Well it's not all bad. Some of the stuff we did was entirely defence and disaster support. I basically got to choose projects I worked on until I was told I couldn't.
Not really. Offence is sometimes the best defence. But when people start rubbing their hands at the prospect of a war being their retirement plan I don't want to be around them.
Good on you for quitting, but unless you know of people in your network who're willing to buy what you're making not sure if this will work. Often times its the simplest ideas that make the most profitable businesses. You know, like selling handmade soap or coffee. The problem with what you're doing is you are trying to enter a market as the first person doing it. Which means nobody has taken the risk to prove there is a demand, and without that it means you're potentially burning a ton of time and resources with no logical place to pivot to next.
I am building a very similar thing after a short stent at a robotics company in 2024. The industry is very far behind more general dev experience and tooling.
I am forced to accept the popularity of ROS but I find it to generally be a terrible experience. Are you considering an alternative? Have you used foxglove?
Hey! Great to hear from someone in the same boat. I completely agree, the general dev experience and tooling around ROS can be deeply frustrating...
I am definitely looking into Foxglove! It seems to solve many of the transport/protocol headaches, but I feel like there's still a massive gap in how we actually interact with the robots day to day, especially when you are not glued to a desktop monitor.
I'd love to hear more about your experience. What specific part of the tooling drove you crazy enough to start building an alternative?
(Also, if you are open to a quick 15-min chat to share "war" stories, let me know!)
Foxglove is not the only name in town. There are many, Transitive Robotics, the company I'm building is one of them. Different from Foxglove we are much more focused on live-remote monitoring and control, e.g., we have a pretty popular remote teleoperation module: https://transitiverobotics.com/caps/transitive-robotics/remo...
You can find all the other modules we're currently offering here: https://transitiverobotics.com/caps/
The platform itself is and remains open-source.
I will second this. You might not be able to get away without ROS compatibility depending on the market but a dependancy on it is a big pain in the neck from my point of view.
As a citizen of a country currently defending in a war, unmanned systems are a literal lifesaver. We can send an armed robot where we previously would have to send a soldier. This is a good thing and before the war many had the same pacifist sentiment in the tech sector, but it's completely reversed now.
Though I can understand your position being in a country that's not defending itself currently.
Thank you so much for quitting and putting the long-term needs of humanity over your short-term economic comfort. This is nothing short of a heroic move.
I hope you are able to convince some of your colleagues to do likewise.
Robots are everywhere. Especially in the factories.
I think making things automatic is good, all those stupid jobs, moving all day something from one place to another, manually is pure waste of human energy. If this energy is redirected to education, and more meaningful work, those people will be much more valuable for their community and the world. If robots are used in that direction, they can do a lot of good things, and there will be no ethical lines to cross.
Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem. The problem is that we tie basic human dignity to how much value that human can produce, and then remove the ability to produce that value. It leads to the stratification of society between the people who own the automation and the people who don't. That's always been a problem but we're about to enter a period of exponentially worse growth of that problem, beyond the ability of social systems to handle. A 'k shaped' future is not stable.
> Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem.
Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.
If your job is that tedious a robot could do it, it's a bad job. Do you think Sam Altman wastes a single minute on operations and the actual minutae of running a business? Fuck no he gets wageslaves like me and yo to do it
Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.
"Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.
This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.
Search "Humans are becoming horses" by CGP grey. He's making the exact same point as you except his is 15 years old and still hasn't passed.
I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?
If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does, you can go read about the Gilded Age. Productivity improvements are necessary but not sufficient to enhance human wellbeing. Productivity improvements by themselves appear to simultaneously suppress quality of life for those below the productivity and/or capital ownership bar while increasing quality for those above it.
Yes, an economy is perfectly capable of orienting itself around satisfying the wants of the few people who have a lot of capital at the expense of the many who have little capital. Why wouldn't this be possible?
It obviously creates systemic risk in the economy, which is one of many reasons it should be mitigated by policy and taxation, but I'm not sure why you're acting like it's some mathematical impossibility.
Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity, which again we have literally hundreds of real world examples of throughout history.
Again with a strawman. You should consider engaging with the arguments people are actually making, and not the silly versions you make up in your head.
No one said "everyone" is being driven to extreme economic hardship. Without that word, your implication doesn't quite work :)
Here's a rephrasing of your question using the dynamic that I actually described. Let me know if you still need me to fill in the blanks for you:
> when automated systems owned by fewer and fewer people are responsible for greater and greater proportions of economic surplus, who buys the output of those systems?
