mergeconflict237
James: [00:00:00] I rank it as official. The robot apocalypse is finally upon us because my new favorite robot of all time was just not announced. The Samsung bot handy. 
Frank: [00:00:22] Are you telling me there's a robot named handy? Is that its name handy? 
James: [00:00:26] Tandy. Cause it's a handy robot with a single hand. 
Frank: [00:00:31] I get it now. Okay. And I'm just following around, you actually showed me a picture of this robot.
It's kind of hilarious. Are we talking about robots today? I'm so excited. I can't wait to talk about robots. Uh, so Samsung had some 
James: [00:00:42] announcements. That is correct. We are in the middle of the glorious CES, 2021 virtual, where everything's virtual. And to be honest, I'm not mad at it because I pretty much only watch those blah-blah-blah event in five to 10 minutes anyways, recaps.
And the Samsung one was delightful because there is a brand new suite of robots. If you remember last year, they announced their exoskeleton. Do you remember that? 
Frank: [00:01:10] No, but, uh, that, that sounds fascinating. I I've seen him. I've seen terrible versions of them in robot trade shows before they actually had a good working one.
There was someone in Stanford, a professor in Stanford working on those. So I wonder if it's network too, I'm excited. This is like the best show ever. Tell me more stuff. 
James: [00:01:27] It is the, the gems, um, which, uh, specifically is an exoskeleton. I believe it's to help individuals with, um, You eliminate mobility as well.
Like that's that, I think that's a goal behind it is the gait enhancing and motivation system gems, um, exoskeletons. They didn't talk very much about it, except for that. They're still working on it, but they decided to go all in and robots and announced two robots and actually three robots because one robot has a LIDAR sensor, Frank, and I know that you're going to be excited about that.
But before I get to that, what I really got to talk about is that I've been waiting. For this robot revolution for over 13 years, because 13 years ago, one of my favorite Disney movies of all time came out, Wally. 
Frank: [00:02:14] Ooh, that's a good one. Uh, I love Wall-E too. Did you just say 13 years? What did you, did you just say that very casually?
Oh my God. That's I feel so. Oh, thank you. When I 
James: [00:02:25] was in college.
Frank: [00:02:29] I don't want to do the math. What year did you say? 
James: [00:02:33] 2008? So I was, I had just graduated college because I was in that year round program, but, um, yes, it was. It was a while ago, 2008. And you know, what was fascinating about that movie is not only was Molly, one of the most adorable robots ever, but once you got up into the world of Wally, you realize that there's this suite of robots and over the years forever, right.
We've, we've watched movies about with robots in them. We've been sort of, um, Teased with robots that were not really products really to, that would, we would be able to bring home. But while he had the concept of these robots, that could do one thing. Well, right. You had a robot that cleaned up, or you had a robot that didn't make up, or you had a robot that helped play tennis or just pour drinks or do Butler.
Well, you know what I mean? And I was really excited because when are we going to get this? When am I going to get a robot that can bring me a Bodhi, like from. The fridge, like open the fridge and bring it over and just like hook it up. Right. And I was always enticed by that. And finally, Samsung has one because in the video bought handy over here is pouring.
Why? Now? I don't think Bob handy can open the wine because two hands to do that, but bought handy can definitely pour a glass of wine. And that intrigues me. 
Frank: [00:03:54] Uh, should we try to describe, I bought handy, really handy bot it's terrible in every form. Okay. So bought handy is a cute little, um, like a skinny R2D2, like a really skinny R2D2 that moves around and has this giant arm coming out of it.
And what is it? Just like a normal, like two fingers, like a thumb and forefinger is that basically handy? Sand. 
James: [00:04:19] I think so. Yeah. It's a three pronged 
Frank: [00:04:23] approach. Three pronged three-pronged okay. So yeah, probably can't do the bottle of wine. The video had a lot of handy picking up dishes and putting dishes in the dishwasher.
So I guess theoretically handy could get you the beer out of the fridge. It's so funny. How like beer out of the fridge is. Kind of what we all go back to for like, we won't know robots until they're getting the beer out of the fridge. And then, uh, Rick and Morty has that amazing joke about the, uh, robot.
