[HN Gopher] Atlas robot does parkour
___________________________________________________________________
Atlas robot does parkour
Author : azhenley
Score : 194 points
Date : 2021-08-17 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.bostondynamics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.bostondynamics.com)
| mrfusion wrote:
| Any ideas why the physics looks slightly off like gravity is
| slightly too slow? Maybe it's slow motion or sped up?
|
| Or I'm wondering if it looks like both feet are off the ground
| when really only one is and supported by the other?
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| I think it's just that the robots are very heavy?
| thisisbrians wrote:
| I thought the video was fake. It doesn't look right to me, but
| maybe that's just uncanny valley?
| Kye wrote:
| There was a time when I would have been excited to hear about a
| real life parkour robot.
| she11c0de wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible to setup a multi-agent
| reinforcement learning scenario where a few of those play tag
| over a complex terrain.
| rasz wrote:
| They would probably need 10x the technical woman power to keep
| them operational for longer than 10 minute stretches. The
| second article about the challenges articulates pretty well
| they are in the crawling stage of locomotion, constantly
| discovering and improving on hardware bottlenecks and weak
| points.
| gcheong wrote:
| Certainly impressive. I almost get the sense that these robots
| would be bored out of their minds working in an Amazon
| fulfillment center.
| rasz wrote:
| Whole point of a machine is it doesnt get bored.
| lanerobertlane wrote:
| That's why they sell them to the police and military and put
| guns in their hands instead.
| sparrish wrote:
| Strangely portions look like stop-motion with the stuttering.
| smikhanov wrote:
| Honest question: if Boston Dynamics robots are so good, why we
| never see any news of them cleaning up toxic debris, working in
| an area of armed conflict, or rescuing people from fires?
| tempestn wrote:
| The current robots are a research platform, not a commercial
| product. The idea is that eventually it would be able to do
| things like that and many more, but currently huge amounts of
| choreography and testing are required to produce videos like
| this one. They've come a long way, but they've still got a
| _long_ way to go before they could go into an uncontrolled
| situation and perform usefully, let alone with the level of
| aptitude apparent here.
| rtkwe wrote:
| They're good at certain things like movement but task planning
| and execution are still under development. You could maybe use
| the current version to explore burning buildings but they
| wouldn't be able to do much more than that, you don't see these
| lifting shifting loads or dragging things ever which is the
| kind of things they'd need to do for the toxic cleanup or fire
| rescue tasks.
|
| For the war fighting it's pretty much always more effective to
| use things like tanks or drones rather than dealing with
| walking motions, that's still pretty inefficient.
| dexterhaslem wrote:
| yak shaving a fist pump, awesome
| prepend wrote:
| What can I do to defend myself against killer robots?
|
| Seriously, is there something simple that I can put in my
| glovebox of my car to use in case these robots start getting
| scary? Is there a simple household good that will work well
| against these, until they start explicitly shielding against
| stuff?
| yabones wrote:
| I'm going to assume that most 'killer robots' will be
| reasonably heavily armoured, so unless you have very powerful
| AP rounds the best approach will be to disable rather than
| destroy. They'll also likely be hardened against 'jammers' or
| any radio interference.
|
| Presumably most systems will use multiple sensors and vision
| systems, LiDAR, RADAR, etc. The key would be to disable enough
| of each to put the machine in 'safe mode'.
|
| Vision systems are the easiest to attack. A cheap paintball
| gun, spray can, or fire extinguisher would be more than capable
| of disabling a camera system.
|
| LiDAR would likely also be fairly easy to disable. Most LiDAR
| systems also depend on visual light, and have a revolving
| sensor of some sort (though there are some fixed units as well)
| which have their own weaknesses. A reasonably powerful pellet
| gun, or most rifles or pistols would be enough to disable a
| revolving lidar sensor, and a few shots with paint would
| disable a fixed unit, much like a camera.
|
| It's almost certain the designer of such robots will think of
| these attacks and build around them. Think windshield wipers or
| compressed air to clear debris. So, the ideal material would be
| very thick, very sticky, and completely opaque. It would also
| need a high pressure container and a nozzle that produces a
| laminar stream to hit the sensors from at least 10m away.
| [deleted]
| numpad0 wrote:
| Some sort of high tensile wires that their limbs can't
| overcome. Flexible materials are computationally hard even for
| actual humans, let alone for bunch of Python scripts running on
| a random Docker container somewhere.
|
| Or Reason. Whichever available. Aim for torso.
| rglover wrote:
| Pocket EMP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siVGavpBiyA
|
| Obviously would need to modify to generate more energy.
| tyingq wrote:
| Spray can of sticky expanding foam for the various sensors?
|
| Edit: Like this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2rVHLKS3g
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVy5Vm43X_A
|
| There's also bulk rodent glue, if you could figure out how to
| shoot it :) https://www.domyown.com/catchmaster-bulk-glue-
| can-p-15693.ht...
| prepend wrote:
| So my mini fire extinguisher might be the easiest for now.
| tyingq wrote:
| Has the bonus of plausible deniability. _" The robot was
| smoking and crackling in that area, so I put the fire
| out"_.
| hmottestad wrote:
| Paint ought to do it. Chuck a bucket of paint at one of these
| and the sensors will be knocked out instantly.
| prepend wrote:
| It's kind of hard to fling paint, but I guess just making a
| potato gun that spits out paint should be good.
|
| I'll be looking for some Holi festival type gear.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Or a paintball gun.
| prepend wrote:
| Good idea but when I used them the balls were fairly
| small and not very accurate. So hitting cameras might be
| tough to do completely enough to block visit.
|
| Is there a paintball shotgun?
|
| Yes, there are [0]. But it seems like they shoot "slugs"
| and not a spray of paint in a cone.
|
| [0] https://paintballglobe.com/paintball-shotgun/
| vorpalhex wrote:
| For a very aggressive answer, I would go for one of those
| shotguns with two magazine tubes you can switch between. Anti-
| drone projectiles in one and rifled slugs in the other.
|
| Less destructively, a good net launcher seems like it'd stand a
| decent chance at fouling things but they are usually single
| shot and inaccurate at any kind of range.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Why are these nonsense fantasy world comments so common here?
| prepend wrote:
| For me, my interest is in sort of lateral thinking for any
| problem. For novel situations, I like to think of what the
| positive and negative impacts are and particularly what
| "hacks" might be able to get unexpected outcomes.
