rubyfan wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 10:09 am
I think Abyss jumped the gun by a couple of years with their AI/robotics dolls. With the major advances going on with technologies like ChatGPT and Replika, AI has really matured and left the original Realbotix AI in the dust. The robotic head was perhaps a bit more worthwhile as a research project, but the pricing was simply too high for all but a tiny set of customers.
Pretty sure we are going to get some amazing fembots over the next decade but I'm doubtful they will be from Abyss. Maybe they will still surprise us but have not been hearing good things from or about the company for a couple of years now. Not sure what happened as they seemed to be doing great for awhile.
True all the technology for a local server based solution is possible right now, it's just not user friendly.
There are two problems with what McMullen did in his approach to integrating robotics, AI and dolls. McMullen should have focused on his expertise which is doll making. He then should have standardized his animatronics and opened it up to open source development. Instead he tried to be all things and lacked expertise in software development. Rather than go with a chatbot firm that was out of date and for all intents and purposes obsolete, he should have made bridges with virtual reality firms inclusive of haptic suits and AR glasses. The reason: The robotics industry is primarily about industrial robots, everything else is a toy! So, without economies of scale to bring down the costs of parts for robotics and the application as a humanoid implementation costs are going to be astronomical. Literally, those bots that have the realism of facial expressions cost over half a million dollars!
With that said, McMullen should have focused on a two tier approach:
Tier 1: A soft body with standardized head mounting and new bodies with tactile sensors.
Tier 2: A hard body that could with stand the rigors of real environments.
- a. Because hard bodies don't have good solutions yet alternative approaches are required, like:
- 1. Virtualization of robotic bodies using real engine or unity
2. Integrating new doll bodies' sensors with AI
3. Implement an AR glasses solution
This way McMullen would retain the control and focus on improving process for what he does best, the art, which are the bodies and animatronic heads. Look at the PC in comparison to the Apple Mac. The Macs where closed systems and everything had to be approved by Apple before it could be a solution for Mac owners. The PC was wide open, literally the wild west, anything goes. The amount of development and choice of solutions for the PC in comparison to Mac was dramatic!
What makes Realdoll Realdoll is its approach to details, realism and even durability, which is McMullen expertise. The company now suffers because it lacks expertise in technologies it never was a leader in. This is why IBM made the PC architecture so flexible there were too many unknown unknowns in terms of tools, hardware peripherals and even deliverable frameworks. When in that mode focus on what you know and let others work out the problems they have a vision for...