You can't answer it can you? A simple rebuttal to this dystopian future you present, where robots do everything and somehow make a few people rich, but at the same time the economy is fine despite nobody having any actual money to spend.... Make it make sense, you do you, just sayin
I'm on a similar journey. I took flight 6 weeks ago and built a turn based board engine for human/agent delivery teams called Keel https://www.spoke.sh/keel. The grand vision is to apply the board engine as a control mechanism for work to be done and verified in deployed robot fleets.
After many many years in fintech, I'm now getting into robotics by trying to build an autonomous snow clearing robot, think of it like a miniature electric loader.
I've been using AI heavily to do this, so everything is in ROS2 since it's "standard" and AIs have pretty good training for it. I can see how it's annoying and suboptimal if you're writing manually and after a more integrated system, but it's been pretty good for getting up and running because it's "standard" and kinda plug and play. I see why you'd want to rewrite it for production, the endless processes and nodes and startup processes can get annoying
One of the more useful things I've done so far is actually not robotics related directly, it's a Godot based "game" with a ROS bridge that lets me drive the robot from Foxglove, which I will eventlly get a vlm based agent to drive. Seems much easier and faster than Issac Sim for getting started with.
Unfortunately, this is where robotics is going to end up. We already have drones being used in warfare. Humanoids are next.
Won't be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of humanoid robots strapped up with explosives running to their target or some of them flying to their target with drones attached.
I don't see bipedal murderbots being commonplace - they're a lot slower than 4-legged "Big Dogs". I think that the Ukraine war has shown that "slaughterbots" are far more likely.
That may be true but doesn't matter. The fact that weapons will exist and even the fact that they must exist, and even the fact that you benefit from them existing, none of that means you are obligated to work on or with them yourself.
Cakes exist and I even like them, and I do not choose to work at a bakery.
Why would you build a very expensive bipedal robot to suicide bomb someone, when as you note, a very cheap flying drone could do the same thing? (and more over: already is, this is literally how drones are used in Ukraine).
Which of course leads to point 2: it's very easy to take a moral stance on weapons when you don't think you're in any danger, nor going to be doing any of the fighting otherwise.
Why would they have to be killer robots strapped with explosives? If we have highly capable semi-autonomous robots they could be non-lethal with no risk of life to their owners.
It upends the entire paradigm of kill-or-be-killed warfare.
Rather than blowing up a school full of little girls, you could deploy a swarm of thousands of fast-moving cat-sized robots armed with tasers and bolas to identify and capture targeted enemy leaders.
Something like the robot from interstellar is probably more likely.
All the drone warfare developments remind me of the introduction of tanks during the first world war and perfected by the second world war. In the space of a few years they changed warfare. Then planes changed warfare again. Now drones. Makes you wonder what the next thing will be
> We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.
Don't you live in a nation state that uses violence to maintain the order that you've come to enjoy? Here's a harsh dose of reality for ya, suffering is unavoidable... the trick is convincing the worker class that it's easier to just cooperate
I've lived in a lot of places, many of them on the receiving end.
I'm from a western country originally though, sure. Can't think of any wars we've been in during my lifetime that have done me much good. All wars of choice and aggression.
... but I found out they were planning to mount teleoperated weapons on the robotic platforms for a demo. I’m not willing to go there, so I resigned without another offer.
There's a ton of anti-drone defense startups currently, but how does one defend against armed bipedal robots? They're a lot heavier than most drones, so presumably they can be decked out with various types of shielding.
As far as I'm aware, phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range don't yet exist.
I'm putting my money on miniature RC Incom T-47s complete with tow cables.
It should be required that as soon as firmware detects that its bipedal host has, in fact—had its legs tied up by a snow speeder—that it must proceed with a claymation-style display of panic before falling onto its face.
Not helpful if all detractors leave a company that's going down a dangerous path, leaving all the trigger happy peeps to follow their worst instincts. But understandable regardless.
I do not work in robotics, but I would also like to thank you for listening to your conscience and resigning. The world needs more people like you. I hope your venture goes well!
I think ethics will often fall short in general. I don't mean this to be limited to the comment above by the threadstarter, but when it comes to money, most people will choose money. People will have different threshold levels of what they want to accept.
I guess people making swords and arrows in the past had similar ethical dilemas in the begining, until they were attacked and then it became business as usual.
You didn’t know Boston Dynamics was involved in weaponised platforms until 2 weeks ago? That feels like wilful ignorance at this point; DARPA was sponsoring BigDog which was revealed two decades ago: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8802-robotic-pack-mul...
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Relevant: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=chWCcec_gzg
I am forced to accept the popularity of ROS but I find it to generally be a terrible experience. Are you considering an alternative? Have you used foxglove?
