[HN Gopher] How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
___________________________________________________________________
How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
Author : samizdis
Score : 328 points
Date : 2021-01-07 14:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| ultimoo wrote:
| Fascinating!
|
| On a separate note, I was reading up on Boston Dynamics just the
| other day and was surprised to see that they are now owned by
| Hyundai (Google X sold BD to SoftBank who sold them to Hyundai).
| I guess was surprised to see non US-based ownership because I had
| always assumed the US government had some interest in the core
| technology.
| rtx wrote:
| Still with a protectorate.
| rattray wrote:
| What does that mean?
| ghc wrote:
| Being a protectorate means by treaty the US has some
| responsibility for the military defense of Korea.
|
| https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Protectorates-
| a...
| MikusR wrote:
| Funniest thing is that is Hyundai the carmaker and not Hyundai
| the robot maker.
| amelius wrote:
| Every BD video should at least contain a fragment of somebody
| poking at the robots with a stick.
| aj7 wrote:
| Awful interview. Almost nothing of interest revealed.
| wrnr wrote:
| Yea I still don't know what the input level is for the robots,
| did they use some sort of dance notation[1]?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation
| Technically wrote:
| I think it's safe to say they don't give a shit about
| tradition.
| fctorial wrote:
| Probably limb positions at discreet instances in time, and
| bots know how to move from one position to another.
| yarcob wrote:
| There's more to it than just that. There's no way that just
| moving to predefined limb positions would be stable.
|
| You can't script an unstable system without feedback. Any
| tiny perturbation would cause the robot to fall over. You
| need to actively control the system to counteract the
| instability.
|
| So there will be some (scripted) goals, and a very
| complicated control algorithm that tries to reach the goals
| without falling over.
| rendall wrote:
| There are some hints with this excerpt:
|
| "Atlas' current dance performance uses a mixture of what we
| like to call reflexive control, which is a combination of
| reacting to forces, online and offline trajectory
| optimization, and model predictive control. We leverage
| these techniques because they're a reliable way of
| unlocking really high performance stuff, and we understand
| how to wield these tools really well. We haven't found the
| end of the road in terms of what we can do with them"
| wiz21c wrote:
| "offline trajectory optimization" this doesn't sound
| good... I read this as : "we've made those robots do
| things they won't be able to do autonomously thanks to
| massive amounts of offline optimization".
|
| Sure it's impressive, but I wonder how it helps the
| casual viewer to get an idea of what these robots can
| actually do. One could say that's the whole point of PR
| but...
|
| It sure helped BD engineer to push their robots forward
| (as said in the article).
| exikyut wrote:
| It's a demo.
|
| Literally. Like in the demoscene sense.
|
| And it doesn't matter that the robot couldn't possibly
| coordinate everything in the video on is own. The
| software doesn't just have to coordinate high level "go
| here, move like this", you also have the lower level
| coordination that sits between the collision avoidance
| and basic driving etc and the $gcode_variant driving the
| servos. I'm guessing _that_ stack gets a major overhaul
| every time one of these videos gets made, like almost
| every Hollywood movie has a massive "software
| development" section because of all the artistic
| direction that needed new or changed functionality.
|
| The original video showing Spot moonwalking had the most
| imperceptible of splices in it right at the end of the
| moonwalking bit. Several months' worth of development
| alongside careful use of multiple scenes in this newer
| video have mitigated the need for hacks like that. It's
| nice to see.
| yarcob wrote:
| Offline trajectory optimisation sounds a lot like a
| dancer training dance moves?
| rendall wrote:
| I heard it as motion capture data cleaning, getting the
| data into a form the robot could use
| rendall wrote:
| Personally, I like seeing these baby steps and starts. As
| you and the article pointed out, this initiative let them
| see what they need to do before they can get to a purely
| autonomous dancing robot. Exciting times
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I concur, I was hoping to see more detail on how they actually
| train Atlas to do things. Do they use a software simulator? Can
| it mimic a motion capture of a human? Is it rigged like a video
| game model?
| amelius wrote:
| > Do they use a software simulator?
|
| "We used simulation to rapidly iterate through movement
| concepts while soliciting feedback from the choreographer to
| reach behaviors that Atlas had the strength and speed to
| execute. It was very iterative--they would literally dance
| out what they wanted us to do, and the engineers would look
| at the screen and go 'that would be easy' or 'that would be
| hard' or 'that scares me.'"
|
| --Aaron Saunders, Boston Dynamics
| rendall wrote:
| I thought it was a fine interview. It didn't dive deep into the
| technical aspects, but that wasn't its purpose. It gave me an
| overview and synopsis of some of the factors involved in
| producing something like that
|
| Also, the people involved including the author are
| participating on this page. With respect, this guideline might
| be relevant:
|
| _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._
| Vosporos wrote:
| Ah yes, doing fortnite dances while committing war crimes
| slumdev wrote:
| People won't think they're cute when the DOD awards a contract
| to strap a belt-fed .50 cal to each arm. Hell, why stop with
| two arms?
| eplanit wrote:
| Enforcement Droids! Then we can build Delta City.
| slumdev wrote:
| If they were scaled up to the size of an Enforcement Droid,
| there would be ample space to solve their battery capacity
| problem.
| krapp wrote:
| The most American thing ever.
| laydn wrote:
| Anyone know, how long would these robots keep dancing, with the
| on-board batteries?
| qayxc wrote:
| Spot could easily last an hour or more - BD quotes about 90
| minutes of walking on a single charge.
|
| Atlas on the other hand is still a prototype, so it's not
| optimised in that regard and also much bigger, heavier and
| bulkier. I'd guess it doesn't last longer than maybe 20 minutes
| or so.
| jansan wrote:
| 1. Teach humanoid robots to dance
|
| 2. ???
|
| 3. Profit
| wiz21c wrote:
| Not to rain on anyone's parade BUT what about the battery life ?
| ernopp wrote:
| > You mentioned that Spot is now robust enough to dance all
| day. How about Atlas? If you kept on replacing its batteries,
| could it dance all day, too?
| qayxc wrote:
| That doesn't answer the question. Even Spot requires constant
| battery swapping to be able to function all day. Its battery
| life is measured in minutes, not hours.
|
| The comment referred to robustness, not endurance.
| qayxc wrote:
| The battery life is abysmal. These machines use the same
| batteries as every other piece of contemporary tech.
|
| Spot can walk about for 90 minutes top and the more it needs to
| do (e.g. running additional sensors, performing autonomous
| functions, etc.), the shorter its battery life will be (I'd
| guess around an hour is more realistic).
|
| Bipedal prototypes like Atlas wouldn't last that long. Think 20
| minutes or so for a heavy robot like that.
| rohan_shah wrote:
| Robots who could replace some manual labour work within a
| specified area (say: factories), don't need to rely on
| batteries. We could attach them with a huge wire and plug it
| into power supply.
| qayxc wrote:
| In those specified areas it's also much simpler and more
| efficient to change the process itself.
|
| Automated warehouses for example don't use legged robots
| that climb ladders, operate forklifts, and carry boxes
| around.
|
| Interestingly, the bits of manual labour still required in
| these areas (e.g. factories) are cheap in terms of manual
| labour and not doable with the same level of efficiency
| with even the most sophisticated robots, let alone bipedal
| ones (you'd change the factory to accommodate to the
| simplest possible robot design, not vice versa).