|
| I'm typically like this for everything, but for robots that
| can jump around and stuff (and will likely soon do police and
| military actions) this is novel enough for me to explore this
| for the first time.
|
| I think similarly about facial recognition software for how
| to evade and confuse. And also for biometrics, locks, etc.
| Any of these things are interesting to me and I want to know
| how to do stuff with them.
| AngryData wrote:
| If these become a serious concern to where simply throwing crap
| on the sensors isn't enough, small scale EMPs aren't that
| complicated. Using a fast explosive to blast a magnet through a
| few coils of wire will make a fairly powerful locallized pulse,
| although it is likely super illegal.
| retSava wrote:
| This is the video with the blog post:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk
|
| To me, I like to see when they stutter or slightly-fail, since
| that to indicates the dynamics and real-time part of the thing,
| that it is not a 100% scripted thing (although the blog post
| mentions the engineers fine-tuning the celebratory arm-pump, to
| what extent is that scripted then?)
| electricwallaby wrote:
| I noticed around the 50 second mark there is some fluid leaking
| out of the robots bum. Wonder what that could be?
| juancampa wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fluid
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Ha would be something to see it in Ninja Warrior show or
| something one day, needs hands.
| levng wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk&feature=youtu.be
|
| This behind-the-scenes video says it is choreographed and
| scripted. It also contains instances where things go wrong as
| well.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's interesting to see how this has progressed from their
| video two years ago
| [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk] and one year ago
| [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sBBaNYex3E]
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| That video is partly CGI, right? I can't find a smoking gun but
| it doesn't look entirely real.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| As one of the comments on the video says, that feeling is an
| example of the "uncanny mountain" effect.
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| I'm not so sure.
|
| 1. [EDIT: IGNORE THIS POINT] They've done this before. [1]
|
| 2. To get more specific, look at the robot's legs around
| 0:09-0:16. They don't seem to be moving normally.
|
| I don't have professional video analysis chops, but I'd put
| some money on this being fake.
|
| Happy be to be proven wrong, though.
|
| EDIT: It appears I remembered this story incorrectly, and
| posted a link without reading it. I retract my first
| statement. I'll leave the link for posterity, though.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/17/18681682/boston-
| dyna...
| mastax wrote:
| Have you seen the behind the scenes video?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk
| dane-pgp wrote:
| That provides some great context, but I couldn't help
| finding it a little unsettling at 03:09 when one of the
| robots is suspended off the ground and "bleeding" a pink
| fluid onto the mat beneath it.
| ttmb wrote:
| > 1. They've done this before. [1]
|
| Your link says nothing of the sort.
| mastax wrote:
| That CGI gag was done by Corridor Digital, not Boston
| Dynamics.
| ansible wrote:
| That's a great channel, I really like their "reacts"
| series that comes out every Saturday. They also had a
| good one from Sunday about the Pentagon UFO videos.
| [deleted]
| kingsloi wrote:
| yeah definitely odd looking. I thought maybe just like
| 5k@60fps or something and my peasant eyes were just bad, but
| deffo odd looking
| KMnO4 wrote:
| Most likely it's real. That said, we don't know how many
| 10s-100s of takes this was done in. This single video could
| be the results of hundreds of hours of fine tuning
| parameters.
| [deleted]
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Would it be incorrect to say that the primary problems Boston
| Dynamics works on, which is planning and controls, is already
| mostly a solved problem?
|
| My understanding is that the majority of research was completed
| within the past few decades, in comparison to the relative
| nascency of modern deep learning techniques.
| freediver wrote:
| What makes this really interesting is that all this is achieved
| with very little or no "AI" (in the context of current machine
| learning approaches). Purely heuristics based approach to
| something as complex.
| auxym wrote:
| Well, heuristics, and probably a lot of classical controls
| theory and inverse kinematics/path planning.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| There is weired tendency to use AI for well-understood problems
| that have formulas and solutions.
| habitue wrote:
| Right, but is parkour a well-understood problem with formulas
| and solutions?
|
| I think there's also a tendency to go "You just need linear
| regression" a lot when actually, well, there is a reason
| people are excited about new AI techniques: they make things
| that were very difficult much easier, and they make some
| things possible that never were before.
|
| Is deep learning / reinforcement learning actually useful
| here? Maybe. I would be surprised if Boston Dynamics wasn't
| at least looking into it.
| gsibble wrote:
| I just tried raising money. Mentioning ML makes investors
| immediately want to throw in. So hot right now.
| candiodari wrote:
| Well. yes. Using AI means you learn one theory, and now you
| can do voice recognition, chess and parkour with state of the
| art performance (except perhaps when it comes to minimising
| compute) ...
|
| And then there's where it takes off. There isn't a single
| human that can come anywhere close to the language knowledge
| base AI algorithms can build up. Even a team of 100 humans
| would not have the breadth of languages algorithms have these
| days. Yes, context understanding humans still have the edge,
| but it's shrinking every day. But so many language aspects,
| from translation to grammar, machines outperform all but the
| very best humans, and 99.9% of all humans even within one
| language.
| taytus wrote:
| Is bostondynamics making more money from youtube ad revenue than
| from their robots?
| trenning wrote:
| Can we brainstorm how you would compromise one of these robots?
|
| I don't think I've seen discussion about how you would stop one
| in an adverse situation.
|
| Hogtie cowboy style? Taser? Paint splashed over sensors?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Doorknob.
| kipchak wrote:
| I would figure conventional firearms would do the job pretty
| well depending on the round. That being said I could well see
| "anti robot" rounds becoming a thing similar to "zombie" stuff
| a few years ago.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| People are begining to post some things:
|
| https://twitter.com/LenKusov/status/1364640007101775872
| prepend wrote:
| Funny, I was thinking the same thing.
|
| I was thinking some high strength fishing line fashioned into a
| bolo sling would be cheap.
|
| Or maybe just some "invisibility cloak" made out of astronaut
| blankets.
| bserge wrote:
| Bullets, lasers, paint, bricks, rope, pipes, anything that
| works on a human and more.
|
| Doesn't seem particularly hard if they're in range.
|
| Now if they're sniping you from a mile away, that's a bit
| worse.