He built a pass him the butter, and that was its whole purpose in life was to just pass him the butter. But it's funny because we were just talking about IOT stuff with all your IOT fund stuff and how, um, Very tasks. Specific devices can be built now because we've combined appetized hardware to such a degree that you can affordably build these tasks, specific things.
And honestly, this is great for robotics because the problem in robotics is building a general purpose robot. You. A human is a good robot because we are general purpose. We can adapt ourselves to different tasks. And even with our limited tools we manage and robots, we are artificial intelligence, just hasn't gotten to that point.
Um, let alone the mechanics system, the intelligence system just hasn't gotten there. So these tests specific robots are. Way more doable, you know, Roomba and Roomba, fetching beer. It's not a big gap between those two, honestly. 
James: [00:05:51] Well, and the nice thing is that I think that we're at this pivotal point in which more.
Scenarios in this bond world can become a reality because what Samsung really talked about in this video, um, is about how they're infusing things with AI and machine learning. And if you look at bot handy, which I love, I just love and saying the name bot handy. It has. Uh, multiple cameras. They almost look like Microsoft connect cameras.
I don't, I don't, I don't think they are obviously, but there is a big camera on the top of its head and on the arm. And what it is doing in real time is it is processing the world around it. And it's putting a mesh map and understanding. What a dishwasher looks like, what a dish looks like, where it can pick it up, what a towel looks like, where the ham, you know, where the things are, what a bottle of wine looks like.
And these are very tangible things. Um, you know, and if you imagine a world in which your entire kitchen or house is Samsung products, then they could very easily integrate with those systems. We were talking about bought and doing the laundry. Well, I have a pretty old laundry.
Frank: [00:07:03] Very old. It's not actually like ancient tech. It just acts old. It's it's old. It, it approaches life in an elderly way. I like 
James: [00:07:12] that. Yeah. And, and, uh, I don't know if bot handy would be able to figure out that mechanism, but imagine if you had Samsung, you know, things in which these bots could interact and they could do things, but they could still.
Generalize that this is the hamper, and these are things that I'm going to put in here. I don't know how bot handy knows if things are dirty or not, but you know, it's, it's fascinating enough that it can be assigned tasks. Like they said, let's set the table or the dishwasher, you know, pick up laundry, you know, pour a glass of wine.
Um, and these are tags. These are all, all data that can be fed in. Right. You can vary. Easily understand what a bottle of wine looks like or what a beverage looks like. You could read labels, you know, for all intents and purposes, a CPU, it could, it could take something, it could scan it. It could, you know, see the UPC and look at a database.
These are all things that are not unimaginable in this world of what a bot handy can do. 
Frank: [00:08:13] Yeah, I think, um, given current state-of-the-art, it's still going to be larger objects. Um, certainly it could have like dedicated barcode scanners for apples code scanners, whatever the heck, you know, code you want to come up with for that kind of stuff.
It's a neat time because connect is. Pretty old now. Right. And those were what, $150 devices. And, you know, it's cute as handy is handy, ain't going to be cheap so they can easily afford to connect level sensors on that device. And I'm sure, you know, commoditization has happened in those sensors are much cheaper and much, uh, More accurate than what was ever on those gaming consoles.
So that's totally fun. And then on top of it, we're also having this little neural network revolution where all of a sudden image recognition tasks have become trivial or solved essentially. And the fun thing is we got a little bit lucky we'd been working so hard on 2d image recognition. So here's a photograph.
What can you recognize in this photograph? Uh, These now we have depth data with these connects. So we don't have just RGB data. We have RGB D data people call it RGB plus depth data, and it turns out then same neural networks that we're able to do. Image recognition are just as good at 3d image recognition.
And so we had this wonderful tool already at our disposal to recognize. Dishes and things like that. Honestly, for me, uh, as a controls engine here, the, the, the general navigation stuff we've had that figured out for a while, uh, picking up a dish, you know, it's harder than you think because it's got to apply the right amount of pressure.
Not too much pressure, not too little pressure. It's got to angle itself around. There are some very clever things you have to do with arms, but again, uh, we've been working with arms and robotics for. 30 40 years. So it's just nice seeing all that, like high-tech stuff applied to one device, 
James: [00:10:15] one of the same time when you think about those hands and those arms and those joints, robots will have a lot more flexibility than us humans have because our, my risks can only go up and down and around so much, but bots can rotate three 60, you know, and, and.