| alexpotato wrote:
| Then all you need is a centralized "depot" where all of the
| Spots can come back to and have their batteries swapped out
| by another robot.
| qayxc wrote:
| But why even? What would be a realistic use case for such
| scenario that wouldn't be simpler, cheaper, and more
| reliably served by more conventional means?
| twistedpair wrote:
| Big Dog had a gasoline engine for longer endurance, but was
| heinously noisy.
| pragmatic8 wrote:
| To all that are wetting their diapers at the _ridiculous_ thought
| of robots hunting you down (a rather pompous thought in my
| opinion -- why would anyone expend any resources to kill _you_?):
| please remain in your bunkers for the sake of society.
| abhijitr wrote:
| It must be nice for you that you've never felt persecuted or
| treated unjustly by human systems and therefore can't
| extrapolate to how that might play out when autonomous killer
| robots are thrown into the mix.
| DoktorDelta wrote:
| Ask Breonna Taylor who would expend any resource to kill you
| [deleted]
| mam2 wrote:
| The worst part of it is people who imagine robots hunting you
| would be for some reason 'worse' than horrific humans militia
| such as SS have done in the past.
|
| Any atrocity has been done by humankind already.. we didn't
| wait for robots.
| dshep wrote:
| Am I the only one that finds these BD robots kind of repulsive?
| They are so weird and alien and... unnatural.
| samizdis wrote:
| I doubt that you are alone in your reaction, but the robots'
| appearance is driven more by function than by form. This dance
| exercise goes some way to redress the balance, with movements
| that are more fluid and graceful than the jerkiness typically
| displayed by robots. Yes, weird, and perhaps alien. But of
| course unnatural: nature has provided no precedent or template
| for robot designers to follow.
| jsdalton wrote:
| You're not the only one. What you describe is actually
| hypothesized in the concept of the "uncanny valley effect":
|
| "...as the appearance of a robot is made more human, some
| observers' emotional response to the robot becomes increasingly
| positive and empathetic, until it reaches a point beyond which
| the response quickly becomes strong revulsion. However, as the
| robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable
| from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive
| once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.
|
| "This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with
| appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully
| human" entity is the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea
| that an almost human-looking robot seems overly "strange" to
| some human beings, produces a feeling of uncanniness, and thus
| fails to evoke the empathic response required for productive
| human-robot interaction."
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
| mleonhard wrote:
| I felt repulsed by only the arm on the quadruped robot.
| Animats wrote:
| That's impressive.
|
| It took 40 years and somewhere well above $100 million to get to
| a minimum viable product. First DARPA, then Google, then
| Softbank. It helps having long-term funding.
| k__ wrote:
| _" it's about having a pipeline that lets you take a diverse set
| of motions, that you can describe through a variety of different
| inputs, and push them through and onto the robot."_
|
| Remember that, when you think automation can come later.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| That's useful for HN readers in general, but when specifically
| talking about robots, it needs to be communicated to legacy
| robotics manufacturers like Fanuc, Yaskawa, etc.
|
| This dance happened because Monica Thomas could drag-and-drop
| motions as if she was programming a MIDI sequencer, generating
| text files on her laptop, pushing data from the PC to the robot
| with some Python and protobufs. Other manufacturers doing
| anything like this is rare, and they're nowhere near as fluid
| or graceful, because it involves a robot technician tediously
| jogging the robot around with a teach pendant in the way all
| industrial robots have been programmed since the 70s.
| jessep wrote:
| My sister choreographed this dance, and I'm a little unhappy that
| she isn't mentioned here by name. She's brilliant, and I want her
| to get credit.
|
| Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King
| Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc
|
| Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song "Do you
| love me", which is a winking but still charming reference to the
| fact that this is a PR stunt to get us to love scary robots.
|
| Dancers and choreographers are poor, and struggle to build
| careers. A public acknowledgment of something of this magnitude
| would be so impactful, and would require so little from Boston
| Dynamics. I wish they would do it.
|
| They could even brand themselves as helping artists, could be
| good for their image.
| johnx123-up wrote:
| FWIW, https://www.madkingthomas.com/content/who-monica is 404
| joopxiv wrote:
| Also, the song is about be able to dance...
| riantogo wrote:
| Followed, liked, retweeted. I had loved the choreography and
| I'm glad I now know who was behind it. Please tell Monica that
| we await here next piece of art.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| >...Do you love me", which is a winking but still charming
| reference to the fact that this is a PR stunt to get us to love
| war machines.
|
| Neat Easter egg. Though I'm not sure I can reconcile being both
| critical of and centrally involved in the same PR stunt.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I would _so_ love to see some of the original concept videos
| with the humans who were dancing, I hope they release it.
| Honestly, I think a "how we made this" video would be just as
| popular as the robots dancing.
| jordache wrote:
| yep! a how we made this video for the robot dance would be
| much much more compelling than one of those video for an
| apple headphone
| totetsu wrote:
| Can't be every day she gets to choreograph for a quadruped.
| anoncow wrote:
| Art > Science
| casey77 wrote:
| Prior to reading your comment, I read the article and my main
| takeaway was how impressive the choreographer was and how I
| wouldn't have expected the engineers to rely so much on the
| choreographer. So it is great to see your comment and I agree
| with you. But the article did give at least one person more
| appreciation for choreographers.
| unixhero wrote:
| She did an amazing job and is talented for sure.
|
| I still absolutely hate those robots. This won't end well.
| amelius wrote:
| People won't accept them on the streets, that's for sure.
|
| Perhaps they'd have a chance if they used a different form
| factor, though.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| Without wishing to spoil anything, the robot video reminded
| me very much of the final scenes of the Battlestar Galactica
| reboot from a decade ago.
| mrfusion wrote:
| We need the three laws of robotics now!
| mkl wrote:
| Totally impractical. You'd need human level general AI
| before they could be interpreted and applied, and as
| Asimov's stories show, they're plenty fallible even with
| that.
|
| These robots know roughly where they are, what positions
| their limbs are in, how balanced they are, and what
| movement they should do next. _That 's about it_. They
| cannot understand Asimov's three (*four) laws, or even a
| single sentence of English, and have no choice over their
| own actions as a whole.
| unixhero wrote:
| Now!
| 0x0203 wrote:
| I think that unfortunately, when it comes to the public
| perception, that the movie Terminator did to robotics and AI
| what Jaws did to the Great White shark. This seems to have
| permeated western culture in a way that makes it very
| difficult to have much serious and honest discussion about
| the technology and I suspect is actively holding the field
| back. My perception is that in other countries, like Japan
| for example, they have a very different perspective on what
| these technologies can do for them and they seem to be much
| more embracing of it, rather than scared of it.
|
| Both here and anywhere else the Boston Dynamics robots are
| shown off, half of the comments always come back to the
| "scary robots" that will take your jobs and murder your
| family. I wish we could hit a big reset button on how the
| public at large perceives robots because I personally think
| that there is a lot of benefit to be harvested here, for the
| true benefit of mankind.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Boston dynamics itself was started with military funding.
| Robotics will be an industry with a lot of blood on its
| hands, even if it does do good as well.
| tandr wrote:
| It is unfortunate, but - Internet have started as an ARPA
| project. First rockets to space started with military
| funding.
|
| Question is... what are current goals of Boston Dynamics?
| Do they even see these robots used for non-military
| widely used scenarios - construction, medical care,
| first-responders etc? Are these things even possible for
| the things where cost is an important factor (unlike
| military, where cost is not that important)?