| ansible wrote:
| > _Now if they 're sniping you from a mile away, that's a bit
| worse._
|
| Humans snipers regularly make kills at that distance or
| farther, so that's not really a new threat.
|
| I'd be more worried about the development of supersonic AGMs
| that are smaller and cheaper. Right now, it doesn't make much
| economic sense to fire a $10K USD missile to kill random
| people (though the USA does it anyway), but if it only costs
| $1K... now you're starting to get to WMD levels of murder.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah but I reckon these kind of robots won't be deployed
| strictly against human snipers. The average enemy won't
| have the skill nor equipment to retaliate against long
| range, rapid fire sniping.
|
| A robot, maybe with drone support, could be really accurate
| at launching grenades or unguided mortar rounds. Or hell,
| attach it to an artillery gun. Much cheaper than missiles.
| Amin699 wrote:
| The robot did pump its arm, but it also stumbled a bit on this
| simple move. It was just the slightest stutter step, something
| most people watching the video would never notice. But the Atlas
| team notices every detail and they want to get it right.
|
| "We hadn't run that behavior after the backflip before today, so
| that was really an experiment," says Scott Kuindersma, the Atlas
| team lead at Boston Dynamics. "If you watch the video closely, it
| looks a little awkward. We're going to swap in a behavior we've
| tested before so we have some confidence it will work."
| jacksonkmarley wrote:
| The thing that looks weird imo is when the robots are running on
| flat ground, something looks off about their feet. Can't tell
| what it is but they look like they're floating. Anyway it's
| pretty amazing, and interesting to see the improvements over the
| years in how the robots move.
|
| And clearly the two robots should fight.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Agreed! Floating is the right description. See my other
| comment. I'm thinking the other foot is still in contact with
| the ground and supporting the floating foot?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is awesome, but until someone solves the real-time sensing
| and modelling problem, it'll never fly in the real world. The use
| case is still warehouses.
|
| Here's my logic / assumptions: How does the robot "know" (have
| sufficient model information to predict the response) that the
| board will hold it when it does a vault? It doesn't -- it is told
| to vault by placing one limb on top. As we've seen with self-
| driving cars, where the sensing is 99% of the problem, that's the
| barrier between a closed set and the real world.
|
| Don't get me wrong. The fact that Atlas / Boston Dynamics is in a
| state where the sensing is _mostly_ what remains a problem is
| _astounding_.
| qiqing wrote:
| Wouldn't it be great, though, if humans were no longer working
| warehouse jobs that strain their backs and their bladders?
| konart wrote:
| I don't think we need anything humanoid for this though.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Yes! Your warehouse would have to be a cleanroom (someone
| left a can of soda? Your robot just smashed through a shelf
| when it tried to step on it)
|
| In general, I'm an AI researcher and an AI skeptic. After 10
| years in robotics, I'm learning that the Human Is Cheaper and
| where Human Is Expensive, we prefer toasters, not
| terminators. (just enough hard-coded / hard-wired adaptivity
| to get by with tons of supervision)
| ryankrage77 wrote:
| > Your warehouse would have to be a cleanroom
|
| At which point you're back to an automated assembly line
| which needs very little dynamics or intelligence. The whole
| point of developing such advanced robots is so that you
| don't need to worry as much about that can on the floor.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Depends on who profits.
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| Whenever I see the four legged dog robot, I wonder how far we
| are from the chevaline in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's easy to forget sometimes, in the era of cars, how much
| we gave up when most people in industrialized society stopped
| riding horses.
|
| It's pretty hard to get a horse to careen off a cliff or
| straight into a tree. The largest risk for riding a horse
| drunk is that it'll inadvertently scrape you off on a low-
| hanging branch.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Well, Scottish king Alexander III. died in 1286 when his
| horse fell off a cliff with him, but that was after sunset,
| and this kind of death was weird enough that we still
| remember it.
|
| The # of important people who died in a car after a driver
| error is much higher.
| implements wrote:
| That's cool and all, but how long before they can manage:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx-vUsShk9U (Robot fight in
| "Outside the Wire").
| rasz wrote:
| Robotic platforms would not miss as much as in the movie, but a
| 5 second gunfight scene wouldnt be fun to watch.
| rglover wrote:
| Progress on our dystopian hell seems to be moving right along.
| WalterSobchak wrote:
| Side note, I am surprised bostondynamics.com does not enforce a
| redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.
|
| https://blog.bostondynamics.com/atlas-leaps-bounds-and-backf...
| swayvil wrote:
| The "cha-ching" is a placeholder for "strafe the rioters".
|
| Too cynical?
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| Much easier (and already being done) with drones.
| swayvil wrote:
| What would these legged, ground-traversing robots be better
| at than the flying variety?
|
| Sweeping tunnels?
|
| Construction?
| cs702 wrote:
| An impressive accomplishment -- and beautiful in its own way.
|
| Alas, I can't help but keep imagining a Terminator climbing and
| jumping over barriers, instead of those smaller, less-threatening
| robots:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSXl_XKXZAI
|
| I'm rather surprised no one else has mentioned James Cameron's
| robot-from-the-future nightmare so far.
| johnnyb9 wrote:
| I can't help but listen to the terminator theme song in my head
| while watching these ala
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCeb5DfENaY
| seriousquestion wrote:
| Is Boston Dynamics primarily a viral video company? If not, why
| do they keep getting bought and sold?
| jcuenod wrote:
| The video I wanted to see (the two robots actually doing their
| thing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Are these incredibly expensive or have a regulatory hurdle or
| something?
|
| I feel like we've been seeing increasingly sophisticated demos
| like this for over a decade now and yet nothing has really made
| it to market that I can tell.
|
| Maybe there just literally aren't many good use cases for the
| types of robots made by Boston dynamics?
| the-pigeon wrote:
| No. But it's just a demo.
|
| In perfect conditions if you run it 100 times this is the
| result.
|
| In the real world they have no application as they fail pretty
| much always in real conditions. But this is research, pushing
| things in controlled conditions help you learn what you can do
| in less controlled conditions. Though sometimes it's just a
| deadend.
|
| The exact same thing is true of YouTuber stunt videos. Any very
| impressive stunt was failed hundreds of times but they show you
| the footage where they pulled it off. The thing to remember is
| that media is largely fake or deceiving, presenting the very
| best and not the reality.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| Also battery tech needs to improve for practical usage
| noelsusman wrote:
| They're currently selling the dog robot for $75k. You can see
| what their current customers are doing here:
| https://www.bostondynamics.com/resources/case-studies
| jpindar wrote:
| I believe the four legged Spot robots are for sale, but I
| haven't heard of anyone actually buying them.
