas that feel like a playground but it’s not like they’re all Frolic together hey again maybe you’ll arrange it uh a robot Meetup um but in general what’s
Your view on competition in the space for especially like humanoid and leg of robots are you are you excited by the competition or the the friendly competition I think that um it it doesn’t you know I don’t think I don’t think about competition that much uh you
Know I’m not a commercial guy uh I think for many years at Boston you know the many years I was at and Dynamics we we didn’t think about competition we were just kind of doing our thing there wasn’t it wasn’t like there were products out there that we were
Competing with no you know maybe there was some competition for DARPA funding which we got you know got a lot of got very good at at getting but even there uh in in a couple of cases where we might have competed we ended up just being the robot provider that is for the
Little dog program you know we we just made the robots we didn’t participate as developers except for developing the robot and in the Dara robotics challenge we didn’t compete we uh provided the robots so uhh you know in the AI world now now that we’re working on cognitive stuff it
Feels much more like a a competition you know the the entry uh requirements in terms of computing hardware and uh and the skills of the team are and and hiring Talent it’s it’s a much tougher place so I think much more about competition now on the cognitive side on the physical side
It doesn’t feel like it’s that much about competition yet obviously with 10 humanoid companies out there 10 or 12 I mean there’s probably others that I don’t know about um they’re definitely in competition will be in competition how much room is there for a quadruped and especially a
Humanoid robot to become cheaper so like cutting cost and like how low can you go and how much of it is just mass production so questions of you know Hyundai like how to produce versus like engineering Innovation how to simplify um I think there’s a huge way to go I
Don’t think we’ve seen the bottom of it or the bottom in ter of lower prices uh you know I think you should be totally optimistic that at ASM toote things have to be anything like as expensive as they are now back to competition I wanted to
Say one thing I think in the quadruped space having other people selling quadrupeds is a great thing for Boston Dynamics because the question I believe the question in the users mind is which quadruped do I want it’s not oh can a quadr do I want a quadruped can a
Quadruped do my job uh it’s much more like that which is a a great place for it to be yeah then then you’re just you know doing doing the things you nor nor do to make your product better and compete and sell selling and all that
Stuff and that’ll be the way it is with humanoids at some point well there’s a lot of humanoids and you’re just not even it’s like uh iPhone versus Android and people just buying both and it’s kind of just yeah U you’re not really you’re creating the category you or the category is
Happening I mean right now the use cases you know that that’s the the key thing having realistic use cases that are money making uh in robotics is is a big challenge you know there’s the warehouse use case that’s probably the only thing that makes anybody any money in robotics
At this point there’s got to be a moment there’s old fashioned robot I mean there’s AR fixed arms doing manufacturing I don’t want to yes say that they’re not making money industrial robotics yes but I there’s got to be a moment when social robotics starts making real money meaning like a spot
Type robot in the home and there’s tens of millions of them in the home and they’re like you know I don’t know how many dogs there are in the United States as pets but this feels many it feels like there’s something we love about having a intelligent companion with us
That remembers us that’s excited to see us all that kind of stuff but it’s also true that the companies making those things there’ve been a lot of failures in recent times right there’s that one year when I think three of them went under um so it’s it’s not that easy to
Do that right getting you know getting uh performance safety and cost all to be where they need to be at the same time is uh that’s that’s hard but also some of it is like you said you can have a product but uh people might not be aware
Of it so like also part of it is the videos or however you connect with the public the the culture and like create the category that make make people realize this is the thing you want cuz from a you know there’s a lot of negative perceptions you can have do you
Really want a system with a camera in your home walk around right um if if it’s presented correctly and if there’s like the right kind of boundaries around it that you understand how it works and so on that uh a lot of people would want to and if they don’t they might be
Suspicious of it so that that’s an important like we we all use smartphones and that has a camera that’s looking at us yeah it has two or three or four and it’s listening very few people are are uh you know suspicious about it they
Kind of take it for granted and so on I think robots would be the same kind of way I I agree
Video “Boston Dynamics founder on Elon Musk and Optimus robot | Marc Raibert and Lex Fridman” was uploaded on 02/16/2024 to Youtube Channel Lex Clips