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Uncanny valley is so real.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > This won't end well.
|
| Care to expand on that? I'm very cynical about Boston
| Dynamics, given that - as far as I can tell / know - they've
| only done tech demos and again as far as I know don't have
| significant commercial success, or their robots doing things
| outside of (carefully orchestrated) tech demos.
|
| disclaimer: I never actually looked on their website for user
| cases or whatnot.
| Shivetya wrote:
| Initially they will be a curiosity; robots in the public in
| general; but public perception is a tricky thing. There
| will be people absolutely terrified by their presence but
| some of this can be mitigated by how the robot looks; the
| more dexterous it is I am willing to bet will make it more
| scary to some.
|
| however the real bugaboo begins when one is used wrong
| regardless of where that occurs. like facial recognition we
| are going to need some serious regulations on how law
| enforcement uses these. I don't expect issues with fire and
| rescue but they would get secured by the same laws.
|
| As in, if they end up in use to secure assailants and there
| is an injury to that target or worse bystanders public
| reception will tank quickly. Let alone if robots ever got
| employed against protestors.
|
| that perception will change radically regardless in the
| world where it happens because not all governments respect
| the rights of their citizens to the same degree and it
| becomes only a matter of time before abuse happens and its
| film.
|
| on a side note, we certainly have enough movies and
| television presentation of the bad uses of robots; though
| most if cyborg type; to give people pause but will it give
| lawmakers pause?
| visarga wrote:
| It's not something you can simply outlaw. Progress won't
| stop, those who oppose it just get left behind. The
| progress of technology is a force we don't have control
| over. When writing, the engine or electronics get
| invented everyone has to get onboard.
| grkvlt wrote:
| their website has an online shop [0] where you can purchase
| the things and have them shipped to you, to (ab) use as
| desired - so hardly 'only (carefully orchestrated) tech
| demos' any more.
|
| 0. https://shop.bostondynamics.com/spot
| yarcob wrote:
| As soon as they make a usable remote control for that robot
| the US military is going to buy a bunch of them and attach
| machine guns and use them to shoot up "suspected
| terrorists".
|
| Looking at what the US military has been doing with drones,
| that scenario doesn't seem that far fetched.
| Notorious_BLT wrote:
| Given the success (inasmuch as one can call it that)
| they've had with drones, why bother with mounting a gun
| on a robot that can barely run for longer than an hour?
| Wouldn't a remotely-piloted/autonomous vehicle with guns
| mounted on it be much more efficient than a robot walking
| around on 2 legs?
|
| I guess I just struggle with understanding how this
| changes anything.
| tandr wrote:
| Weight of what it can carry might be an important factor.
| XorNot wrote:
| Conversely an army of non-sapient robots would have a lot
| more options for dealing with belligerents. A human has
| to fire back when threatened because they don't want to
| die. A robot can take the hit, and risk being destroyed,
| because we can build another one.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Judging by the use of drones for "extrajudicial"
| assassination, the narrative of robots as merciful
| weapons sounds dubious at best.
| bradyd wrote:
| Police in the US have already used a robot to execute a
| suspect after a sniper killed 5 police officers.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12129348/dallas-
| shooting-b...
| XorNot wrote:
| A drone at 2 miles up isn't arresting anyone.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| Interesting comparison, in times of militarized trigger-
| happy police...
| XorNot wrote:
| Which again, a robot has no need or ability to be.
| qayxc wrote:
| > Looking at what the US military has been doing with
| drones, that scenario doesn't seem that far fetched.
|
| This scenario will remain science fiction until we invent
| a compact power source with an energy density (by both
| mass- and volume) matching fossil fuels.
|
| The military has no use for loud and cumbersome petrol-
| powered monstrosities like Big Dog (which is why the
| project was axed) or underpowered robots with an
| endurance that's measured in minutes (like Spot) in
| combat scenarios.
|
| Once such power source is available, though, the
| independence and versatility of a human in power armour
| would still be far superior to a remote controlled robot
| that can be hacked or have its comms jammed with COTS
| equipment...
| exikyut wrote:
| Wait, Spot's power source only lasts minutes?
|
| Ah, its battery runs for 90 minutes.
| qayxc wrote:
| > Ah, its battery runs for 90 minutes.
|
| Yep, and that's best case, too (e.g. not running Lidar or
| complex processing for autonomous function at the same
| time).
|
| Minutes sounds a bit shorter than it is, but nevertheless
| anything with an endurance under 2 hours cannot run for
| hours pretty much by definition ;)
| jackhack wrote:
| It's about perspective. Imagine being pinned down by a
| squad of these things for "only" 60 minutes. Or being
| pursued through the forest or an urban environment. That
| 60 minutes would feel like a very long time.
|
| For a glimpse of this, check out the videogame Generation
| Zero (1980's Sweden overtaken by armed robots, including
| robot dogs).
| qayxc wrote:
| > Imagine being pinned down by a squad of these things
| for "only" 60 minutes. Or being pursued through the
| forest or an urban environment.
|
| Given the current state of these machines, both these
| environments would favour humans. Even a fairly untrained
| average Jane or Joe would have no problems outrunning
| these things in forests or urban environments, let alone
| a trained soldier. Not to mention the lack of autonomy.
|
| Everything you see in these promotional videos is
| carefully choreographed, prepared and pre-programmed in
| advance for days, and edited:
|
| "There were definitely some failures in the hardware that
| required maintenance, and our robots stumbled and fell
| down sometimes." - they shot the first part several times
| and kept the one that worked best. That's not something
| you can do in the field outside of a controlled
| environment.
|
| These robots are still long ways away from posing more of
| a thread to a soldier than much simpler solution, e.g. a
| Humvee with a mounted machine gun.
|
| > For a glimpse of this, check out the videogame
| Generation Zero
|
| The game is based on fiction, not fact, though. The
| required autonomy just isn't there yet and the video game
| robots clearly run on magic, not electricity or petrol.
| They never overheat, they are maintenance free, and they
| move faster than is currently possible w.r.t. motion
| planning and image recognition.
|
| It's your typical AM/FM affair: BD is actual machines -
| pre-programmed or remote controlled, very limited
| endurance and still impractical for most military
| applications.
|
| The robots in video games and cinema on the other hand
| are for the most part in the domain of fucking magic -
| capable of "120 years of continuous operation on a single
| power cell" like the Cyberdyne Systems series 800 v2.4
| (Terminator), turning themselves from "autonomous swords"
| into screaming humans (Screamers), are nearly
| indestructible like Vision (Marvel's Avengers) or strange
| spiky flying thingamabobs like the Sentinels (Matrix
| trilogy).
| brlewis wrote:
| That would be terrifying, but a squad of trained humans
| is still more terrifying. If you're worried about what a
| military is going to do, robots are mostly a distraction.
| latencyloser wrote:
| Perhaps enough time to drop a few in with a parachute,
| hit a target, then possibly "self destruct" somehow, if
| I'm being imaginative I suppose.
| pegasus wrote:
| I have the same feeling that antropomorphizing robots these
| way is a dangerous direction to head in. We are
| intentionally confusing ourselves into thinking they are
| something other than they are.
| typhon04 wrote:
| I think the dog-like robot - Spot is commercial. SpaceX are
| using one to asses things on their launch pad. But I guess
| it's truly a difficult problem and they aren't rushing it
| to market before is good and save enough. Which if they
| have the funding I think is a good approach.