|
| They do have support pages and user manuals online.
|
| https://support.bostondynamics.com/s/
| stakkur wrote:
| _"If robots can eventually respond to their environments with the
| same level of dexterity as the average adult human, the range of
| potential applications will be practically limitless. 'Humanoids
| are interesting from a couple perspectives,' Kuindersma says.
| "First, they capture our vision of a go-anywhere, do-anything
| robot of the future. They may not be the best design for any
| particular task, but if you wanted to build one platform that
| could perform a wide variety of physical tasks, we already know
| that a human form factor is capable of doing that."_
|
| No, they're not "humanoids", and it's chilling to hear them call
| it that.
|
| But more simply than that: this will be used for war and human
| surveillance and response. It is already underway.
|
| TL;DR: Why?
| tempestn wrote:
| Webster uses humanoid robots as an example usage of 'humanoid'.
| The word just means it has a human-like shape, ie. two arms and
| two legs connected to a torso.
|
| Definition of humanoid
|
| (Entry 1 of 2) : having human form or characteristics
|
| // humanoid dentition
|
| // humanoid robots
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humanoid
| rglover wrote:
| Because.
|
| Why allow "useless eaters" to roam the planet, dealing with
| them coughing on your parfait when you can have one of these
| sanitary machines do it? And of course, when we tell the
| parfait makers that they're out of a job, they'll freak...now
| we have the perfect, emotionless authority to keep them in
| line.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU&t=14s
| rkagerer wrote:
| What's that dripping from the right robot's right thigh near the
| end?
|
| https://youtu.be/tF4DML7FIWk?t=49
|
| Also are the layers of foam over the landing surfaces they
| backflip onto needed for dampening?
| nofunsir wrote:
| Sweat, clearly. Hardcore parkour's not easy.
| tantalor wrote:
| _Sir, are you aware that you are leaking coolant at an alarming
| rate?_
|
| https://youtu.be/z7U3x3uRmi8?t=57
| nemothekid wrote:
| The robots are powered by hydraulics. Might be a leak.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk
| moralestapia wrote:
| Anyone else thinks the video looks a lot like CGI?
|
| Nice job, nonetheless.
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| I also think that. But it appears we're both being downvoted
| for saying so.
|
| I'm not sure I understand why? HN is usually pretty tolerant of
| healthy skepticism. And it's not as if we're saying "this feat
| is impossible, Boston Dynamics must be lying". We are (or at
| least I am) saying "the thing I'm looking at doesn't look
| real".
| thisisbrians wrote:
| It looked fake to me immediately. Maybe just uncanny valley
| since the movements are not very human-like -- I'm not sure.
| But the lighting on the machines looks all wrong to me
| (although the shadows do look accurate, and the audio also
| seems convincing).
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yeah, the lightning seems weird for me as well, and some
| movements look kind of blurry. Who knows.
| delgaudm wrote:
| I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't
| know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a
| worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but
| these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law
| enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial
| Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at
| recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these techs
| converge I just feel melancholy, not optimistic. I feel like "AI
| Robot cops show implicit bias resulting in 3 deaths" or "Robot
| Cop shoots innocent person after facial recognition goes bad" or
| "Crowd Control Bots kill 55 at peaceful protest" - type headlines
| are the future here.
| frozenport wrote:
| firefighters, nurses, construction workers
| mastax wrote:
| When we automate the last jobs that can't be offshored we'll
| have to ask some questions as a society.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| From a nurse's point of view, having an intelligent helper
| like Atlas doing lifting of heavy patients etc. means
| saving her back from injury.
| prepend wrote:
| All these positions involve life and death decisions that
| freak me out.
|
| I want the source code to firefighting bots to be public so I
| know whether my town buys the ones that prioritize babies
| over elderly. Or stuff like it's easier to save 5 dogs than 1
| human.
|
| Nurses too have great power for good and harm. Currently when
| nurses decide on mercy killings [0] it requires lots of
| deliberation to figure out and it's just one person. If a
| robonurse is programmed to put lethal morphine into a patient
| under certain conditions, that's a big deal.
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122
| 054...
| mrfusion wrote:
| Most bad stuff can more easily be done with drones. I wouldn't
| worry about these guys. Just tie their legs together.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Oh I can imagine non violent uses. One of these to do my
| laundry, dishes, perhaps cooking, wash the car, clean the
| bathroom, generally tidy up and so on would be pretty good.
|
| Keep it humanoid so it can work in the same space as me, then
| it can fold itself into a box or something when not working.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| A special-purpose scope-limited robot probably washes your
| dishes already. What remains is putting them in and out of
| your current robot. Dextrous manipulation is tough, and
| likely to be very expensive for a while.
|
| Amazon currently pays people to fill boxes for a good
| economic reason.
| alecst wrote:
| Same. It's undeniably cool. But with developments like this, I
| just picture humanity slowly writing its own epitaph.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Whenever they do these demos they never show them firing
| weapons. I guess they just haven't figured that out yet.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Bundling BD's work with loss of privacy, face recog, etc. is so
| far fetched. This is just such an illinformed fearful stance
| that is cliche with any robotic innovation - it gets a
| disproportionate amount of pessimism (because robots!).
| Motorized controls of arms and limbs is physical intelligence,
| a very small slice of "AI" if you want to call that.
| "Overlords" meme has infested most of YT comments and but
| surprised to see it on HN. Disproportionate attention to
| physical visceral things - especially if it looks like humans -
| is particularly prone to fear response.
|
| Have you ever seen your cat/dog stare at a look-alike version
| of stuffed toy and become completely bamboozled? Humans are
| particularly magnetized by anything that has 2 legs and moves
| like itself. No one bats an eye on a sentry with a gatling gun,
| but how dare you put 2 legs under it - sudden dystopia.
| kingsloi wrote:
| I get some Black Mirror-esque vibes from this sort of tech,
| too. The 90s kid in me also gets MechWarrior vibes, too.