Then just do crazy movements and get into spaces in which your human body couldn't, which I, which I think is a really fascinating point to think about. And, um, as it brings in this data and it has this articulation, it should be able to do many of the tasks. I will say the one thing that is creepy about the video, they have this really cool.
Um, I like this, this little gift that the verge has from the video, and I'll put a video in the show notes, but it has the diagnosis of how it's scanning and figuring out where it's going to, um, pick up the dish using those depth sensors and cameras, sensors, not only on its head, but also on its arm, that's going, but there's a really creepy part in which bot handy is.
Is going into the kitchen and just like kind of cruising, but then there's a like knife rack sitting there, like what's my handy doing? Yo, what are you doing? The bot? You know, I mean, I'm just saying I robot up in here. 
Frank: [00:11:36] You're going to need bot shield. The two Gargy from bot handy should bot handy. Get a little too handy.
Yeah, I see where you're going with this. Yeah. When is the singularity coming? When should we all duck cover? Do I need an E M gun in my house? These are questions. We all have to ask ourselves. Now my favorite 
James: [00:11:53] part though, is the personality that they gave. Oh, 
Frank: [00:11:58] wait. No. Okay. Well, let's just rewind. Before we get into the terrible personality, a bunch of engineers put into these robots.
It's so cute. The little connect sensor on his wrist. So it's like not on the arm, it's actually on the wrist. So the hand can do decent manipulations of things. This robot is so fragile. It is not going to survive a kid, but I'm hoping this is just the beta one and then paid it to we'll have better integrated sensors that kids won't tear apart instantly.
James: [00:12:23] Oh, yeah. I mean, and also this robot is very big. It's very large and it, it kind of gets taller. Like it can peak over things and extend its body. So it is, uh, it looks like it's almost five foot tall at the max height. 
Frank: [00:12:39] That's kind of clever. I didn't notice the uppy Downy part. So imagine people are Roomba with a cylinder on top and the cylinder is able to go up and down like a piston.
Uh, that's cute. It's it's a Roomba with a piston and a creepy robot arm. I love it. I can't wait to have a creepy robot Butler. Okay. Um, so what kind of personality are we getting with our creepy robot 
James: [00:13:01] Butler? Well, you know, they showed off not only bought handy, but they also showed off an update to bot care, which is the first one in the video that we'll put a link to.
And this is sort of a more square, like helpful assistant robot. 
Frank: [00:13:18] Let me interrupt here. I prefer this one to be called, um, iPad bought, um, because it's just a, it's a mobile iPad. I love it. This is my favorite robot. Handy is cute. Handy. Can do your dishes, but iPad bot can bring you an iPad. It's not as good as a beer, but on the list of grand things.
I like an iPad just as often as I like a beer. So, you know, I'm good. Plus I like, um, it's shape, it's more of the Wall-E box shape, you know, it's more like gen one robot shape. I like that. Not as refined as handy. 
James: [00:13:51] Very true. Yeah. I think that this is a little bit more. Um, out there. I mean, the idea that we have here is that we're bringing our digital assistants that we've had with Alexa or Siri or Google assistant into something that can do more.
Right. You could, you could ask this robot assistant to tell you the weather and it could display something visually you could ask it to you start a conference call and actually starts the conference call and it can move around and it can do stuff. And. In this video, they show how, if you have a Samsung connected world, these are all perfect demos, by the way, of course, where it's of perfectly crafted world and a perfectly clean environment with it's beautiful, most beautiful office I've ever seen no carpet anywhere.
Yeah, because it can like bring you the tablet. Like you're saying it's an eye, big iPad holder. It has different emotions because it's more of a. A square on top was with some eyes on it. But yeah, I mean, what they did is they put big L led eyes on these, you know, characters and they, they took out of wallet.
I mean, it looks like Eve. Uh, Eva in, in these with, with eyes. I mean, it has like little Blinky eyes, little squinty eyes, little animations. 
Frank: [00:15:05] Yeah. It's a trick. It's a trick. It's an MIT trick. There are published papers on this. It's kind of hilarious. So people have studied human robot relations, even though we haven't had intelligent robots, we could fake intelligent robots and we wanted to figure out what the bare minimums were for.