| qayxc wrote:
| Spot is a solution in search of a problem.
|
| SpaceX are using one because I think simply because
| someone thought it'd be cool. You can remotely inspect a
| launch pad without shelling out $75k+ using RC cars and
| drones, for example. It's much cooler and better for the
| company's overall image, though, if you use a Spot robot.
| PR is a thing after all and using Spot fits perfectly.
|
| I seriously doubt there's any difficulty with safety or
| "being good enough", as I've yet to see an application
| for Spot that couldn't be done just as well by
| conventional already existing means.
|
| BD is a group of enthusiasts that build cool robots, not
| a company that primarily develops robotic solutions.
| wiz21c wrote:
| Very good sense of humor indeed. I caught the "do you love me"
| question instantaneously and wondered who got that very good
| idea. As always, the good idea didn't came from the PR
| department :-)
| cbozeman wrote:
| There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my
| Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can
| be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.
| uniqueid wrote:
| They are scarier than your Roomba.
| greatgirl wrote:
| A roomba doesn't have the potential to kill you.
| fsflover wrote:
| It has a potential to sell info about you though.
| notum wrote:
| Mount a knife on it.
|
| Though to day, the most dangerous murderous machines we
| have created have been cars.
| slavik81 wrote:
| Your wish is my command. https://youtu.be/OwtxWL0P9wA
| caturopath wrote:
| Done.
|
| What's next?
| fsflover wrote:
| Now wait until you fall on it.
| amelius wrote:
| > There's nothing scary about these robots
|
| How would you feel if the dance contained some choreographed
| "mow the people down" moves?
| paganel wrote:
| There isn't even a need for that, take the "classic" goose
| dance, for example, it can be particularly funny, like in
| this video [1], or out-right scary, like in this footage
| [2].
|
| It all depends on the context, I can't see John Cleese
| turning into a genocidal dictator anytime soon, while we
| all know what the people in the second video did only a few
| years after those images were filmed. For what it's worth I
| see the robot in this story closer to the second video than
| to Cleese's comedic genius.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/yfl6Lu3xQW0?t=82
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvS4LY26Yg
| ralfd wrote:
| They are more scary the same way a tiger is more scary than a
| cat even though both are Felidae.
| [deleted]
| richardw wrote:
| If your Roomba was programmed to hurt me I'd surround myself
| with power cords.
|
| This looks like us so it's easier to see how we're threatened
| by it. It's more visceral. My cats don't care about my vacuum
| but if it walked and jumped their neutrons might fire
| differently.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I can't edit my original comment, or else I'd add this
| line:
|
| Everyone afraid of this, you _ought_ to be afraid of micro-
| drones like the Black Hornet Nano -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano
|
| No one is going to send a fleet of these ultra-expensive
| Robo-Killers to assassinate you and everyone else on the
| battlefield. Once these micro-drones can be mass produced
| cheaply enough, and you can put enough high-explosive on
| them to fly up to a person's neck and ! _!pop!_! someone 's
| head clean off, you'll see them programmed with swarm
| behavior and be unleashed onto the battlefield.
|
| They fly faster than you can run (13 miles per hour), have
| a 1 mile range, and a 25 minute flight time. More than
| enough capability to swarm entire battalions and wipe them
| out.
| 0x0203 wrote:
| > Everyone afraid of this, you ought to be afraid of
| micro-drones like the Black Hornet Nano
|
| >They fly faster than you can run (13 miles per hour),
| have a 1 mile range, and a 25 minute flight time.
|
| And can be trivially defeated by some netting, blinded by
| bright lights/lasers, and/or knocked out of the sky by
| leaf blowers and umbrellas. Despite what certain
| propagandaesque sci-fi "warning" videos would have people
| believe, I'm least worried about these nano-drones. At
| the end of the day bullets are still cheaper, less
| complicated, and more effective. And as soon as you give
| the drones some standoff capabilities to mitigate some of
| the countermeasures, you start loosing many of the
| perceived "benefits" and are back to just using guys with
| guns.
| klyrs wrote:
| I agree, that single nano-drone isn't scary. What of a
| swarm of hundreds?
| 0x0203 wrote:
| Cost and complexity. If you have to send so many to
| overwhelm and bypass all the countermeasures, the cost
| and complexity of make it a much less practical and
| appealing solution than just doing it the old fashioned
| way. I can't see how brass, lead, and gunpowder will ever
| be more expensive than light weight plastics/composites,
| electronics, sensors, motors, batteries, plus the actual
| lethal component. Add to that the required
| time/complexity required to configure and deploy,
| situational considerations such as weather, sensor
| viability, terrain/environment factors, etc... and we're
| back to going back to guys with guns. Could there
| conceivably be a scenario where this might be the best
| option? I suppose, but in my estimation it would likely
| be the option of last resort.
|
| If an enemy force has already made up its mind to kill, I
| don't see this making it any easier/more reliable/more
| effective than well-established alternatives.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That depends on the target. The military is quite ready
| and willing to spend tax dollars on things even if at the
| end of it there is something cheaper that does the job
| better.
| richardw wrote:
| That escalated. I started with a few power cords for the
| Roomba and now I never leave home without a laser, net
| and leaf blower.
| cutitout wrote:
| > It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for
| good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a
| gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a
| mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific
| device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal
| society, then one might very well say one cannot know.
|
| > But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete
| social and historical circumstances and political realities
| in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something
| like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted
| will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete
| realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure
| logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're
| living in the society in which we in fact live.
|
| > If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that
| mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and
| rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it
| goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one
| of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it
| is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist
| that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is
| going to be used.
|
| -- Joseph Weizenbaum,
| http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html
| ufmace wrote:
| They're a little unclear about exactly what morality they
| are advocating for. The nature of weapon technology
| transforms the way society works.
|
| In the era of sword and shield, for example, combat
| effectiveness is hugely dependent on raw upper body
| strength. That means that strong healthy men rule all
| domains, while women, children, any men not in top physical
| shape are helpless before them.
|
| In the modern era of mechanized weapons, personal size and
| physical ability are much less relevant. There's a much
| greater ability for small groups to make their opinions
| felt. Victory in large battles tends to go to whoever has
| the best tech and greatest quantity of it. It's probably a
| better world overall.
|
| The real question is, exactly how will any "killbots" work,
| and what effect will they have on society? Maybe they'll be
| super-expensive and centrally controlled, and nobody better
| dare to move against whoever ends up in charge of them.
| Maybe they'll be cheap and plentiful, so anyone with a
| grudge will be even more able to cause chaos. Maybe
| something else we can't imagine yet. I have a feeling we'll
| find out eventually, one way or another.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Your second paragraph seems rather simplistic to me.
|
| Less-able men with more ability to marshall
| resources/rewards can convince more-able men to be their
| proxies by paying them . How would they have the ability
| to do that? Technology, knowledge, cunning, guile.
|
| How long has it been since the king was the best fighter
| in the realm? I mean, seriously?
| ufmace wrote:
| Well yeah it's simplistic, since it's 2 sentences. I'm
| not really prepared or qualified to write a 30 page paper
| on the nature of medieval combat. Yet there seems to be
| an obvious truth to it.
|
| There are of course exceptions, such as persuading or
| paying someone else to fight for you, or concealing a
| weapon, getting someone to trust you, and stabbing them
| in the back, etc. It still seems to shape much about
| reality to know that the majority of people will have no
| chance of ever winning a remotely fair fight against the
| enforcers of whoever is in charge.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I don't find the "truth" you mention obvious at all. I
| think it's just a fairy story simplification based
| largely on fiction (written and visual).
