Re:Ask HN: When do you expect ChatGPT moment in robotics?
by a-saleh on Monday March 02, 2026 @04:11AM
(#47215506)
I think there will be a sort of ~meeting in the middle. I.e. when friend was furnishing his appt. he chose specifically the sort of furniture that will make it easier for his robotic vacuum to work. I wouldn't be surprised if there will be some extra allowance for autonomous vehicles comming in next ~5 years. Stuff like that.
Robotics still pays a heavy “reality tax”. Every improvement eventually has to survive messy, unstructured physical environments where sensing, actuation, and safety interact in unpredictable ways.
My guess is we’ll see a ChatGPT-like moment first in semi-structured environments (warehouses, logistics, industrial assistance) rather than homes.
A general household robot feels closer to a GPT-4 equivalent problem than a GPT-3.5 one because reliability matters much more when failure affects the physical world.