What, what kind of emotional relationship? Well, human form with an inanimate object, what do you need to do to that inanimate object to imbue it with animus? And it turns out you had put some googly eyes on it and that's enough. Humans are sold, you know, put some Google guys on it and we're like, that's obviously intelligent creature.
I will treat it as such. It will be polite to it in kind to it, and that's all you have to do. So it's funny research like that and, um, they are adorable eyes and it's a good trick. I put eyes on all my robots. It's very important. 
James: [00:15:55] Well, let's take a quick break and thank our amazing sponsor. That will let you put googly eyes on anything you want in your mobile applications or web apps.
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Imagine a Google AI control that you could just pop on anything. 
Frank: [00:17:03] Frank. You actually had me going there because sometimes you pull these controls out and I'm just like, they actually do have that. I was like, they're going to have it as like a, a joke aren't they? And I just walked right into it, but darn it.
Well, thank you think fusion. We really appreciate it. But take notes. Yeah, we have right. We have one request. 
James: [00:17:21] So the other one, so these are all robots in development, but there is actually one robot Frank that is coming out and you are, you've been talking a lot about Roombas and Roombas are. What Frank the robots.
Frank: [00:17:36] Right. They are vacuuming robots. They are, they were the most primitive implementation of an algorithm, but designed by a very smart roboticists. So they work very well, but, uh, they've been getting smarter and smarter over the years too. Yeah. 
James: [00:17:52] Now Samsung is releasing. The jet bot 90 AI, plus what a name?
Frank. What a Navy 
Frank: [00:18:00] jet. It better be able to fly me to San Francisco within two hours. I'll give it two hours to get me. No, 
James: [00:18:08] it's, it's a, it's a, it's a vacuum. Now this puppy here though. Is pretty cool because it actually has a LIDAR sensor and a 3d sensor that can recognize objects and separate those from the floor it's trying to clean.
So for example, a kid avoid things like cables that usually robots get all tripped up over. And it also has object recognition algorithms. So it can figure out the best way to clear a room and it has cameras built on it. So you can also see what the cleaner is seeing, which is pretty crazy. And this thing is actually shipping in the second half of this year.
So we think about these robots that are way out there. They're sort of, I think, beta testing, some of these technologies and object recognition in. Things that people can accept. Right. I think we're in, we're in the, the, our minds are like, okay, with little vacuums cleaning our floor. I think we've accepted that at a high level, but I don't think we've accepted robots with a creepy arm walking past knives.
And getting a dish out of the sink. You know what I mean? 
Frank: [00:19:15] Yeah. Yeah. There's so much pack there. Um, but you got me thinking like we're actually beta testing applications because I'll speak for myself as an amateur roboticist, we have developed a solution and we're looking for a problem to solve with it, or we haven't even solved a solution yet.
We want to make. Smart intelligent things that move around. Why? Because it's fun. But we got to get that funded somehow. So we have to find an application that people would be willing to give money for, to fund our fun, to have fun. And so. It's like these companies are almost just beta testing applications for, uh, do you want one that does the dishes, do you want one that does the laundry, do you want one that flies you to San Francisco?
You know, th these various applications? I think what we're probably going to see you, unfortunately, over the next 30 years, or fortunately is a lot of failures and a lot of attempts to see like what sticks Roomba sticks or enough people have put them in the houses. It's pretty much a safe bet. We all want.
Vacuum cleaners that are robots. And by the transitive rule, we all want lawnmowers that are robots. Like these are easy farmers already have lawnmower robots. We just got to get them. Uh, but if you go beyond that, it gets a little bit trickier. The problem I like to work on is balancing robots, walking robots, those kinds of things, but I've never actually gotten home.
Able to work. So I thought I would spend, instead of a year working on that, I was going to spend a year working on just navigation and I'd set silly goals of like, it should be able to get around my apartment. And ideally I would like it to be able to go on sidewalks outside, but. I have zero application for that, you know, like I don't, I'm not solving a problem.
I'm creating a lot of problems for myself because it's a fun hobby and it's a fun technology. So what I'm saying is we're going to have to do a lot of exploring of the consumer space to find out what these things are actually useful for. 
James: [00:21:15] Yeah. And when you sort of look at that space of things, moving around, that's a hard problem to solve.
I mean, the most famous example would be like Boston dynamics. And even then a lot of people. Really find those robots creepy and not okay. Cause they're almost there. Their movements are almost too human-like in a way. I think that sounds song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I think like they did the sort of the right thing, which is these robots are basically Roombas on the base just with things right attached to them.