|
| Over the last couple of thousand years (or more, but
| history gets a bit fuzzy beyond that), lots of nations
| have had leaders at many different times who were not the
| best fighters.
|
| Your claim wasn't that a majority of people had no chance
| of winning a fair fight against enforcers, which is
| obviously true. You made a much more broad claim about
| how historically certain physical attributes would put
| particular kinds of people in positions of power, and
| about how that has changed.
|
| I think this is likely misleading and inaccurate. Yes,
| those with power have always used force to enforce their
| wishes, but that's very different from saying that those
| in power are themselves of a certain physical type.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Still, it's a nice way to shift blame to scientists and
| engineers, away from people who actually _use_ these tools
| for evil, or commission development of technologies to use
| in their evil business models.
| cutitout wrote:
| All links in the chain are responsible for what they do,
| there is no single packet of "blame" that gets to reside
| with any single party, and denying one's responsibility
| will not make it go away.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > or for the benefit of mankind.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't know that I can trust any of the
| organizations that would have the budget to control enough of
| these robots to make a difference in any direction.
|
| Which is sad to me, as I love this from a technological
| perspective and looking at a best case scenario.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Humanity's goal should be to build AGI and let robots take
| over - we're doing it, willingly or unwillingly. No need to
| have blobs of meat hanging around. Intelligence itself is
| human thing. Whether it needs to have a body / physical
| metabolic processes to run by injesting cheetos all day, is
| totally absurd. Evolutionary processes have given us so
| much unnecessary baggage. Pure abstract intelligence is
| pretty damn human. There is already Neuralink and other
| hybird tech going on. I believe humans will willingly give
| up physical bodies in the long term (millenia scale).
|
| This is bound to happen. There is no way it wouldn't I
| believe, ofcourse in short term, we gotta worry about stuff
| like politics, solving hunger and world peace.
| adamsea wrote:
| Shit, I would simply be happy if humanity had a _goal_.
|
| LOL as for blobs of meat, well, me and a couple other
| people I know would be unwilling to part with our meaty
| blobs, for a whole bunch of reasons ;)
| bbarnett wrote:
| _This is bound to happen. There is no way it wouldn 't I
| believe, of course in short term, we gotta worry about
| stuff like politics, solving hunger and world peace._
|
| There will never be world peace, unless humanity is no
| longer human, or alternately, under the boot of an all
| encompassing empire ruled by force.
|
| To believe otherwise, is to believe history teaches us
| nothing, nor our knowledge of human behaviour. To assume
| that we somehow have a culture which "can do this", that
| our modern beliefs are "enlightened" enough to allow
| this, is the ultimate in hubris.
|
| Sure... humanity couldn't do it before, but now? Now,
| we're just ever so enlightened and perfect enough to
| enable world peace.
|
| There are only two real ways to enable world peace.
|
| 1) Genetically engineer the entire species to become
| more... social. Kill or prevent any 'old style' human
| reproducing. End the old species. There are innumerable
| issues here, including "we're just messing around with
| what we barely comprehend".
|
| Yet our entire culture is predicated upon how the human
| brain works, and the human brain works more on genetics,
| than post-birth learning.
|
| OR
|
| 2) Take over the entire planet, killing everyone who
| disagrees with you, and ensuring that due to the
| technology involved there can NEVER be a revolution.
| Further, destroy and hunt down every single person which
| does not swear fealty ; allow no external empires to
| form. Ever.
|
| NOTE: I am not happy about this, yet, this is reality.
| Let me put this another way.
|
| You want world peace? OK! Great!
|
| First, you'll need to end all murders, thefts, all anti-
| social behaviour. "World peace" is denied because of the
| genetics that create this behaviour. They're the same
| problem.
| rtx wrote:
| Robots are our next steps, we don't need to hang around.
| arethuza wrote:
| Personally, I'd hope we end up with something a bit like
| The Culture - which is perhaps the most positive scenario
| for any society made up of 'humans' and powerful AIs.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Spectrum of humanity spreads wide and there will never be
| absolute world peace - in the same way, there is no peace
| in the animal kingdom. As I write, thousands of animals
| are dying at this very moment, millions of insects are
| killed. Nature is fucking brutal, my friend. Unimaginable
| amount of pain was inflicted in the wilderness during
| this hour.
|
| We're lucky to be able to communicate to each other in
| civil manner without ripping each other apart for food.
| Pretty incredible to be a human!
| fsflover wrote:
| 1) really looks like the world from Brave New World.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Evolutionary processes have given us so much
| unnecessary baggage
|
| 21 years ago, when I started writing a cross-platform
| digital audio workstation called Ardour, I was convinced
| that your claim above applied to contemporary mixing
| consoles. It seemed to be that they had evolved in ways
| that were deeply constrained by
| physics/mechanical/electrical engineering, and that there
| were all kinds of things about their design that was just
| unnecessary baggage from their crude history.
|
| Two decades later, I understand how that evolutionary
| process actually instilled those designs with all kinds
| of subtle knowledge about process, intent, workflow, and
| even desire. It turns out that the precise placement of
| knobs, and even their diameter and resistance-to-motion,
| rather than being arbitrary nonsense derived from the
| catalog of available parts, rather precisely reflect what
| needs to be done.
|
| Don't be so quick to dismiss your physical form or the
| subtle wisdom that evolution can imbue.
|
| There's also the whole "situated action" sub-field of AI,
| which is centered around the idea that humans build
| themselves physical environments to embody and maintain
| knowledge in order to reduce computational load during
| decision making.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I enjoyed reading your perspective. I find evolutionary
| processes fascinating contrary to what my original
| comment imbibes. It's had a lot of time to optimize :)
| amelius wrote:
| > Humanity's goal should be to build AGI and let robots
| take over - we're doing it, willingly or unwillingly.
|
| Yes, but better not make them look human. Humans are bad
| at tolerating more/equally intelligent species, just look
| at homo sapiens versus neanderthals. Hell, even between
| races humans are barely tolerant.
| cbozeman wrote:
| A Spot costs about $75,000, so as far as trusting the
| organizations... I mean, I find myself seriously
| considering buying one.
|
| Yes, I would likely have to add-on other modules over the
| course of time, but $75,000 for Spot's capabilities is
| actually pretty reasonable.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What would you use use it for if you had one?
| cbozeman wrote:
| Goofing off, most likely.
|
| I haven't really thought of a use case for the home,
| although there's literally dozens of them. I actually
| wonder if it could function as an auto-dog walker for my
| organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped with work to
| do so.
|
| The thought of attaching a leash to my dog and the leash
| to Spot while I'm indisposed is actually kind of
| attractive. I would have to make sure my dog has already
| done her business though, since I wouldn't want to be the
| kind of asshole that not only uses a robot to walk his
| dog, but also lets his dog shit on his neighbor's yard
| _while_ a robot walks his dog.
| andreareina wrote:
| According to BD Spot doesn't do well with moving objects
| and shouldn't be used around children, animals.
| devchix wrote:
| > function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on
| the days when I'm too swamped
|
| Be wary of renting to any penguin, if you do buy Spot.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Trousers
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I wonder, would the time spent programming and
| integrating all this be less than just walking the dog?
| For me, this would defeat the purpose of having my dogs
| my our life.