I am definitely looking into Foxglove! It seems to solve many of the transport/protocol headaches, but I feel like there's still a massive gap in how we actually interact with the robots day to day, especially when you are not glued to a desktop monitor.
I'd love to hear more about your experience. What specific part of the tooling drove you crazy enough to start building an alternative?
(Also, if you are open to a quick 15-min chat to share "war" stories, let me know!)
Though I can understand your position being in a country that's not defending itself currently.
I hope you are able to convince some of your colleagues to do likewise.
Helping people enhance is a good thing!
> Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem.
Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.
"Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.
This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.
I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?
Yes, an economy is perfectly capable of orienting itself around satisfying the wants of the few people who have a lot of capital at the expense of the many who have little capital. Why wouldn't this be possible?
It obviously creates systemic risk in the economy, which is one of many reasons it should be mitigated by policy and taxation, but I'm not sure why you're acting like it's some mathematical impossibility.
Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity, which again we have literally hundreds of real world examples of throughout history.
> Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity,
Just answer my question, who's buying all the stuff the robots are making when everyones "driven to extreme economic hardship"?
No one said "everyone" is being driven to extreme economic hardship. Without that word, your implication doesn't quite work :)
Here's a rephrasing of your question using the dynamic that I actually described. Let me know if you still need me to fill in the blanks for you:
> when automated systems owned by fewer and fewer people are responsible for greater and greater proportions of economic surplus, who buys the output of those systems?
Do you need help answering that question still?
Even if a job is "bad", losing it creates short-term shocks; especially low-income workers can’t instantly move to better jobs.
No doubt that structural (long term) changes are profitable for everybody - but both phenomenons can hold true.
I'm on a similar journey. I took flight 6 weeks ago and built a turn based board engine for human/agent delivery teams called Keel https://www.spoke.sh/keel. The grand vision is to apply the board engine as a control mechanism for work to be done and verified in deployed robot fleets.
I've been using AI heavily to do this, so everything is in ROS2 since it's "standard" and AIs have pretty good training for it. I can see how it's annoying and suboptimal if you're writing manually and after a more integrated system, but it's been pretty good for getting up and running because it's "standard" and kinda plug and play. I see why you'd want to rewrite it for production, the endless processes and nodes and startup processes can get annoying
One of the more useful things I've done so far is actually not robotics related directly, it's a Godot based "game" with a ROS bridge that lets me drive the robot from Foxglove, which I will eventlly get a vlm based agent to drive. Seems much easier and faster than Issac Sim for getting started with.
Won't be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of humanoid robots strapped up with explosives running to their target or some of them flying to their target with drones attached.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-exoskeleton-test-bat...
Cakes exist and I even like them, and I do not choose to work at a bakery.
Which of course leads to point 2: it's very easy to take a moral stance on weapons when you don't think you're in any danger, nor going to be doing any of the fighting otherwise.
Rather than blowing up a school full of little girls, you could deploy a swarm of thousands of fast-moving cat-sized robots armed with tasers and bolas to identify and capture targeted enemy leaders.
All the drone warfare developments remind me of the introduction of tanks during the first world war and perfected by the second world war. In the space of a few years they changed warfare. Then planes changed warfare again. Now drones. Makes you wonder what the next thing will be
I'm glad I did it though. We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.
> We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.
Don't you live in a nation state that uses violence to maintain the order that you've come to enjoy? Here's a harsh dose of reality for ya, suffering is unavoidable... the trick is convincing the worker class that it's easier to just cooperate
I'm from a western country originally though, sure. Can't think of any wars we've been in during my lifetime that have done me much good. All wars of choice and aggression.
therefore it makes no sense to consider one's own role in producing, mitigating, or directing suffering in the world
i am very smart
/s
>
... but I found out they were planning to mount teleoperated weapons on the robotic platforms for a demo. I’m not willing to go there, so I resigned without another offer.There's a ton of anti-drone defense startups currently, but how does one defend against armed bipedal robots? They're a lot heavier than most drones, so presumably they can be decked out with various types of shielding.
As far as I'm aware, phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range don't yet exist.
I'm putting my money on miniature RC Incom T-47s complete with tow cables.
It should be required that as soon as firmware detects that its bipedal host has, in fact—had its legs tied up by a snow speeder—that it must proceed with a claymation-style display of panic before falling onto its face.
There are many open source solutions out there: https://alternativeto.net/software/google-forms/?license=ope... I recommend if you can choose any of privacy friendly options, thanks and have a nice day.
Using a survey like this is IMO not ideal though.
> I’m not willing to go there
Unfortunately it doesn't matter, some else will go ... just look at the ukr war.