A brief, incomplete, and mostly wrong history of robotics

by Bogdanp on 6/16/2025, 4:28:10 PM with 65 comments

  • by Symmetry on 6/20/2025, 2:50:59 PM

    The YouTube videos will never stop.

    But I think the author missed a trick by not including that time one of our Spots got shot.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/boston-dynamics-robot-do...

    EDIT: And a link to the programming languages inspiration for this post if you haven't read it already.

    https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...

  • by z3ratul163071 on 6/20/2025, 6:21:39 PM

    great history. one of the hidden gems inside: "the wildly successful ROS operating system. ROS is used to this day by enthusiastic researchers and frustrated companies who can’t figure out how to migrate off of it"

  • by modeless on 6/20/2025, 3:50:08 PM

    The problem with Google's robotics acquisitions was that they fired Andy Rubin less than a year after he made them. They floundered after that.

    It's clear that Google's management simply didn't have the patience to continue putting money into hardware development before the software was ready. They forced premature commercialization on BD and then dumped them on SoftBank. Strong top-level executive support could have changed that. I wonder what Google robotics could have been.

  • by nsxwolf on 6/20/2025, 8:49:34 PM

    Serious question: Why would I want to read something with this title? Is this some much more abstract form of a "How Not To" article?

  • by ianbicking on 6/20/2025, 5:04:04 PM

    Why do folks think remote telepresence never became popular, outside of the occasional appearance in sitcoms?

  • by degrees57 on 6/20/2025, 5:54:22 PM

    I was hoping to see a mention of Odex 1 by Odetics. I was working in a printed circuit board factory at the time (1983), and we got to build boards for it. Later on, there was a demo where it lifted one end of a small pickup truck off the ground.

  • by mooseling on 6/20/2025, 4:56:38 PM

    I'm going through a breakup right now and really enjoying posts like this. Interesting, funny, accessible. The Grug Brained Developer also really hit the spot. Any other recommendations in this vein? Thanks!

  • by smath on 6/20/2025, 6:08:20 PM

    Serious Q: What are the best known approaches for getting robots to fold clothes / do dishes? Doesn’t need to be humanoid

  • by outside1234 on 6/20/2025, 10:14:39 PM

    Just awesome stuff: "Tesla deploys thousands of their Optimus humanoids working in their automotive factories.1 The robots are slower and less productive than human workers, but make up for it by being more expensive and harder to train."

  • by taneq on 6/20/2025, 2:29:11 PM

    Halfway through and this is hilarious. Are you trying to tell me that AI originally stood for Anomalously-small Istanbulians? :D

    Edit: Oh. In hindsight this (and other similarly snarky backronyms) is obviously why any time computers can do a thing it stops being “AI”.

  • by gdiamos on 6/20/2025, 3:28:46 PM

    Was this thing written by ChatGPT?