|
| Also, I looked a while ago but is there anything up and coming
| in the anti-facial recognition space? I know that some guy
| created an almost life-like replica of his own face for sale,
| and then there were some sort of reflectors, but anything that
| cannot be outlawed, like a full face covering, would be cool.
| soperj wrote:
| So basically the same headlines as right now, but with Robot in
| the title?
| tyingq wrote:
| I would guess even the more mundane "bad robot" scenarios, like
| the various interactions with police bots in Elysium, might
| also play out.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Initial economic impact will be harder for those whose job is
| simply moving things/people around. And those people, obviously
| aren't aware of the problem they'll face in a few years
| (5-10?). Thats the real problem in the near horizon.
| mc32 wrote:
| If they were ever deployed as auxiliaries to law enforcement,
| my hope would be any weapon would have to have a human approve
| a request.
|
| Robots should be able to swarm and restrain uncooperative
| suspects so there should be less need for lethality unless the
| perpetrator is an active threat against other people -a hostage
| situation, mass shooting, etc.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Probably all of our current policing problems come down to
| officer emotions & decision making so I'm neither pro-
| autonomous robot cop nor pro-robot cop as a police controlled
| tool
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Robots will be the new zip ties to restrain you while your
| rights are violated. It's not a tech failure though, it's a
| governance and accountability failure.
| mc32 wrote:
| Do do we want more uniform enforcement via robot, or do we
| want more leeway for human LEOs?
|
| It used to be cops could make their own decisions on the
| spot about a subject (good or bad), now with cameras there
| is much much less ad-hoc decision making. Everyone gets
| booked.
|
| It's a double edged sword. Depends on what we want.
| [deleted]
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Neither! Human LEOs in the US need to have fewer weapons
| and more accountability, they are currently virtually un-
| prosecutable. Even when cops commit a crime on camera it
| is extremely rare for them to be indicted.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Do do we want more uniform enforcement via robot, or do
| we want more leeway for human LEOs?
|
| Or, do you want _more_ enforcement, period. Automation
| can scale a lot more than human LEO - and since everyone
| breaks some law pretty much daily, that limitation is a
| _feature_ in my book. Didn 't turn on your blinkers for
| long enough before switching lanes on a deserted street
| (by 0.2 seconds)? Jailerbot 2000 deactivates your car,
| detains you and sends you to the fully automated jail
| below the city until the judge sees you on Monday.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| honestly I would prefer a robot goes in and restrains the
| people the police want vs a crowd of hopped up armed
| officers.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Arming law enforcement robots must be illegal- the whole
| point is that you can risk the robot to restrain a suspect,
| it doesn't need to defent itself like a police officer does.
| mc32 wrote:
| It would be useful in circumstances they might work best.
| Hostage situation, mass shootings. We don't want to have to
| wait till a human LEO shows up to incapacitate the perp.
| ryandvm wrote:
| You're not wrong, but those circumstances are so
| exceedingly rare that activating an armed robot should
| require a warrant or some other way of rate-limiting
| their invocation.
| handrous wrote:
| I think the developed world's headed nigh-inevitably toward
| something more closely resembling the Chinese model of
| government--maybe not with autocratic leadership, but with
| similar levels of centralized surveillance and such, extensive
| Internet filtering and blocking, and yeah, probably a lot more
| robots in law enforcement (military? Definitely yes in China if
| it makes cost/benefit sense, and maybe in the West whether it
| does or not--yes in either case for flying drones, that's
| already well underway)
|
| I think we'll find states that fail to do that, suffer. The
| other way out is rejection of technology to a large extent, but
| I doubt many will try that model as it'd cause a large & swift
| hit to quality of life.
|
| (why, yes, I do have a fairly large technological-determinism
| and social-groups-experience-evolution-like-anything-else-does
| streak, why do you ask?)
| narrator wrote:
| The military will just use aerial drone slaughterbots. The
| Azerbaijanis did this in the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan war and
| it was a total blowout against 20th century tech.
|
| Here's what I'm thinking the good future looks like: Let's say
| I have a big back yard and would like to have that be a
| productive farm. AI bot comes over, surveys the land, does soil
| tests, orders seeds, fertilizer and garden equipment off
| Amazon. Plants seeds, sets up permaculture, sets up irrigation,
| installs monitoring, goes next door, repeats for every house in
| the neighborhood. That's the kind of AI future I want to see.
| Software codifying knowledge of an experienced practitioner to
| manipulate the physical world in a way beneficial to humans.
| handrous wrote:
| > The military will just use arial drone slaughterbots. The
| Azerbaijanis did this in the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan war
| and it was a total blowout against 20th century tech.
|
| It hadn't occurred to me that drones let despots wage high-
| tempo modern wars (at least, partially) without the
| associated risks (of devolved control) and costs (of very
| expensive training and equipment for your soldiers)--but they
| totally do. That's a pretty big deal. Wonder if we'll see
| 2nd-tier, regional powers gain influence through this effect,
| as they can afford quite good drone programs while weaker
| neighbors might not be able to.
| btbuildem wrote:
| As with anything else, we will have countermeasures for
| drone warfare as well.
| leshow wrote:
| Will we? It's not as if there is some countermeasure that
| will magically even the playing field, things seem to
| advance in the direction of escalation vs countermeasure.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm mildly surprised that in all the "AI goes rogue and
| turns a controlled smart munition into a murder-bot"
| fiction I've seen, I don't think anyone has drawn the
| relatively short line of causality along "Drone
| countermeasures disrupt remote control --> designers
| build in some basic decision-making to account for
| control interruption --> the decision-making gets
| sophisticated enough that it's trusted with kill / no-
| kill decisions --> jamming drone + scrambling IFF -->
| murder-bot turned on its 'owners.'"
| robotresearcher wrote:
| A system that has intolerable friendly-fire issues would
| not be used longer than it takes to learn about the
| issues.
| djrogers wrote:
| There's already a drone/anti-drone arms race going on, with
| tech like microwaves, jammers, nets, and other more
| classified means of drone flight denial.
|
| The drones will be effective for a while, then it'll become
| impossible to fly them in airspace controlled by a 1st or
| 2nd tier power, and you'll be back to needing foot soldiers
| (if only to take out the drone jammers).
| D13Fd wrote:
| I think the key is recognizing that these have nothing to do
| with true AI or replacing humans in any profession.
|
| This is just a semi-autonomous vehicle that is bipedal or
| quadrupedal instead of having wheels. That's it.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I think the future headlines will be that widespread rebellions
| will be always put down because the army can't be convinced to
| switch sides. I think we're very close to a situation where
| current governments in power can only be deposed by external
| armies.
| IndySun wrote:
| How do you prosecute a robot that kills the wrong person? It's
| not possible. Would you then logically move on to prosecute the
| software programmer? And for what crime? Is it murder?
|
| (side note : ios slide to type will not allow the spelling of
| murder, try it.)