|
| Having worked in robotics quit a bit this is a common
| trap. There are plenty of things that we can think of for
| a robot to do, but most of them would require more
| concessions, programming and maintenance time than it
| takes to just do the task, or hire folks to do it. The
| areas where the value prop holds up it really works well,
| but these kind of low value, high complexity applications
| like walking a dog around the neighborhood without
| dragging it by it's collar if the dogs knee hurts and it
| walks slow that day.
|
| A $75k robot arm with legs is not a completed
| application. We can already buy robots with the needed
| mobility to do things like walk dogs for far less. This
| is a classic hammer nail situation. I think this is the
| issue that BD keeps running into, they have an amazing
| team, amazing tech, amazing capabilities, but are still
| searching for that killer high value application. There
| are over 400k industrial robots sold every year, its a
| huge market. They sell well because it relatively
| straightforward to program and integrate them into
| workcells and factory lines to create value. To program
| and integrate one of these robots to do something so
| complex that it would necessitate a BD robot and not a
| standard industrial robot would be a huge development
| effort. It just doesn't hold up when we have folks that
| need work. The cost of one 75k robot plus two person
| years of engineering labor is 4 or 5 years worth of
| traditional labor. The value prop just isn't there until
| our ability to control, program and integrate these
| complex robots (cobot stuff) gets better.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > The value prop just isn't there until our ability to
| control, program and integrate these complex robots
| (cobot stuff) gets better.
|
| When you ultimately drill down to brass tacks though,
| you're left with a chicken and egg scenario. We need
| better programming and integration for this to be time-
| effective. We need more time programming and more time
| integrating for this to be a value proposition.
|
| You don't get there without some idiot like myself
| saying, "I _could_ spend 1000 hours walking with my
| dog... or I _could_ spend 1000 hours programming my robot
| to walk my dog... "
| iancmceachern wrote:
| My point exactly. Its not 1000 hours and 1000 hours. Its
| 1000 hours and 1,000,000 hours. If we could program a
| complex robot like spot to do a highly complex task like
| walk a dog safely on an open ended "real world" in 1000
| hours there are lots of other things we would do first
| (package delivery comes to mind). We're just not there.
| We have the hardware, but not the software infrastructure
| to apply them as is being expected here.
| ralfd wrote:
| https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot
|
| They promise "repeatable autonomous missions to gather
| consistent data", so my guess is programming a route and
| mapping terrain is reasonably easy. There is also remote
| control and camera access, if that could be triggered to
| automatically notify you (or a dog walking central
| command service supervising), for example when your dog
| is barking/complaining or resists to being dragged, it
| could go a long way to solve dog walking (for smaller
| dogs).
| iancmceachern wrote:
| But how? How do we program it to know when to call you?
| Its a non-trivial problem.
| Shared404 wrote:
| $75,000 is far enough out of reach of the average person
| that I think I'm standing by my statement.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| For the price of one of those robots you can hire a minivan
| full of armed goons that will do exactly as you tell them
| todo with less supervision.
| bbarnett wrote:
| During development, and initial per-unit sales? Sure.
|
| Once mass produced, not even close.
|
| Think of:
|
| - training costs (training grunts isn't 100% free) - pay
| as soldiers wait to go on missions - and here's the BIG
| one, medical care - and lastly?
|
| PR! PR, no more "soldiers coming home in body bags". Why,
| you can fight any war you want, and no one will get upset
| about your soldiers dying. Yet beyond that?
|
| How do you negotiate with one of these things? How do you
| trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to them, and
| blowing them up?
| ben_w wrote:
| > How do you trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to
| them, and blowing them up?
|
| Right now? Regardless of if it's controlled by remote or
| by AI, the sensors are probably easier to fool than an
| in-situ human would be.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I'm not talking about fooling. Mass produced, these
| things would be 10k max. We're talking 10+, 15+ years
| out.
|
| What sort of fear do robot soldiers have? None. How does
| it make people "upset", if a robot soldier is blown up.
|
| Now think on the converse.
|
| Right now, suicide bombers take out soldiers, but almost
| always take out innocents around those soldiers. Often,
| children are killed.
|
| Now, imagine the locals knowing that absolutely no enemy
| will be killed, just a machine, but dozens or more of
| _their_ friends, family may be killed.
|
| How long will suicide bombing last, when the only human
| casualties are the local population?
| ben_w wrote:
| Ok, but that's a surprising direction to go in.
|
| Sure, this would make it less likely to use suicide bombs
| against soldiers -- perhaps even politicians will put
| skin suits on the robots and use them for public
| appearances a-la Westworld for similar reasons -- but
| grenades and RPGs and anti-material rifles and IEDs would
| likely all still be used.
|
| And PS10k robots can also be used by terrorists, perhaps
| stolen from warehouses, perhaps hacked.
|
| That said, what worries me about terrorism is not cargo-
| culting shapes that look dangerous (be that robots which
| look like the Terminator or 3D printed guns), it's people
| with imagination who know there are at least two distinct
| ways to make a chemical weapon using only the stuff in a
| normal domestic kitchen and methods taught in GCSE
| chemistry.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Gun control is a uniquely US problem, at least in its
| current form. Yet this isn't going to have the same
| problem as gun control, for example, how easily can
| people obtain nuclear material?
|
| And terrorists? Sure, but an explosive truck is probably
| easier than one of these. And if sales are controlled,
| then they won't have a domestic army of them.
|
| In terms of hacking? 100% agree. It's why I find Tesla's
| OTA updates to be, frankly, insane. Full control of
| things like brake firmware has been demonstrated, with an
| OTA fix to brakes in the past.
|
| This means that, along with autonomous modes, you could
| perhaps manage to (especially with an inside man), force-
| push updates, regardless of driver permissions, to all
| Teslas out there. And set them to run into everyone they
| find, just run over as many people as possible.
|
| So there is tonnes of risk, and anyone thinking "Oh,
| they'll secure thing $x" is, IMO, a damned fool. Hack,
| after hack, after hack, after hack, proves this to be
| absurd.
|
| We literally cannot lock down _anything_. Anything. Not
| CIA infrastructure, not any corporate infrastructure, not
| government infrastructure, not health care, _nothing_.
|
| So I agree, 100%, robots with guns = horrid, just from
| that one angle. But I contend that they are cheap, and
| effective, so you can bet governments will use them.
|
| The link?
|
| Your reference to chemical weapons. I see the concern,
| yet I'm more concerned about genetically engineered
| death. And training people from (for example) China on
| how to do this, seems beyond absurd.
|
| The future is biotech created death I think.
|
| Another example, genetically engineered animals, designed
| to kill as well. How about mosquitoes, pre-loaded with
| viral payloads? What about bacteria which infects well
| water, and is literally impossible to ever get rid of,
| once in the wild? How about a fungus, which destroys
| wheat, which primarily the west eats, yet the east
| doesn't (rice)?
|
| How about gut flora/fauna, which when fed (eg, when you
| eat), releases a mind altering substance? A poor fellow
| was infected with yeast, which made him drunk every time
| he ate, so imagine a genetically engineered set of
| bacteria which releases a mild hallucinogenic? One that
| makes it impossible to concentrate?
|
| How will you cure this, if your scientists can't think
| straight? Or worse, what if it's an aphrodisiac? Let's
| try to solve a problem, when you can't keep your hands
| off of yourself.
|
| I can think of so many endless horrors, and most of them
| biotech related.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-canada-
| universities-r...