Whereas if you look at Boston dynamics, I mean, listen, I love it. Spot. I think spot is like the coolest thing has great applications. And just, I love the movement. I love everything that it can do. Um, but at the same time, I think that it's still freaks people out. 
Frank: [00:22:07] I think everyone finds spot. Absolutely adorable.
It's Atlas and his gun toting friends, because they're a little more scary. I like is adorable. Um, also spot has had an intelligent arm for a while now. I think it's an add on though. So you've got to spend 70 grand on spot and then you probably got to spend, I don't know the prices, but like another 50 grand on the arm.
So. Without sidetracking the conversation. Like that's always the question and robotics. It's not even the technology is at a level, but it's, it's what you can afford to manufacture at scale. You know? So these robots, we can make fun of them and call them like, Oh, it looks like they have a connect glued to its wrist.
And it's just riding on top of a Roomba, but that's probably good from a consumer standpoint because. It definitely is more familiar to people, but B it's easier to manufacture if it's, you know, not balancing on three feet while trying to dance. 
James: [00:23:05] Yeah. What do you think the realistic. Expectation is that these robots are going to enter our home.
Like, do we think it's a 20, 22 thing? It's a 20, 30 thing. It's a 20, like how feasible is it that bought handy and bought care over here? Maybe not in their current iteration, but when does things, these robots go mainstream beyond the Roomba. 
Frank: [00:23:33] You know, I'm such a pessimist pessimists that I'm usually right.
So it's another 10 years, unfortunately. Um, we'll probably see something in five years, the weirdos will have some, and then it's going to be another five years of weirdos having them. And then more mainstream, everyone having them, you gotta let the weird beta testers, cause you know, Yoga at one Scott handsome and I'll get one.
I'll probably get one to tear apart if they're in a certain price range, but they're going to be expensive. You know, there, there's no way this robot is less than 10 grand right now. And we'll see what they can get a consumer version down to. And that's just going to put it out of the range of most people for a long time.
And then it's just a matter of commoditization and competition to bring those prices down. 
James: [00:24:24] Yeah, to me, this is more of a play in my personal opinion for the business and enterprise space. Because when we think of a world today of COVID imagine these robots bringing people coffee into their office and managing, and like having to go places where people be allowed to interact or bringing, you know, a conference to people or doing things around the office.
I mean, if we looked at. Google glass or hollow lens or these types of, um, augmented reality, mixed reality glasses. Those didn't really necessarily take off in the consumer space, but they did take off in the enterprise space and I could see enterprises, you know, taking and doing some very fascinating things with these robots first, before they go.
Amazing. Because again, you, you have to go. You have to figure some way to drive down your prices and also test out that, um, you know, equipment and enterprises have a lot more money than consumers, just in fact. Right. That's a fact. So, um, I think that that is a good place where a bot handy could kind of come in where it's like, Hey, replace your dishwasher with bot handy.
Like not that it's going to be good for jobs necessarily, but you know that that's not its intended goal, but. It could be a good use case for it. 
Frank: [00:25:50] Um, I was daydreaming a little bit about, uh, Scott Hanselman, telepresence robot in my house. So I could just have Scott Hanselman whenever I want him and he can have a hand so he can help me out with things.
So yeah, maybe that kind of merger, uh, it it's, it's tough. Like, um, again, I I've found in my own imaginations, I have a limited. Um, grasp for what these mobile robots are actually useful for aside from war. It's not going to talk about the war part. Um, I, I think telepresence is kind of a useful one. I not sure what they'll be in manufacturing.
That's something I always think about a lot where. Robots basically came from manufacturing, but they're much more tuned to the very specific tasks that they're doing. You know, Tesla has a robot to flip a car over that's its whole purpose in life is to flip a car over and it's going to do that for all of eternity.
Is that a robot? Is that not? Is the definite. Definition of robot is something that can move. So I'm not sure they're going to work in the industrial world. So what application do they have to the, uh, maybe lighter manufacturing world or to the office world, but you know, we're all stuck in our homes right now.
I wouldn't mind a robot to talk to just, I don't know. Do the dishes, is that all handy? Does this do the dishes and give me glasses of water? I mean, it's good enough. I'm just asking. 
