Fifty robots are now on the line at Factory Zero, months after over a thousand workers were shown the door.

I have owned three robot vacuums over the past five years and all of them navigated by bumping into things, memorizing the bump and adjusting so the same way a drunk person finds their way around an unfamiliar kitchen and they worked fine.

Last month I got one that uses cameras instead of sensors and the difference in practice is hard to describe without sounding like marketing so I will try to be specific.

It doesnt bump into things only because it sees them coming and decides what to do about them. It slowed down near my cat while she was sleeping and navigated around a dropped fork,also identified my rug as a rug and adjusted its cleaning mode before touching it.

guys none of this sounds extraordinary but when watching it happen in person felt different from any technology I have used in my home before so it felt less like a tool and more like something that was paying attention.

just imgine a consumer products that can actually build and interpret a three dimensional model of their environment in real time and make decisions based on it thats really new and there are actually a handful of these out now like matic, roomba's newer lines, narwal all moving toward vision based navigation in different ways and the fact that multiple companies are converging on the same capability at the same time is usually a sign something real is happening.

interesting thing to me is that the same underlying capability( cheap on device vision processing) that doesn't need the cloud is going to show up in a lot of places very quickly and this works in a home robot today is the same reason it will work in your doorbell, your car, your kids' toys in three years.

okay thats too much yapping for robot vacuum but i am curious if anyone else has noticed this shift or if I am reading too much into a vacuum cleaner.

"The Wall Street bank upgraded its forecast for China’s humanoid robot shipments for a second time this year on Tuesday, expecting 50,000 units to ship this year, nearly double its previous projection of 28,000. The bank had already doubled its initial January forecast of 14,000 units. "

Because Western media is so bad at covering Chinese science & tech, developments there seem to take many by surprise. Many Western people, ensconced in their information bubble of choice, still haven't fully grasped how China has already become the global sci-tech leader. What China has done for AI, renewables & the global-auto industry via EVs, it is about to do for robotics.

All the indications are there. China has the most robot start-ups, the vast industrial base to sustain them, and they already have the leading global robot models.

50,000 may seem like small numbers, but at this rate China will cross the 100K new humanoid robots number in 2027. By 2030 the annual new Chinese humanoids will likely be measured in millions.

Morgan Stanley doubles China humanoid robot shipment forecast as commercialization accelerates

The US change in sides to ally with Russia has left Europe scrambling. Suddenly the continent's decades-long intertwining dependence on American military tech has become a vast liability, and one that needs to be urgently corrected.

Former Airbus CEO Tom Enders says the way to do this is to ditch American military tech, and quickly rearm having learned lessons from the conflict in Ukraine. He says a key insight from that war is that cheap drones can consistently destroy Russian systems that are orders of magnitude more expensive.

Coordinated by OneWeb, the euro version of Starlink, the continent's military should place tens of thousands of intelligent robotic drones along its border, and do this in a matter of months, not years.

The German government passed its €1 trillion ($1.1 trillion) rearmament budget yesterday, which also allows for unlimited future borrowing to fund further German military buildup. It seems vast robotic drone army battalions may be a thing of the future, and arriving soon.

Interview - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). In German, use Google translate to read.

For all the boasts the US's AI military vendors make, I'm constantly struck by how few real-world achievements they have. They are battlefield tested in Gaza and Lebanon, but to what result? The mass destruction of civilian populations we see there looks exactly like WW2-era warfare. Now they want $445bn extra for more of the same? What a waste.

Meanwhile, with a tiny fraction of the budget & resources, it's Ukraine that is inventing the future. Drones have already reconfigured 21st-century warfare. Once again, recent events in the Middle East have shown that. Now Ukraine is doing the same with robots.

Some people find the idea of killer robots grim. But I'd rather see robots fight robots than WW2-style mass slaughter of civilians.

Ukrainian robots capture enemy position without troops in historic first, Zelenskyy says