🤔 What's it going to take to get me a Gundam?

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.”— Agatha Christie

Maybe we don’t have Gundams because no one needs to be that idle yet?

In today’s newsletter:

• What's it going to take to get me a Gundam?

• Creepy or no

• Robots out there

Pense

Are we skipping a step in the innovation pathway? We jumped right to autonomous robots and human-robot interaction with probes and sensors.

But what about Gundams?

For those of you not raised on early 90s Japanese Anime. A Gundam is a robotic suit that a human pilots —not like the Iron Man armor but like you sit in a seat to operate the robot. Like a plane pilot but a robot

See the video below.

So with that out of the way, “Why can’t I be a Gundam Pilot yet?” seems like it would be a better next step.

So I spent the week trying to understand why I can’t have a Gundam. It turns out that Physics is the primary problem, not technology. We need physicists to figure out how not to spin out of control while it maneuvers. Like all anime, the physics defies inertia and sometimes gravity.

Well, I’m disappointed that I likely won’t live to see Gundam in action.

And with that disappointment, I bring you robots falling over, 5 reasons my dreams won’t come true, and 5 reasons you should encourage a young person to go into physics.

They’ve fallen over and they can’t get up… 😂😂😂

5 reasons robotics development is really, really tough.

1. There’s just not enough money in the robotics industry.

2. There’s not enough talent.

3. The materials are too expensive.

4. It’s hard to scale.

5. And there’s no reference architecture.

See the article that killed my dreams.

5 reasons you should encourage people to go into physics

1. If it wasn’t obvious, I want a Gundam.

2. No one wants to do housekeeping. See the Jetsons.

3. There are good jobs in engineering if you also learn about electronics.

4. Great for people who like knowing how things work… i.e. Discovery Channel enthusiasts.

5. You get to figure out how to make the implausible possible.

Creepy or no

So people have recorded creepy things said by robots. And here is one of those videos.

Language model failures are hilarious. These robots aren’t conscious. They are replying from the information the web scraper used to build Large Language Models (LLM) has picked up across the web. People mention these issues on websites and forums so the robot repeats. This isn’t consciousness. It’s bad design. So not creepy…more like media hype.

Plus if you don’t want this outcome why try to give robots consciousness? Seems like the industry is run by hypocrites. Or are they secretly into robot domination???

Robots out there

Robot startups fail regularly but t’s still fun to read about the interesting startups being built.

• Verity uses a drone fleet to manage inventory at Ikea stores. Read more here. 

• Swarmbotics AI is making robotic swarms…like ants. Read more here.

• Renovate Robotics robot installs roof shingles. Read more here.