Re:Ask HN: Creating a consumer humanoid robot – suggestions ...
by dario-fino on Sunday November 14, 2021 @01:43PM
(#29219409)
Hey, chronolitus thanks!
We've looked and interacted with Pepper, but they're distant from what we're building. They've got more of a research purpose, we are going full-blown social robot.
For the sensors, we're using the feedback we've got from all the 19 servo motors since they're closed-loop servos.
For the ML part, all the visual perception is being done the Jetson and only the audio and NLP is off-loaded towards the cloud. For the body planning, it's all developed through inverse kinematics and dynamic balancing ... no need for ML :)
Have you looked / interacted with Pepper and Nao robots? In my experience, Aldebaran Robotics tried hard to go down the "lifelike robot" route, and the issues they encountered are real and hard problems.
A big problem with body control was lack of touch / impact feedback. Do you have plans to integrate sensors on the robot's 'skin'?
Modern ML based perception is expensive (audio, visual, NLP, etc). Modern ML-based full-body planning even more so. Do you intend to go down a hand-crafted route for walking, gestures, grasping, or do you intend to do it all with ML?