A founder answers

Why build robots for everyday tasks instead of humanoids?

Jason's belief is that humanoid robots as hardware aren't currently mature and are way too expensive, while the real bottleneck for useful robots is AI and software. So Dyna first focused on off-the-shelf hardware you can buy for a couple thousand dollars and developed the AI on top of it.

The full answer

JM
Jason Ma · Dyna Robotics
EP 14 · Founder, Dyna Robotics
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Jason's belief is that humanoid robots as hardware aren't currently mature and are way too expensive, while the real bottleneck for useful robots is AI and software. So Dyna first focused on off-the-shelf hardware you can buy for a couple thousand dollars and developed the AI on top of it.

More from this episode

Dyna's eventual goal is a robot that can do any task, and Jason says perhaps at some point they'll venture into humanoid robots. But from his past experience and research, "robots as hardware is not currently mature and it's way too expensive." At the present moment, "the bottleneck for useful robots is AI and software." So the company decided to first focus on off-the-shelf hardware — robots you can buy for a couple thousand dollars — and develop the AI on top so it can be really useful. He points out that today's humanoids "are not actually very useful," you can only see them behind a screen rather than in action in front of you, and "the cost and the hardware readiness is a big factor." Folding napkins and cloth is a stepping stone towards the more human-like form factor.