James: [00:27:15] I think that it's a very expensive, uh, robot. If that's all I can do, I mean, it can do your job. I can pour you a glass of wine and that's, you know, good that that's the problem almost in a case, which is you would almost need too many.
You know, bot handies around different, different bots to do different things. My house is only so big, Frank. I mean, I think what robots are really good at is, or what could they, what can they Excel at is what are the things in which people are like, don't want to do like, or aren't super good at, right. I really don't like to clean my bathroom if I could have a robot that just.
Everyday, I press a button and cleaned my bathroom. That's going to be awesome. Do I pop toilet bump? Right. I don't mind loading the dishwasher, but I don't like unloading the dishwasher. I got to get an unload bop. You know what I mean? Uh, how about full, full my lawn? I don't mind doing my laundry, but I do like not.
Folding it it's kind of the stuff at the end, right? Like I like to do the dishes or do the laundry, but I don't like to fold it or put away the dishes. So like, if I can have a bot that does the stuff after I've done the hard work, then I'm in for that. 
Frank: [00:28:27] Yeah, and that I can sit on and it just seems to me around.
And what else? It made me drinks. What else happened in Wall-E? I'm trying to remember what happened to the big humans at the end, 
James: [00:28:37] higher your makeup. You just about any, yeah, I mean, I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head earlier though, which is. There is a lot of tech that they were showing in this, that we're seeing in other industries, we're seeing those 3d maps.
We're seeing those LIDAR sensors. We're seeing these 3d depth maps, like I talked about. And these cameras in this technology that is in some regard, um, being shown as an individual piece of technology is all coming together in something that can be very useful. 
Frank: [00:29:11] Yeah, it's a nightmare to program. Can you imagine the software here?
It's so many integrations with so many systems that has to work flawlessly with a master control system makes me shutter from a programming perspective. It must've been a lot of effort on their part. It is. I was also thinking I'm just going back a little bit to the conversation of like what he designed these for definitely the applications where humans.
Shouldn't be going is a wonderful application, but it's, it's also the, there's no point in building a robot that can only do what a human does. So there's no point in building a risk that's limited like a human risk. It should be able to rotate 360 degrees. There's no reason to build a robot. That only has two legs.
It should also have wheels. You know, like humans want wheels on our feet. That's why we keep getting on things with wheels. It's just biology. Doesn't allow us to have wheels on our feet, but robots aren't limited by that. So it's. Oh, it's been this fun battle and robot world of how much human do you copy?
Because you want that general purposeness. And how freaky do you get with your designs and just tailor it to that one specific task in this case, handing me a glass of water. I suppose I like candy. I'm so excited for handy, honestly. Um, I just, I don't feel like this is the generation that I'm going to be able to afford and put in my house, but we're getting closer.
You can feel that curve coming down. Or however you want to look at it. 
James: [00:30:38] Yeah. I think we're getting closer, like you said, and there's a world in which, you know, we kind of already own robots to some extent today. Um, and in smaller terms, like I said, the Roombas and the things of the world, and, and there's a lot of, you know, robot  things that are happening.
And I don't think we're that far away from, from. Smaller ones. I think these robots might be a little too big. I think handy might be too big where I do see handy coming in in that 10 to 15 year space down the road. But I'm also an also don't know like, am I, do you think, do you think that we're going to really see a more broader adoption of robots?
To do like Wally ask things in our lifetime, like Jetstar earth, like Jetsons, 
Frank: [00:31:38] you know, Not you and me, man. I don't think we'll make it that far. Uh, we are always limited by the power and mass problem. How much power can you put into a device of this size? And we just don't have great technology. There are batteries are great.
They've, we've been able to build drones with them and some powered cars, but it's not really like. You can't build a robot with strength. You know, if I got into a fighting match with this robot, I actually want to take one exception first. I think it's a good size. Robots need to be big. They, they can't be too light.
Otherwise they're just a toy. They have to be able to survive in the wind. They have to be able to survive the dog, tripping and falling over onto it. You know, if this thing is too fragile, it's not useful. And. Mass weight comes with stability and strength, you know, they come hand in hand. So I think that there, we do have to get to a stronger kind of robot, but to do real useful tasks, like I'm trying, I'm trying to think of a proper, useful tasks, but like, so a suture shot.
