The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 9 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Human-in-the-loop assistance is essential because autonomous robots will never be perfect
“When you give the robot the ability to know it needs help, you give it the ability to ask for help, you create a situation where a human can help it, then we keep the robots moving and they don't have to be perfect because they never will be.”
Theobald: Comprehensive software test suites for robotics are physically impossible
“Like, you know, you can write a piece of software, and you can pretty much write a comprehensive set of tests for that software to verify that it does everything the way it should. Not so with robotics. As a matter of fact, not only can you not really do that,…”
Theobald: Startups must 'cheat' on engineering purity to deliver business value
“If you're not cheating in business and cheating from the engineering perspective, you know, I don't condone dishonesty, fraud, but if you're not cheating, then you're navel gazing, you're, you know, you're pursuing academic interest, but you're not actually pr…”
Robotics ROI calculations must factor in future software-driven performance improvements
“You can't calculate your ROI today based on what the robot can do. I mean, you can obviously, but you shouldn't just calculate it based on what the robot can do today, because the robot will be able to do so much more in the future as well.”
Theobald: Robots physically handling human beings remains a long way off
“Honestly, it was never going to be effective at rescuing soldiers from the battlefield because robots picking up human beings is just something that's, you know, we're a ways off from that.”
Vecna's Walmart robots improved throughput 18% solely via software updates
“We deployed robots at Walmart, for example, And I think it was within the first two months the robots were already just through software updates. They were already operating 18, you know, they're getting 18% more work done than when we had started.”
Performance Level D safety certification creates a massive robotics business moat
“Once we solve these problems, it Created a very large moat around our business. Because, you know, getting safety certified, proving, you know, to 99.99% reliability that the robot would fail in a safe way. We call this performance level D took a lot of time. …”
Vecna's remote human interventions for stuck robots take about 30 seconds
“Most of the time, those interactions only take about 30 seconds.”
Walmart ordered 50 Vecna robots before COVID-19 froze corporate innovation projects
“We had a 50 robot order with Walmart pretty early on, but yeah, they were one of the ones that they said, we love you. And you know, it really hurts us to do this. We don't want to do it, but you know, we basically been told the corporate, we've got to shut al…”