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't know. That just sounds like pessimism about the
| direction of society, which means that any technology that can
| be used for a wide range of tasks can obviously be used for bad
| things. Slowing the progress of technology is not going to
| solve or even improve the outcomes if society is moving in a
| bad direction, unless you are somehow able to very precisely
| predict the outcomes of each specific technology and slow
| progress very selectively. And if you were able to do that, I
| don't think technologies like this one would be a likely
| candidate for something that would disproportionately help the
| bad actors in society.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Boston Dynamics exec: "That's a sensing problem, we are a
| controls and dynamics company".
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I could see this. Especially robot armies marching back into
| the middle east. I can also see robot caregivers for the
| elderly. Or in cities built for pedestrians a robot walking
| next to you carrying your shopping bags or escorting your kids
| to school with a live video feed back to the parents. Fire
| trucks pulling up and 50 robots jumping out and running into a
| burning building to carry people out. Could go either way, or
| both.
|
| Edit: I think from a seek and destroy perspective we are much
| more likely to go the cloud of small drones route than these.
| These would serve as an armed / peace keeping / law
| enforcement. presence but would not be nearly as effective in a
| real combat situation as the drone swarm.
| vindarel wrote:
| Elderly people don't want robots, and yeah, good things(c)
| are unlikely to happen anyways. When new startups want to
| help people(c), they are actually forced to go where the
| market is. "Well, only two years working for the autonomous
| drones for the army and we'll focus back on helping farmers".
| And years go by. Employees can believe in that vision, but
| can be tricked for years. They should change jobs. (there was
| a very true and touching testimony in this book (fr)[1]).
|
| Also I believe 50 firemen robots is unlikely the best way to
| fight a fire :p Like autonomous cars: impose autonomous cars
| to lower car accidents in cities and save lives(c)? Just
| design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive
| so fast...
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-
| robo...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars
| to drive so fast...
|
| ... and then be ashamed of the lives lost because emergency
| responders couldn't get to the scene in time. :(
|
| Everything is tradeoffs.
| derefr wrote:
| Or, rather than any of these special-purpose autonomous
| robots, the most likely outcome: fully-articulated
| telepresence robots, allowing people using VR to do anything
| a human could physically do, remotely. That covers pretty
| much all of the above use-cases and more, without assuming
| advances in high-level strategic AI; just good low-level
| motor-model learning as already exists here, plus good
| Internet and input methods for medium-level subsumptive motor
| control.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Don't forget
|
| 1) carrying enough energy
|
| 2) getting the price point down to what people are prepared
| to pay
|
| for telepresence.
|
| These are very tough indeed.
| derefr wrote:
| There are a lot of use-cases for which a _tethered_
| telepresence robot (with, say, a five-minute emergency
| battery for getting swapping from one wall-socket to
| another) would work just fine. You wouldn 't see infantry
| drones, but it'd work for most anything that occurs
| solely inside a building.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Tethers are a nightmare. A nightmare.
| derefr wrote:
| For autonomous robots, sure. And for dumb robots. But are
| they a problem for people--e.g. rock climbers, divers,
| etc.? If not, then they also wouldn't be a problem for
| remote people, provided those remote people get enough
| sensory feedback to be aware of the relative position of
| the tether.
|
| After all, the whole point of all this motor modelling is
| to enable the robot to do things humans do, like noticing
| when its foot lightly touches its own tether, and then
| using its hands to unhook the tether from its foot,
| temporarily pull it lightly aside, step around it, and
| then drop it. (Think: vacuuming a room with a tethered
| vacuum cleaner.) That's a very hard thing to teach a
| robot to do; but a human that realizes they're "plugged
| in" would do it almost intuitively.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Do you like wifi? Why not stick to Ethernet?
|
| SCUBA is diving without a tether. It's popular.
|
| Singers and guitarists tend to move to wireless for
| performance as soon as they can afford to (purists
| excepted).
|
| Because tethers suck.
| mlboss wrote:
| This would move all the manual jobs from developed
| countries to developing countries. Haircut in US costs $20
| dollar you can get the same haircut in $1 in developing
| country.
| derefr wrote:
| I don't think the CapEx of a robot barber would work out,
| no matter how low the OpEx. (Which is why we don't see
| very many _non_ -humanoid, pre-programmed robot barbers,
| either.) Just because the tech would be there, doesn't
| mean it'd be practical/affordable for mass deployment.
| It'd likely be the domain of rich people and/or tech
| companies--just as less-complex telepresence robots are
| today.
|
| And by the time the CapEx would get low enough to use
| telepresence for such things, we'd probably have the
| general strategic AI to not need it.
| lifty wrote:
| If we retain the same semi-centralised power structures for
| governing society, then I think it's unavoidable that we will
| face the scenario you mention. We need to decentralise
| governance and power in a massive way if we are to avoid
| negative effects from these incredibly powerful technologies.
| mrfusion wrote:
| > We need to decentralise governance and power in a massive
| way
|
| Agreed but I'd also like to see human rights protected from
| the new decentralized governments. Not sure how that could
| work.
| lifty wrote:
| We could mandate that all AI robots should load an abide by
| a digital constitution that has been cryptographically
| signed by a majority of the population.
| djrogers wrote:
| And how do you enforce your mandate? Without the threat
| of physical violence, any mandate devolves into a
| suggestion - or worse, handcuffs on the just.
| lifty wrote:
| I'm not advocating for getting rid of the institutions
| that apply physical violence on behalf of the population.
| I'm advocating for more fairly distributing the strings
| of power. You still have to force the manufacturers to
| implement the check. But the fewer places that you need
| to enforce physical violence on, the better.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Who will enforce this mandate? Or will this be an honor
| system?
| lifty wrote:
| It will be a review system, like on Amazon. Just kidding.
