Technical Challenges Hindering Robotics and the Uncertainty of Demo Videos

Within the AI community in San Francisco, there is a strong belief that general-purpose robots will emerge in the near future. A future is predicted where humanoids equipped with physical intelligence handle physical labor such as cooking and cleaning.

However, progress in physical AI is actually limited to test facilities and demo videos. A robot at a level that anyone can actually use, similar to ChatGPT, does not yet exist.

Demo videos are insufficient as a means of evaluating progress.
A video may show only the single successful instance out of 100 attempts. Furthermore, they may be intentionally edited or set up to avoid challenges that the robot cannot handle.

Replicating the robot "hand" is also a difficult challenge.
The human hand possesses approximately 24 degrees of freedom and about 17,000 tactile sensors. While some existing robotic hands approach humans in certain physical attributes, they have not been able to combine flexibility, sensitivity, strength, and reliability all at once.