by fragmede | 2025-10-16 21:21:19+00:00
(HN link on Substack points at empty page instead of this one, at least before I made this comment.)

What I think is missing is marathon events. Biathalons and Triathalons.

We all know LLMs have a rather limited context window. Thus seeing robots do longer chains of events would be interesting to see that they're capable than a possibly rigged demo.

Something like: move a stack of boxes from one room to another. The boxes at the end also need to be stacked up. or how about pick up a box, go up some stairs, open a door, and put the box on a shelf on the other side.

Also, the real world is sloppy and messy and dirty and, to be real, kinda janky sometimes. Gold for unlocking a door with a key at a well-maintained office complex, (and opening it, and walking through it) is one thing, because facilities is going to replace the lock before it gets old and needs replacing, and we can assume the door fits in the frame properly so it doesn't need to be shoved or lifted up or yanked in order to be opened is easier than. But the real world is messy and sloppy and you gotta jiggle the key in just the right way in order to get it to work.

Closing the door (assuming the robots weren't raised in a robot barn) is also harder than it looks if the door is shitty and needs a proper slam in order to be fully closed. Also, the robot locking the door behind itself after it comes in. Scanning a key card and opening a door, but the first try fails.

We're a long way from a general robot that can screw a simple screw together like you would to assemble Ikea furniture.

Object recognition.

Gather only the dishes from a messy coffee table and put them in the dish bin.

Pick up only the clothes from a messy floor and bed, and put them in the hamper.

Dump a hamper of clothes onto a table, and sort out stuff that doesn't want to go into the washing machine.

Terrain traversal.

Just walk 500 ft, but theres increasing levels of obstacles in the way.

We all saw Boston dynamics robot parkour videos, but what I want to see is a robot make it from the front door of Simpsons house to the kitchen in the back, but it's got to go through the living room, but it's hella messy, with Maggie and Bart and Lisa’s crap strewn all over, Homer’s got some beer bottles, some empty, some full, all over the floor and on the table, and all the robot has to do is walk from one side of the room to the far side of the room without stepping on anything, or knocking anything over. (Simpsons merely being a home layout that's familiar to most people. Doesn't need to actually be them.)

Ducking under a low ceiling. Climb over a barrier, of varying shapes and sizes.

Other loocomotion. how much weight in its arms in front of it, holding a 5-lb briefcase with one hand while walking. Can it carry something on its back? What's the limit? Can it give piggyback rides?

A category for simulated. Let companies show off their robot's kinematics control systems, so have something on the level of CoppeliaSim, so the motors and the gears and the actuators are themselves simulated, vs a simple 3d video game where they are not. Plug their model into the simulated robot and see how well it just walks. If we remember QWOP, it's harder than it looks!

Obviously it's not going to be totally 100% accurate to the real world. The benefit of this is it lets people complete from all over world without having to replicate a very specific setup in the physical world, and compete from wherever they live am not have to fly to your facility to test, opening up a whole new world of contestants because they can now compete because they can afford it now.

At the end of the day, the most important challenge is, can it pick up a battery from the shelf, swap it with one of the two in its chassis, and put the dead one it just pulled out onto the charger?