He Walked Away From a $7M Robot Dog Project: As AI Gets Stronger, the Scarce Skill Is Deciding, Not Prompting
yongqianme · x · 2026-09-07
The author recounts walking away from a $7M quadruped robotics project in spring 2025. The customer wanted robot dogs doing geological surveys across real unmapped terrain—rock slopes, riverbeds, dense forest, wetlands, snow—with minimal human intervention. After talking to leading vendors in China, the US, and Europe, he found that while lab and closed-course performance had clearly improved, stability, endurance, perception, and locomotion still couldn't survive acceptance on unmapped mixed terrain. His broader thesis: as AI gets stronger, the scarce skill is not prompting but deciding—including judging which projects and deployment stories don't hold up.
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