| ben_w wrote:
| > Sure, but an explosive truck is probably easier than
| one of these.
|
| I disagree -- $10k is much cheaper than a new truck.
| grogenaut wrote:
| How does one of these things identify civilians or hold a
| place like Baghdad? Armies occupy. Those weapons destroy
| infrastructure and people and not much else.
|
| Or do you use them like drones paying soldiers to run
| them from a container in Kansas. In which case you have
| the soldier still.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Just like drones used to bomb, as you suggest with
| Kansas.
|
| As time passes though, especially on an actual open
| battlefield, raw 'kill everything that moves" becomes
| more of a potential too.
|
| However?
|
| My logic was predicated upon cost, and if implemented,
| cost reduction due to all those body bags. You think
| Nixon and Kennedy were purely motivated by the cost of US
| soldiers, when they wanted out of Vietnam?
|
| They sent those troops there to begin with!
|
| No. They cared about the PR issues, and re-election.
| grogenaut wrote:
| They also cared about the PR issues of wiping out
| villages. They were there to "Liberate" not to wipe out.
|
| You are correct it does make it cheaper (maybe,
| eventually), but so do bombs or gunships or drones.
|
| These are hella complex machines though. A gun is
| absurdly simpler as is a drone. And the ground is a lot
| messier than the air.
|
| The logistics of servicing/repairing them is also going
| to be hefty. Tanks are a pain for maintenance already and
| they are much less complicated.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| If your Roomba was designed by a weapon manufacturer to gain
| your trust you should be concerned.
|
| If it had the ability to upload detailed maps of buildings
| you should be more concerned.
|
| If it was designed as an initial stepping stone to develop
| into a smart and versatile killer robot...
| blackrock wrote:
| This robot is Version 1.0.
|
| And yes, it's just a puppet. For now. A human controls its
| movements.
|
| What's missing is a brain. And that will come in Version 4.0.
| Or whenever they perfect a decision and control system, for
| fully autonomous decision making.
|
| That's when you should worry.
|
| Or rather. You're probably safe, if you live in one of the
| western allied nations. That is your privilege.
|
| But a black, brown, red, or yellow person in the 3rd world
| should worry. Because they will be the target of America's
| oppression, via this robot.
|
| Meaning that: your 3rd world country had better accept
| democracy and western media, and have your leaders approved
| by Washington DC, otherwise we will deliver some freedom to
| you. I hope you enjoy the fresh smell of napalm in the
| morning. You get bonus points if your country has oil.
| rtx wrote:
| We already have scarier robots, they are called self guided
| missiles. You don't have to imagine this new world.
| throwaway342422 wrote:
| > your 3rd world country had better accept democracy ...
| approved by Washington DC
|
| ...or accept replacing a democracy with an us-friendly
| "anticommunist" dictatorship.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is crazy to see from the outside how the color-of-skin
| obsession permeates every single conversation right now. I
| hope that the USA will be able to find some other topics
| and arguments one day.
|
| It is also false in this context. One of the most massive
| bombing campaigns in recent history was in European Serbia,
| and the hotspots of today (Syria, Iran) have a population
| that looks like Greeks.
|
| As for black: the only predominantly white country that
| systematically sticks its fingers into Subsaharan Africa is
| France. The only external power that grows its presence in
| the Third World overall is China and given how they treat
| their own population, I would not be surprised if the next
| wave of pseudocolonial wars was Beijing's.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| If you're going back to the 80's, don't forget South
| Africa's campaigns in Angola.
| kn8a wrote:
| She did an awesome job. The article implies that the
| choreography was reviewed by an engineer who would script the
| moves? Then article says then there is a pipeline that doesn't
| need scripting? The main question I was wondering is it
| possible to do this with mocap alone? Surely the closer artists
| can get to sculpting the tech the more opportunities for
| creation are possible.
| notretarded wrote:
| Why would they? What business sense would this make? The image
| they want to portray would be that they are capable of
| everything in-house - Their staff are not only experts in
| robotics but also art too. In reality it's not quite true.
|
| Just like you also don't see them saying "Thanks to PwC for
| developing our software."
| aresant wrote:
| Often the people who are doing the actual PR work have no idea
| about the story details and piece stuff together third party
|
| I would encourage her to reach out to the marketing/PR
| department and have a conversation avail herself for interviews
| etc.
|
| I would imagine that a young woman doing something this dynamic
| in a relatively dry field would actually be a PR dream.
| llamataboot wrote:
| And i imagine there were lots of folks involved in all phases
| of doing this at Bostons Dynamics that consciously or
| unconsciously thought of her as just another hired person to
| promote their technical brilliance.
| SftwreEngnr wrote:
| She contributed. That's what science is about--not notariety.
| Get over it.
| sargun wrote:
| I would love to ask a question. In the article they say the
| following:
|
| > We definitely learned not to underestimate how flexible and
| strong dancers are--when you take elite athletes and you try to
| do what they do but with a robot, it's a hard problem. It's
| humbling. Fundamentally, I don't think that Atlas has the range
| of motion or power that these athletes do, although we continue
| developing our robots towards that, because we believe that in
| order to broadly deploy these kinds of robots commercially, and
| eventually in a home, we think they need to have this level of
| performance.
|
| I would love to ask your sister, that is Atlas was a human,
| what age would it be, in terms of skill of dancer? I think this
| is an interesting parallel along what people say "This computer
| is as smart as a 2 year old."
| jacobolus wrote:
| As a parent of small kids who just watched the video, I would
| say 2-3 year old seems about right, assuming kids who do a
| lot of running around. 3-year-olds can move with
| significantly more grace (the motions are more intentional,
| fluid, subtle, and steady, and seem less scripted) than these
| robots, but definitely can't do a jump precisely the same 10
| times in a row, so it's not really apples to apples.
|
| Maybe age isn't the right measure. I would say that these
| robots move like a 3-year-old kid who has been practicing a
| particular motion sporadically for a month or two, but not
| like an active 3-year old who has been practicing the same
| motion for a year.
|
| If you compare to the kids who do martial arts or gymnastics
| or some serious sport or whatever, by age 6 or 7 the kids are
| leaving these robots in the dust. (The robots are still
| amazing though.)
| OJFord wrote:
| Probably need to be more specific about 'skill as a dancer'
| too though - I think you're responding mainly about motor
| control (?) but try choregraphing a bunch of three year
| olds to actually perform that routine!
| bostonpete wrote:
| Evaluating robots on whether they do what they're told
| and whether their timing is good doesn't seem too useful.
| That's the easy part. Pretty much any robot is going to
| be more precise/predictable/consistent in their actions
| than any human, let along a three year-old.
| OJFord wrote:
| True, but they've been well-crafted to make them so. Just
| as they'll (I assume) continue to be worked for finer
| motor control.
| jfengel wrote:
| I think your estimate of 6-7 is closer to right. I'm not a
| parent but as a ballet dancer I get involved in a lot of
| Nutcrackers, which are showcases for entire schools at all
| levels.
|
| The 5-and-under crowd just generally swarms around the
| stage, with little attempt at "dance". The 6-8 year olds
| are beginning to dance, at about this level -- though I
| would say I saw a few movements by the robots that were
| remarkably expressive.
|
| It's a bell curve, and there is certainly a right tail of
| kids who are far better than these robots at age 6-8. The
| median, however, is about on par.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Oh, there is no way you could get a typical untrained 5
| year old to follow this whole choreographed routine.
