[HN Gopher] An electric new era for Atlas
___________________________________________________________________
An electric new era for Atlas
Author : colinramsay
Score : 297 points
Date : 2024-04-17 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bostondynamics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bostondynamics.com)
| temporarely wrote:
| r/legendary/creepy
| blackhawkC17 wrote:
| Figure, a new startup, is working on a similar humanoid robot.
| They just raised $675 million from Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and
| Microsoft [1]. Not sure about their chances of succeeding.
|
| On the other hand, as a non-American, I admire that the USA is
| seemingly the only place where people get funding for wonky ideas
| that sometimes become very successful.
|
| 1- https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/29/robot-startup-figure-
| valued-...
| echelon wrote:
| It's not the only one, but it's the one that's raised the most
| capital.
|
| This "robots + AI" space is heating up just as fast as LLMs,
| and every country seems to have a dozen startups in the ring.
|
| Here is just a sample:
|
| https://www.1x.tech/androids/neo
|
| https://rainbow-robotics.com/en_main?_l=en
|
| https://sanctuary.ai/
|
| https://www.tesla.com/AI
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CToL2qkCd8g (funny)
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1b10p2i/chines...
|
| https://www.engadget.com/menteebot-is-a-human-sized-ai-robot...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/15jyw...
| (NSFW)
|
| ...
|
| Everyone is working on this.
| modeless wrote:
| A while ago I made a blog post collecting 20+ efforts for
| humanoid robots specifically. There has been a real explosion
| in humanoid announcements in the past few months and it's
| hard to keep up even if you follow the news.
|
| https://james.darpinian.com/blog/you-havent-seen-these-
| real-...
|
| Edit: Haha, case in point. I opened Twitter and sure enough
| there's a new announcement of a humanoid robot today, from
| Intel/Mobileye:
| https://twitter.com/AmnonShashua/status/1780611499133685889
| neom wrote:
| imho, Nobody does capitalism better than the Americans the
| South Koreans, and the Japanese(I guess because of the lack of
| natural resource in their geographies for KR/JP?). I've been
| privileged enough to build in those countries for an extended
| period of time, and work with builders in many other countries.
| I strongly believe nobody bruit forces ideas into existence
| better than them, they make the resources happen in the right
| way. Even if you're not much into capitalism, how deeply it's
| been embraced by the culture still fascinating, especially as a
| Canadian where I believe we do capitalism particularly poorly.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > Nobody does capitalism better than the Americans the South
| Koreans, and the Japanese(I guess because of the lack of
| natural resource in their geographies for KR/JP?)
|
| China is not far behind, despite an authoritarian govt.
|
| KR & JP, as well as CH, clearly learned well from Americans.
| fsloth wrote:
| I agree, the skill inherent apparently in the US culture of
| using capital to scale things up compared to the rest of the
| west feels unappreciated. You give a US capitalist money,
| labour pool, and a goal, they will organize them to a system
| to deliver miracles. This is _not_ obviously how things go!
| It _is_ an underappreciated virtue.
|
| I wonder if there is research on the topic - I mean Adam
| Smith is translated to all languages so it's not about the
| ideas or non-tacit knowledge. Must be something institutional
| or otherwise cultural.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| It's just a that competition is a core cultural value in
| these nations, and that competitive spirit lands itself
| really well to capitalism.
| FpUser wrote:
| I live in Canada and have found many Canadians lacking drive,
| curiosity and will. Also far from being straight in business
| to the point they feel like politicians. In average dealing
| with USians was much more to my liking (I am originally from
| the USSR). There are of course exceptions on either side.
| Tarq0n wrote:
| South Korean society and government are deeply co-opted by an
| oligopoly of wealthy families. While that leads to a great
| environment for safe investment, I'll gladly give it up for a
| more egalitarian society.
|
| You doubtlessly know more about life in South Korea than I
| do, but i found this video [0] and its sequel [1] very
| enlightening.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Im4YAMWK74&t=1050s 1:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woB0eecbf6A&t=589s
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| or the film 'Parasite' by Korean director Bong Joon-ho
| (2020 Oscars Best Picture winner)
| threeseed wrote:
| To be fair the situation isn't that much better in most
| Western countries.