Mm, with two hands, we have some robots that can sow a suture, but they're so specialized and they need a perfect environment to be able to do that. Putting that onto a general purpose spot to where, like, you know, a surgeon could walk up to a kid with a big scratch on his head. And so it shut. Um, no robots are going to be able to do that in our lifetime for power concerns, for programming concerns for a million reasons.
James: [00:33:11] Yeah. And I think those. Pipe dreams that we've seen in movies. Like, I'd imagine, like when I was in a bike accident recently and I, you know, split over, slid over my chin, it would've been cool if I would've come home. And there was a robot that was like, Hey, let me just, you know, spray some stuff and stop it from bleeding and let me.
You know, disinfected and then let me suture it up and Oh, all of a sudden I'm going to do the dishes like you're done. It's like, Oh, I'm going to go do the dishes over here. And you're like, thanks, bot. Awesome. 
Frank: [00:33:40] Awesome. Should we register trademark that right now? Yeah. That's that's the one. Uh, yeah. W w we're not there.
That's why, honestly, it's just exciting to see, uh, a hand, you know, we've had two, three joint robot hands. Since I, I had a kid, I had a robot hand toy when I was a kid. So we've been building these in toy form, at least since the eighties. Right. So we know how to build them. Well, we know how to program them well, and it's nice to see them applied.
I try not to get too far ahead because then you just get disappointed. And I just try to accept the fact that, Hey, there's a robot here. That is what looks about four feet tall, maybe three or four feet tall. It's still not human sized, but it's getting to human size and that's exciting. 
James: [00:34:28] Yeah. I like it.
I'm glad that we could randomly talk about this topic, Frank. 
Frank: [00:34:33] I pretty sure I can talk about robots randomly for hours. I'm just holding back on geeking, out in town about how I'm building a robot, uh, like the first one, you know, but I've been trying not to do that hipster thing. Um, but y'all know I love this problem and anyone who's been following me on Twitch knows that I've been in love with lidars lately and specifically interested in the navigation problems.
So working your way around on a level surface, avoiding obstacles, that kind of thing. I'm really interested in 
James: [00:35:02] it. Yeah, I'm I am as well. I, I feel as though this is sort of the next frontier of what can be helpful as, as, as long as they're. You know, doing the things that you want them to do and not creepily walking by a bunch of knives in a promotional video.
Samsung. 
Frank: [00:35:19] Yeah. I just have to get a knife flock. There I'll have to be, yeah, like a key entry to the knives and you can't ever let handy, see you enter the key code. 
James: [00:35:26] Now, if handy, go pick up my hello, fresh box and then prepare dinner because it's basically hello. Fresh is just cutting stuff up. You only need one hand for that.
So. 
Frank: [00:35:38] But w what are you going to call them when you buy the second hand attachment 
James: [00:35:42] bought hand, double handy. 
Frank: [00:35:45] What do you, when the third hand comes on, 
James: [00:35:47] all the hands they just bought is like general grievous. 
Frank: [00:35:52] Yeah. I was thinking doc act. I was trying to get up to eight, but that would have been a really low burn, slow burn.
Yeah. I've always wanted, um, As, as someone who's always tinkering with electronics and needs more hands, I literally need more hands. I want the dock thing with just tentacles that are just have low clampy hands. So, uh, yeah, if you ever see the world destroyed by doc, that was me. 
James: [00:36:14] Sorry. There you go. That is our future of robots with Frank bump, bump bump.
Well, what did everyone think of bot handy? Right. And let us know, maybe we're talking about robots too late and maybe we should have had a 235 or 36 episodes of robots before this will let us know, because I definitely did name this episode bot. Awesome. So go to merge conflict at FM, you can subscribe, you can get contact, you can hit us up on Twitter.
You can do all the things. Um, but yeah, Frank, thanks for talking robots with me. 
Frank: [00:36:42] Oh, it was really my pleasure. Thanks for talking robots at all. We never talk about robots here. Right? We're going to switch the whole, the whole podcast. It's changing whole different motif, all robots all the time. Or not, 
James: [00:36:53] maybe not mall we'll see next week, but I think that that's going to do it for this week.
So until next time, this has been another merge conflict, Jason 
Frank: [00:37:03] and I'm here. Thanks for listening. Peace.