| I replied to the same question in a sibling comment.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you look around the world (and across history), the
| natural outcome of weak central institutions is more along
| the lines of feudal warlords than something utopian.
| lifty wrote:
| You're right. So what we need is strong institutions which
| are controlled by decentralised power levers. What I have
| in mind is cryptographic based control combined with
| concepts from liquid democracy.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Part of the issue in tech is we shrug off the control we have
| over the future. "If it can be done then it is inevitable"
| seems to be a common attitude.
|
| A bit like the GitHub AI coding controversy. Yes, we maybe
| could AI ourselves out of a job, maybe? We can decide not to
| tho.
|
| We have complete control over what we DO and DO NOT.
|
| If humanity could organise well enough, we could collectively
| decide a weaponless utopia.
|
| But alas, we are stupid.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for
| military uses, so you're not wrong.
|
| The weird thing is that the more I study history, the more I
| think that the real dystopia started a century (and perhaps a
| couple millenia) before I was born, and we're just so adapted
| to it that we think it's normal. Take the "[Ro]bot" out of your
| headlines and those would be headlines from today, and if you
| ignore that the media never bothered to report on those a
| century ago, they'd be headlines from a hundred years ago. We
| were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and then
| large numbers of us were killed in the wars that followed.
|
| In some ways, this gives me a weird sort of hope that our
| descendants will welcome their robot overlords. In others,
| there's a melancholy foreboding that our descendants will
| welcome their robot overlords.
| mrfusion wrote:
| When and how did the real dystopia start?
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Well, there are a lot of Ute folks around where I live, and
| as far as I can tell many of them think we are living at
| the end of the apocalypse.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| Some would argue that it started with agriculture:
|
| > According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-
| gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic
| Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation and
| social stratification.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism
| krona wrote:
| _coercion, social alienation and social stratification._
|
| As though sexual coercion, social ostracism and strict
| social hierarchy didn't exist beforehand. Take, for
| instance, the Chimpanzee.
| imglorp wrote:
| This sounds like it resonates with Ted Kaczynski's
| thesis.
| Zababa wrote:
| You can actually see in the linked article that it's the
| opposite. He is mostly against "global" technology
| (technology at a larger scale than what you can make in a
| village for example).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It's not his. There are many thinkers of several
| different stripes who have reached similar conclusions
| about the implications of agriculture. Yuval Noah Harari
| is perhaps one of the most centrist and well known.
| DonnyV wrote:
| As soon as these robots are as maneuverable as people and
| even somewhat affordable for groups of hundreds to be made.
|
| We're DONE!
|
| The ultra rich and the Jeff Bezos of the world will buy them
| and return us to a world of Kings and Queens. Good luck
| trying to fight that.
| RGamma wrote:
| You might be too optimistic with your neofeudal society
| because it insinuates the existence of peasants.
|
| They might select the cream of the crop, wipe the rest off
| the planet to restore it to pristine condition and live in
| infinite wealth forever.
| rapind wrote:
| What's the difference between a king and a Bezos now?
| xornox wrote:
| Dystopia started when we invented farming 10 000 years ago.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Yuval is that you?
|
| I have some sympathy for this view, but there's also the
| fact that at this point we've basically solved hunger from
| a societal point of view.
|
| Deprivation of calories from a population now happens
| because of war or intentional. At the current time we no
| longer are at the whim of natural causes of hunger.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| But the reasonably reliable provision of calories via
| agriculture is what allows the size of stable societies
| to grow, and also what more closely tethers them to
| particular places.
|
| As I^HYuval would say, those are the things that help
| start the long journey to the mess we're today.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| While I totally agree that it is necessary for the
| problems we have today, I disagree that it's obviously
| bad or necessarily creates many of these problems.
| thendrill wrote:
| Depends what you use as "life metric"... Is working 30
| years in a tooth paste factory more fulfilling than
| living on the savanna and hunting then dying at the age
| of 36 from a broken leg?
|
| I guess we will never know. Yet we keep making things and
| automating.
|
| Yes, we have solved hunger. Yes we have solved boredom.
| We only have to solve sexual needs. Then basically we
| have automated ourselves out of the "human condition"....
| But why. What is the point?
| mastax wrote:
| I, too, hate not dying of intestinal parasites at 24.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for
| military uses
|
| And the robo-donkey thing was trialled and rejected by USMC
| for use in the cargo carrying role - too noisy, needed to
| much direct control and other things
| djrogers wrote:
| > We were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and
| then large numbers of us were killed in the wars that
| followed.
|
| We were depersonalized loooong before that - read up on the
| 30 years war, or any other conflict before the Industrial
| Revolution.
|
| "Soldiers" of the time were mercenaries, many of whom were
| pressed in to 'service' when their village/town/farm was
| destroyed by said mercenary company. These mercenaries fought
| at the whims of princes and kings who squabbled over whims
| and privilege, and the princes and generals are the only ones
| who are remembered.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Sometimes we forget that the last 3-5 generations were the
| only humans in history for whom seeing a sibling die in
| childhood was not the norm. Instead of the industrial
| revolution dehumanizing us, for the first time ever we are
| raised from birth confident that we will live long and
| prosperous lives, that we need not kill nor fear being
| killed to live in this prosperity. Human life has become
| much more precious and cherished in modern times, not less.
| The middle of the 20th century was simply the last time
| that people who came of age before the massive improvement
| in living standards was in power in the western world.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| whats also easily forgotten is just how many people are
| alive right now.
|
| the current estimate is that there have roughly been 105
| billion birth since 50 000BC, with our current world
| population at almost 8 billion... about 8% of all humans
| that have ever lived are currently still alive.
| ArtDev wrote:
| My favorite scifi series is the Polity Universe by Neal
| Asher.
|
| The Polity are these benevolent AI that rule humanity after
| "The Quiet War". It is called that because not a single shot
| is fired because they just take control of all hightech
| weapons and technology one day.
|
| The books would be considered utopian scifi if the rest of
| the universe wasn't so gritty. Which is why it is my favorite
| series.
| thefreeman wrote:
| what is the first book in this series?
| Cipater wrote:
| Prador Moon
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1060548.Prador_Moon
| exhilaration wrote:
| Thank you, Audible link for the interested:
| https://www.audible.com/pd/Prador-Moon-
| Audiobook/B00F3HVM84
| gknoy wrote:
| From Neal Asher's Wikipedia page [0], you may consider
| starting with "Gridlinked" (2001). I've read 3/5 of the
| Agent Cormac series set in the Polity setting, starting
| with that book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Now I need to
| go read all the rest, apparently...)
