00:00There are so many things to take away from being here this week.
00:03Let's, I think, focus on the humanoid robot, form factor at least,
00:07but your main impression with those on display,
00:11I think Atlas is probably top of mind for many.
00:14Last night when I was here with Boston Dynamics CEO, Robert Plater,
00:17the wait to go and see Atlas was two hours.
00:21What do you make of that?
00:23Well, just a few years ago, the robots here were kind of janky.
00:26They were wobbly and they had wires coming out of their head
00:30and they looked like science experiments.
00:32And it's really fascinating to see just how quickly humanoids are turning into a real product.
00:39And Atlas is, of course, just one of those.
00:42So instead of them being science experiments,
00:46they look like real things that you might want to have in your home or in your workplace.
00:53You're also a professor at Stanford and, you know, the academic discussion here,
00:59which I've loved, it has been, hey, guys, we think we've solved the software problem.
01:04Have we solved the software problem?
01:07Well, when people talk about humanoids,
01:10everyone has a different picture of what the humanoid is going to do.
01:14If you're talking about a humanoid for a hospital,
01:17that's a totally different situation compared to a humanoid flipping hamburgers or teaching kids math.
01:24So it really depends on...
01:26Does it come to a point where moving a box from one part of the table to the other part of the table
01:29is no longer impressive?
01:30Yeah, that's completely solved.
01:32And Amazon has 1.1 million robots deployed already.
01:36So the logistics pick and place is effectively solved.
01:41One frontier is what you might call social robotics.
01:44So these are the robots that will live with you
01:47and they will teach your kids and they will help your parents.
01:50And that is still more difficult because there's a lot of what we expect when we interact with people,
01:57their ability to make us laugh and speak and be quick and so forth.
02:01That is still difficult.
02:02But basics like picking things up, that's solved.
02:06When we think about the solution of integration,
02:09a lot of companies want to talk about how they're the vertically integrated company.
02:12They are making not just the hardware but the software too.
02:14So where are you getting an in?
02:16How many of these 14 humanoids we see here at CES are you putting your open software to work in?
02:22Well, it's about half of them.
02:24And for many humanoid robotics companies, they have a traditional focus on hardware.
02:32And they're seeing the software move extremely quickly.
02:36And some of them have the sense that they don't have the inherent capability to also be at the frontier of the software.
02:43And that's where we're getting traction for us.
02:46I want to go back to the very thesis of whether you want a humanoid at all.
02:50Boston Dynamics' perspective is, in the interim, before we have manufacturing units that are purpose-built for robots,
02:56a humanoid makes sense because it has to work side-along humans and augment them or at least replace them.
03:02Eventually, maybe that's not the form factor we want.
03:04I don't think I want a form factor of a humanoid in my home, to be perfectly frank.
03:07You're seeing a lot more of these sort of soft, cuddly toys for companionship and the way that they talk.
03:12What will robots look like in the future?
03:15Well, I have a humanoid at home and my kids...
03:19Casual.
03:19Casual.
03:20And my humanoid, my kids, thinks that is totally normal.
03:25Because for them, they've seen that for literally two years now.
03:31And, however, when I talked to my mom, I sent my mom some videos of the humanoids here.
03:36What do you call your humanoid?
03:38Iris.
03:39Iris?
03:40Iris, the humanoid.
03:41No, this is hardware developed by someone else.
03:44Of course, it's running the software I wrote, which is why I trust it, because I know exactly what's going on inside the humanoid.
03:52But, yeah, I sent my mom some videos of the humanoids around here, and she said,
03:56Yanni, I'm shocked.
03:58This is awesome.
03:59So, to your original point, what is the right form factor?
04:04What's special about a humanoid is that they're, by definition, compatible with your home, a hospital, school, workplace, door handles, light switches, stairs.
04:15So, they can immediately be effective in all the infrastructure that humans have built for us.
04:22This is why it's important to get as far as you can be an objective take on the state of industry, right?
04:28We started this segment by saying it's broken through to the mainstream.
04:31Actually, there is a lot of fatigue, just like there was with RoboTaxi.
04:35We've been saying it's coming, it's coming, it's coming.
04:38What I see is in the industrial use cases, it's there.
04:42But one thing that came up with us a lot this week, care of the elderly.
04:46Yeah.
04:46Are we really in a position where, overnight, humanoid robots are going to solve what is a massive addressable market?
04:52Well, to some people, this sounds dystopian and creepy.
04:57You know, is it something you imagined that your parents would interact with robots?
05:05But some of the companies building robots for memory care facilities, like Andromeda in San Francisco and Australia, the stories they tell are heartbreaking, where nurses now have to clean the head of the humanoid every evening because the patients will kiss the humanoid.
05:25So, the nurses now have to remove lipstick off the head of the humanoid.
05:29And so, for many people that are starved of human interaction, they get so attached to the humanoid and their eyes light up and they laugh and they will kiss the head of the humanoid.
05:41And so, there's definitely something there.
05:43And for most people in retirement homes here in the U.S., they haven't been visited by their family members in a year or more.
05:50So, it's a group of people that are really starved for any kind of interaction and some of them really seem to love the technology.
06:00I mean, Jan, that speaks to a greater problem in humanity writ large.
06:04I want your take, if I dare, go back to Open Mind itself.
06:08Where do you make your money?
06:10Ah, well, we have a little bit of a different take on humanoids.
06:14We don't want them to be closed.
06:16We don't want them to be these magic boxes that show up at your front door.
06:20We think of them much more like cell phones that are open and where developers everywhere can add apps or skills that will allow your humanoids to do many more things very quickly.
06:34And so, it's very important to us that this technology is not like this magic black box, but it's something that most of us understand, can engage with, and build for.
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