Christian Hubicki
@chubicki.bsky.social
4.8K followers 570 following 260 posts
Robotics Professor • Director, Optimal Robotics Lab • Florida State University • Legged Robotics—Control and AI—Biomechanics • TEDx Fellow • Science babbled on National TV
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chubicki.bsky.social
I think 1X is saying Figure is specifically ripping off their cloth skin aesthetic. And earlier Figure accused Boston Dynamics of taking their humanoid hip joint design. And Boston Dynamics accused another company of taking their quadruped leg design... and on and on.

But yes, the designs converge.
chubicki.bsky.social
In the episode you’re describing, SG1 gives military aid to Jaffa rebels and they call the staff a weapon of intimidation. Makes sense. The Goa’uld are lazy tyrants.

But there’s another episode with the Asgard where Thor calls Carter to help with their replicator problem and is like “Bullets? 🤯”
chubicki.bsky.social
In one episode, the leader of the most advanced technological alien race in the galaxy basically says “we would have never thought of bullets.”
chubicki.bsky.social
One of my favorite through lines was how aliens with spaceships and laser weapons were amazed by the lethality of Belgian-made submachine guns. Relatable.
chubicki.bsky.social
Good transparency from the CEO, but this is mostly shade thrown at Tesla.

Figure's Blog post:
www.figure.ai/news/introdu...
chubicki.bsky.social
New humanoid dropped this morning. Figure 03.

Pretty video. Pretty robot. Very pretty demo.

How reliable? How reliable? How reliable? As far as I'm concerned that's the whole ballgame.
youtu.be/Eu5mYMavctM?...
Introducing Figure 03
YouTube video by Figure
youtu.be
chubicki.bsky.social
Humanoid company CEO throwing shade.
chubicki.bsky.social
I’ve heard this from my colleagues. Their students don’t use subfolders.

Very sad. Discovering I could organize my own folder hierarchy was a formative joy of my childhood.
micahcorah.bsky.social
So, I know the kids all ignore folder hierarchy these days... But "save as" on Microsoft Office no longer defaults to the initial file location?
chubicki.bsky.social
Agreed on SGU. Stargate overall was fun. The end of Atlantis was a watershed moment for me. I finally understood what it meant for a show to be “bad.”
chubicki.bsky.social
GenZ keeps scrolling TikTok and not raising the shields.
chubicki.bsky.social
Every couple of years, I remember the hilarity of the Stargate science fiction universe.

On a supposed modern-day Earth, the 5 UN security council nations build an interstellar military armada, obliterate every alien adversary across two galaxies, in secret, before we have iPhones.
chubicki.bsky.social
New result: a drone that can screw on a lightbulb

But it's more than that. Right now, the best robot hand controllers work very differently than our best locomotion controllers--they don't coordinate very well.

Seems like a good step toward making them work together, and for more than just flying.
chubicki.bsky.social
Here’s an example from just this week. Swiss engineering firm and robot maker, ABB, being bought out by SoftBank for $5.4 billion. SoftBank, like Google, also bought and later sold Boston Dynamics by the way.

www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...
www.reuters.com
chubicki.bsky.social
Did you hear Google bought out 8 robotics companies? Including Boston Dynamics? Holy crap what do they have planned?!

Oh wait, that was back in 2013. It was not the dawn of a new robotics age.

Remember that when reading about big industry buys in #robotics.

spectrum.ieee.org/amp/google-a...
Google Acquires Seven Robot Companies, Wants Big Role in Robotics
The company is funding a major new robotics group and acquiring a bunch of robot startups
spectrum.ieee.org
chubicki.bsky.social
How do their cybersecurity vulnerabilities factor into this? We firewall our Unitree.
Reposted by Christian Hubicki
david.setouchi.social
And by "some" they mean people who have no clue about how AI works.
nature.com
Researchers question whether autonomous AI scientists are possible or even desirable.

Read the full story: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
chubicki.bsky.social
Makes me curious what the up and down times are.
chubicki.bsky.social
Yeah, the reliability is always what I’m looking for.
chubicki.bsky.social
The interview’s vague, but the Pentagon is considering Generative AI for decision support — a terrible idea.

If LLMs are ever helpful it’s in *low*-stakes suggestions, not life-or-death choices. But for now, industry guardrails hinder LLM use in lethal scenarios.

www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Killer Robots, AI Psychosis and Nuclear War: The Pentagon’s Biggest AI Fears
A Q&A with a former Pentagon insider on the AI debates that could shape the future of national security.
www.politico.com
chubicki.bsky.social
In this case, teleportation would actually be more impressive than a pre-canned trained routine.
chubicki.bsky.social
Aaaaannd it’s already ruined.

It’s true the controller is a neural network, but the routine is pre-choreographed. It’s not responding to the human and making decisions how to “fight,” (it’s probably not even using vision) which is of course what the typical person would assume by saying it’s “AI.”
chubicki.bsky.social
Basically, good job. But I’m also judging your robot on the company claim that it will be a multi-TRILLION dollar product that we’ll send to Mars soon.
chubicki.bsky.social
But it feels to me a fully separate endeavor from making humanoids useful in the near term. This control method is kinda hard to marry with the dexterous task controllers (stable diffusion) humanoids are trying to use.

It’s more saying, “we can do king fu too, Unitree”.