|
| I am just talking about how smooth and graceful the
| individual motions are. By age 3 kids who practice
| something a lot (say, running around barefoot at the
| playground) are starting to get pretty fluent at it.
|
| The kids have a lot more sensory input, a much more
| subtle and refined musculoskeletal system with a whole
| ton of tiny stabilizer muscles, and a pretty impressive
| neural architecture for learning and refining motions,
| compared to these robots.
|
| (Which again, is not to criticize the robots, which are
| also amazing! It is hard to beat 600 million years of
| animal evolution.)
| jfengel wrote:
| I was really impressed at how graceful the machines were.
|
| It's not the first time I've noticed that; drones can
| also be quite graceful. But the dynamic motion of that
| pendulum is such a hard problem, and as you note, the
| three year olds solve it with unconscious ease.
|
| Never as gracefully, and there of course the machines
| have a huge advantage. I spend most of my brain power
| keeping the tense muscles very tense and the loose
| muscles very loose, for each and every one of those tiny
| stabilizer muscles. The machines move straight and smooth
| in a way I never will. I haven't mastered the simple art
| of standing there in first position, and probably never
| will.
|
| (I am not, I would note, any kind of expert. I dance at
| the level of an 11 year old. Maybe a 10 year old. Which
| took me years to learn, and I'm very proud of it.)
| thih9 wrote:
| > would require so little from Boston Dynamics
|
| We don't know that. Perhaps it was important for them to not
| have credits in the video; e.g. to keep attention on the
| robots. Your sister is credited elsewhere in BD's article, see
| other comment [1].
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682864
| jackhack wrote:
| One of the reasons for the formation of worker's unions (such
| as screen actor's guild) is to protect the rights of actors
| and film workers, at all levels. Receiving proper credit is a
| big part of compensation. There may be a fine line between a
| "film" and an "advertisement", and what's more this is surely
| not a SAG film, but it seems to me that credit for
| choreography on something like this - where the dance is the
| core of the content - is appropriate.
| exikyut wrote:
| I'm extremely interested to learn how the dance moves were
| programmed - I'm guessing the standard tablet controller
| probably doesn't cut it for the level of control necessary.
|
| More generally speaking, I'm especially curious if "anyone"
| buying a Spot would have adequate access to be able to do
| similar things.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to not been possible
| for warranty reasons...
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I believe so; see https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concept
| s/choreography/ch... for the choreography API. You don't even
| have to buy a Spot to write the code, which is impressive in
| this industry! Now we just need someone to buy one and set it
| up in front of a webcam with a public SSH login.
|
| There's more documentation at https://github.com/boston-
| dynamics/spot-sdk and https://dev.bostondynamics.com/.
| However, it looks like a lot of the choreography is built-in;
| you can call twerk() or butt_circle() (documented at https://
| dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/mo...) but
| you don't have access to the raw kinematics, gyros, and
| accelerometers to generate your own unique moves. It would be
| amazing if they'd release the full routine to cause your
| Atlas or Spot to perform the dances, but I'm not aware of
| that being public anywhere.
|
| For a more general example, check out this video where Adam
| Savage used a Spot to pull a rickshaw; his programmer was
| able to work with the API to change the payload tuning of the
| robot:
|
| https://youtu.be/zyaocKS3sfg?t=1482
|
| It appears that the API is more about what you'd need to make
| Spot useful in an industrial or demonstration context than to
| build your own Spot. They want something that a generalist
| can make do useful stuff out-of-the-box, which makes sense.
| BotJunkie wrote:
| I wrote the article; thanks for this info. Since your sister
| has posted this publicly on her Twitter account, I'll happily
| add her name to our article if I can get in touch with her/BD
| to confirm. [Edited to add that we'll contact her before doing
| so.]
| anonytrary wrote:
| Wow this is extremely wholesome and coincidental. Glad to see
| the artists are going to be getting the credit they deserve,
| pretty crazy to see this transpire over HN comments!
| Firerouge wrote:
| The Boston credits her by name in their article
|
| >> There's a lot of impressive moves in the routine, which
| was choreographed by dancer Monica Thomas in collaboration
| with the Boston Dynamics team.
|
| https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2020/12/29/boston-
| dyn...
|
| They also link her name to https://www.madkingthomas.com/
| jessep wrote:
| Awesome!!! Thank you so much.
| rtx wrote:
| The choreography was my favourite part, it's hard for me to
| even think how do you plan that.
| bigbizisverywyz wrote:
| I personally would have loved to see a human dancer dancing
| alongside the robots, that would have given an interesting
| comparison.
| mellosouls wrote:
| You can see a side-by-side comparison with the original
| artists in the video linked in my comment here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25687540
| rasz wrote:
| You dont want to be anywhere near heavy powerful moving
| machinery, thats basic OSH. Glitching robot could snap your
| neck without skipping a beat (so to speak). There are
| hundreds of videos on the internet of people being
| decapitated, torn apart and squished by machinery. Not to
| mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(robot_
| fatalit...
| klyrs wrote:
| Nothing a green screen can't fix
| Retric wrote:
| Lack of green screen is what made this video so
| impactful. Having a human dancing on the other side of a
| barrier might have worked.
| miraculous_cake wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8lblosRKsQ ;)
| dkarp wrote:
| Here's a 90s version of that from Alexander McQueen:
| https://youtu.be/ErE7O5NceGQ
| mromanuk wrote:
| Me too. Wouldn't be cool if the robots dance along humans,
| replacing iconic videoclips or scenes? Like the scene of
| Jerry (from Tom & Jerry) dancing with Gene Kelly
| https://youtu.be/2msq6H2HI-Y Or Paula Abdul "Opposites
| attract" https://youtu.be/xweiQukBM_k
| mudita wrote:
| This duet between a human dancer and an industrial robot
| might interest you as well: https://youtu.be/Q-sK-s_TzN0
| mromanuk wrote:
| thank you, very nice performance!
| nisse72 wrote:
| Here's a similar video, where the same robot plays table
| tennis:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8
| antsam wrote:
| I, for one, welcome our new dancing robot overlords.
| eplanit wrote:
| I'm glad that I'll get to witness a live ED-209 in my lifetime.
| Technically wrote:
| Tl;dr they only dance in terms of immediate aesthetics. There's
| no heuristic for understanding the rhythm and tone in any way
| corresponding with human understanding.
| necovek wrote:
| Not wanting to downplay "how strong dancers are", because they
| obviously are, especially in their core, but I would imagine that
| most of the problems with these robots, and Atlas in particular,
| come from an entirely different weight distribution, rather than
| strength.
|
| IOW, to achieve the similarly appearing moves, these robots have
| got to have a lot more strength to achieve the balance that comes
| naturally to most dancers: also why you rarely get 7ft/2.1m tall
| dancers doing the ballet/gymnastics style stuff -- their weight
| distribution and "levers" (limb length) are so much different,
| making many of those moves doubly or three times as hard.
|
| And focusing on their strength in the quotes in the article also
| downplays dancers' exquisite motor reaction time to reestablish
| balance (kudo to our brains is what I am saying).
| mellosouls wrote:
| Boston Dynamics Robots vs Human Originals (The Contours):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VGsfgo8_Jo
|
| Although the dance moves are different, the spirit is
| synchronised :)
| williwas wrote:
| Lol good. Those robots are meant for military usage. To kill
| people, facading them behind a nice dance is an interesting
| marketing disguise.
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