|
| The AI-ruling-humanity idea took a bit to warm up to.
| They do seem to be presented as benevolent overlords.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Asher#Bibliography
| noir_lord wrote:
| The Culture is the future I want, the polity is the one I
| could accept.
|
| Asher world builds literally better than anyone I know -
| his aliens feel truly _alien_.
|
| The Hooder is straight out of nightmare fuel.
| eplanit wrote:
| The only missing parts are the weapons themselves.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I'm sure there's similar video, in the Pentagon, showing them
| handling weapons - it's just not as good PR to release those
| videos
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _I feel like "AI Robot cops show implicit bias resulting in 3
| deaths" or "Robot Cop shoots innocent person after facial
| recognition goes bad"_
|
| Maybe. But that's not different than human cops who already
| show implicit bias and poor facial recognition and kill people
| they have no right to kill.
| aggie wrote:
| "AI Robot cops show implicit bias resulting in 3 deaths" is a
| headline today if you remove the AI robot part. As evidenced by
| the comments in this thread and any other on these robots, the
| public is extremely skeptical of them. If they do indeed
| exhibit these kinds of harms, the public will likely enact
| severe restrictions on them. I wouldn't be surprised if we end
| up in a situation where a lot of benefits are left on the table
| due to over-caution, just as you might see with self-driving
| cars that kill fewer people but are highlighted in the news
| when the rare accident does happen.
| btbuildem wrote:
| The robots will just become drones (remotely controlled by
| humans). BD demos are great to show that these will be
| autonomously ambulatory (you just tell them which direction
| to move, they manage the low-level concerns of the movement).
|
| We won't trust AI with decision-making, but we will trust the
| status-quo police forces to dish out violence from the safety
| of an office.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm not surprised people look at this human-like and try to
| attribute human-like responsibilities. It'll be a marketing
| trap that many fall into.
|
| But for now, the sensing, state estimation, and energy density
| problems preclude the use of these robots in the real world.
| There's far too much uncertainty in the structure of the world
| or the modelling of unknown areas to do parkour outside --
| unless I've missed something huge that boston _dynamics_ has
| done without talking about.
|
| As someone said below, however, if you can develop a hybrid
| control scheme with a human controlling a smart-ish legged
| vehicle, you're on a roll. That's the future for legged
| vehicles that I could see: something like mechwarrior or
| titanfall, but without the AI (remote operated). Or
| Dreadnaughts. But small (as someone else pointed out).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> hybrid control scheme with a human controlling a smart-ish
| legged vehicle
|
| Much depends on scale. BD is working towards a robot-donkey,
| something that can follow soldiers over rough terrain. At
| scales much larger than a horse, such robots already exist
| and are already much more mobile than soldiers in most
| terrains. These robots are called tanks. Or trucks.
|
| Once a vehicle is carrying a large enough load that it will
| not fit between the trees and so cannot follow soldiers into
| forests, legs are not very useful. Wheels and tracks are
| better than legs, particularly in soft/wet terrain. So large
| walking robots are likely never going to happen. The
| MechWarrior fantasy will have to live on in things not much
| larger than a horse, things that can fit between trees and
| along footpaths.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| In hindsight of all of 5 minutes, I agree with you.
|
| But, I read somewhere that only 20% (ish) of the earth's
| surface is accessible by wheeled / tracked vehicles. I
| guess the important part is _that 's where the people are_.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Well, 70% is oceans. So of the land 20% would be the
| majority of terrain. Also, hovercraft probably push that
| number even higher.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Well, 10 minutes of googling didn't return the
| information I needed, so we'll go with "Most of the non-
| water surface of earth is accessible to tracked vehicles"
| adrian_b wrote:
| In the high mountains there are many places that are not
| accessible to tracked vehicles.
|
| Moreover, of the places that are accessible to tracked
| vehicles, many are accessible only to small tracked
| vehicles, smaller than a typical car, and not at all to
| tank-sized vehicles.
| Animats wrote:
| _BD is working towards a robot-donkey, something that can
| follow soldiers over rough terrain._
|
| That was done years ago, as the Legged Squad Support
| System.[1] It sort of worked, but was too expensive and too
| noisy, being powered by a small IC engine. The USMC
| abandoned the project in 2015.
|
| Boston Dynamics' big accomplishment was to get enough
| funding to actually do anything useful in mobile robotics.
| Most university robotics projects were a professor and a
| few grad students, and took forever to get anything. BD
| spent upwards of $100 million of DARPA money over a decade
| and got some working demos. Then they were funded by
| Google, and now Softbank.
|
| Big walkers have been built. The Timberjack, from John
| Deere, is probably the best example.[2] This is a large
| six-legged off-road machine equipped with a long arm with a
| chainsaw. It worked but was not cost effective vs. wheeled
| systems.
|
| The message is that with enough money you can do legged
| locomotion, but so far, there are few profitable
| applications.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legged_Squad_Support_System
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y
| vijucat wrote:
| I'm reminded of the robot that goes wrong in Robocop. Except,
| with Reinforcement Learning, we'll have a robot that executes
| hundreds flawlessly until stopped. This is the kind of
| advancement that should be regulated, IMHO.
| okwubodu wrote:
| It would take a lot. Humans can be incredibly brutal when their
| opponents aren't alive. Autonomous drones are more of a threat
| and even then a ballon full of string would put most out of
| commission.
|
| edit: that's not to say they'll never be an issue. They almost
| certainly will, but fighter jets can't hold ground and neither
| can any robot.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| The middlebrow dismissal in this thread is galling.
|
| This is AMAZING. Just like everything else Boston Dynamics
| does...and all HN has to offer is weird musings on Terminators.
|
| You know, its okay to spend your days knocking out three-line
| Python PRs and still be wowed by people working at a much higher
| level...
| blackoil wrote:
| Is humanoid form factor really best compared to mountain goat /
| spider? or some other factor is helping decide the choice?
| UnFleshedOne wrote:
| I think the main reason for making a humanoid and human-sized
| robots is that all infrastructure is made for humans. So
| keeping a similar form factor is an advantage if you expect it
| to work in human spaces.
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