Benjie's Humanoid Olympic Games

> It would require an entirely different kind of robotics.

I was 100% with you until suddenly this technical claim pops out. You might feel this way, and might be right, but why? Changing a diaper is crazy hard, I absolutely agree, but you seem to be just declaring from vibes that we 'require an entirely different kind of robotics'. Can you put your finger on why this is true?

Not nitpicking for the fun of it - I'm genuinely interested. Robot person.

This is a great one. The manipulation is hard, but we're probably on a trajectory to be able to do it in 1-3 years if you were tolerant of some risk to the baby, but, of course, your tolerance for injuring babies is basically zero. I think 'risk & reliability' is a good potential category: there is the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that we got a video' and the bar of 'got it to do a task reliably enough that I'd risk an infant in its grippers.

Why? There's nothing particularly special about this problem. I would bet a year for an alpha version, and production version in 5 years. We are not exactly limited by mechanical engineering here, there's nothing particularly unique about the human hand that can't be replicated. Tele operated surgical robotics have been a thing for decades. Give it a few months for the multimodal robotic VLM/LAMs to catch up. In many ways this particular problem is a lot more well defined than e.g. self driving cars.

> a baby some robot neglects to prevent from falling off the changing table

that is when we think about 2 handed robots. 6 handed robot can easily have 2-3 hands assigned to tightly keeping the baby. Humanoid robots are handicapped by their similarity to humans which is really an artificial constraint. After all we aren't building airplanes using birds as the blueprint.

On the similar note - while not about baby, was just rewatching an early Bing Bang Theory season with this episode where Howard "falls right into the mechanical hand"

> but just, how can you stand possible breadcrumbs IN THE JAR!?

Bacteria can do a number on people... Kept telling the wife to not cross contaminate jars, and other products. But you know, she knows better...

Wife was eating some fish in can, puts spoon back (with lovely saliva bacteria), puts in fridge "i wil eat tomorrow", 2 days later she eats the leftover.

She enjoyed a hour+ of "fun" muscles contracting stomach cramps to the point it was almost hospital time. Learned her lesson, well, ... for fish.

Its always like "but i do not like to keep using fresh utensils". I am always: "the dishwasher does not care if it 20 or 40 utensils". Its the same amount of wash and cost. So stop trying to recycle utensils!

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Almost all progress at doing tasks reliably has been made with 2 massive caveats:

1. Force. Walking, running, fighting, doing backflips, etc. all allow for large amounts of force, without a lot of dynamic precision required. Many common tasks require precise and dynamic force. E.g. for washing a window, pushing too hard breaks the glass while pushing too softly will leave streaks.

2. Environment interaction. Most reliable humanoid robots do minimal environment interaction beyond self-balancing. They walk/run/jump in environments that are largely open, with usually convex blocky obstacles. The real world has lots of tasks that require processing beyond low-resolution maps of solid/open space. E.g. I'd want to see a robot that can walk through a forest: jumping/stepping over thin branches that are hard to see, ducking under fallen logs, pushing though bendy branches without breaking them, avoiding ground that is muddy, and seeing through the current obstacle to determine if the obstacle beyond is traversable.

Just to reiterate, I don't see fast progress being made on doing these tasks reliably. It's easy to show 1/N success rate, and much much harder to show ~N/N success rate on these dynamic tasks.

Making a bed.

You need to manipulate a large sheet, and you probably need to move around, bend down and lean over to reach all the corners. Bonus points for neat hospital corners on a flat sheet.

Putting pillows in pillowcases is another fun one. Usually pretty easy, probably a bronze medal.

Gold medal: put a UK super king size duvet inside a duvet cover. It's huge and awkward, there are buttons, and it's almost but not quite square (why??) so there's a good chance you'll get it round the wrong way and have to rotate it 90 degrees.

Something I still struggle with as a human: Cracking an egg into a bowl. No making a mess and no egg shell in the bowl.

Gold Medal: Separate the egg white from the yolk!

I'd go for something in the manipulation of ropes or wires.

State of the art seems to be that they can untangle a loosely knotted cord.

Untying a short rope with a tightly pulled overhand knot in the middle seems like it's decades away. You have to be able to grip it well enough, then twist the rope and push (even though every physicist says pushing a rope is impossible).

replacing an inner tube on bicycle wheel - strong forces / both arms / level use / dexterity / problem solving

Standard evening family home tidy/reset - toys, books, clothes, shoes away in their places. All over the house.

Oh, and load/unload dishwasher. Same with laundry machines. Along with folding laundry, these are the domestic robot equivalents of 'de-mining' and 'search and rescue': the classic motivating use cases for mobile autonomous robots.

I like these benchmarks and the videos are funny!

Consider examples using building tools like screwing in a drywall screw, or hammering a nail, using a paint roller, caulking a sink, minor plumbing repair with a torch and solder. These differ enough in terms of forces, state changes, and combined dexterity/acuity (two-handed proprioception) from the windex, sandwich and key examples

Ikea product assembly for gold medal.

Maybe careful application of large amounts of force? Opening a jar, peeling garlic, splitting a squash, opening a soda can. This category seems like a good test of "grip" strength + force feedback + sense of touch.

How about something with unpacking items from a shopping bag, i suspect the difference in bags (standard plastic, reusable etc) and certain items can really crank the difficulty.

It can also create a good time of a story - open the door to get the grocery delivery, unpack the delivery etc.

I think my shirts just automatically get inside-outted in my washer/dryer? I certainly don’t put them in that way, and it seems like I spend a lot of righting them when putting away laundry.

I agree, but in some cases it makes sense to protect the print. Although I habe no idea if it actually helps.

Clothe instruction care sometimes requires washing clothes inside out.

I've seen suggestions that having your clothes inside out in the wash helps them get cleaner. And if it keeps the AIs under control, you know, benefits.