|
| Murdoch family for example has huge influence in US, UK and
| Australia.
| decafninja wrote:
| I don't completely disagree, but Korean and Japanese
| corporations are renowned for being bureaucratic and
| inefficient, at least at the white collar level. Having
| worked for a Korean conglomerate, I've written off ever
| working for one again because of this kind of stuff.
| (disclaimer - I am Korean)
|
| Then again, it's hard to deny the progress and products these
| countries have made. So what gives? To be honest, I don't
| know.
| neom wrote:
| Yah, I worked at Samsung for a while and my (korean) wife
| worked at a jaebeol too. Here's what I think it is:
| Bureaucratic and inefficient till someone important (and
| usually thoughtful) says jump. Then absolutely everyone
| says "how high?" and then they all jump. I think this is
| conducive to risk taking, and if you're generally
| directionally correct in your bets, the bureaucracy and
| inefficiency matter less because big bets take time anyway
| and lots businesses suck so it's ok to be a bit slow. I
| don't see them getting into much analysis paralysis at the
| top of the companies, they move on the big bets, and that's
| half the battle.
| philwelch wrote:
| South Korea is a bit different in some interesting ways. The
| South Korean economy is dominated by a small number of
| "chaebols", which are massive corporate conglomerates that
| tend to be owned and controlled by an oligarchic family.
| Samsung, for instance, is owned by the Lee family. These
| families also tend to have a ton of political influence. The
| government has, for decades, embraced an explicit policy of
| developing the chaebols via industrial policy. So, as you can
| imagine, you end up with a situation where the chaebols and
| their owners have lots of political power. Not exactly the
| kind of free market capitalism that someone like Milton
| Friedman would endorse, but it seems to be effective in its
| own way.
|
| There's a flip side to South Korea's chaebol-centric economy,
| however. South Korea's national security situation is
| extremely dangerous, so in fact one of the reasons for the
| industrial policy has been to maintain a domestic defense
| industrial base so that they aren't dependent on arms imports
| from Western countries. Accordingly, most of the South Korean
| chaebols have a significant presence in the arms industry. In
| recent years, this sector has expanded, with South Korea
| becoming one of the world's leading arms exporters.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Japan, the country whose GDP hasn't grown in 30 years, has 0
| major tech companies, still uses fax machines for everything,
| and has numerous stagnant, conglomerates/trusts/monopolies,
| does capitalism really well? I feel like this comment comes
| from another planet.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Well, that article didn't say anything at all really, now did it?
| fforflo wrote:
| What's the best way/resource to get an honest/pragmatic view of
| where things stand with the "robots market" in general and how
| much and fast things are really progressing?
|
| I remember seeing prototypes from Toshiba when I was 10 (20 years
| ago), and every few months, there is a company releasing an
| "amazing video." its mother company then spins it off like
| there's no adequate progress, and so on.
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| Talk to people in the area, I guess we do miss honest and
| straight forward source of info for the general public.
|
| In general robotics flies under the radar because it's rare to
| see a unicorn or anything really flashy and there is a big gap
| between big aspirations and fake demos and real world
| applications with polished use cases and diligent design,
| processes, etc.
|
| source: I'm a skeptic roboticist working in the industry.
| fforflo wrote:
| I have zero ties to the industry. Am I right to assume
| there's a lot of DoD-driven echo chamber? Material being
| produced for the big clients and contracts ?
| DoctorDabadedoo wrote:
| I'm not based in the US to give you an accurate picture on
| this scene, most of it happens behind the curtains.
|
| What I can say it's there has been always a movement to
| weaponize robotics in some way and this has gained interest
| from the market in the past few years specially with the
| Ukrainian and Palestinian wars. It takes time and a lot of
| money to polish an application like this, if there isn't a
| behemoth funding research and PD on this it will take a
| long time before it takes off, and I hope it never does.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| I'd say Tesla is the leader or could quickly become the leader
| given their intense investment in FSD. If a car software can
| "understand the physical world" using vision Ai / neural nets,
| it shouldn't be out of the question to reoptimize that software
| for the rest of the "physical world". Especially when you need
| a whole lot less safety standards compared to a 3,000lb 70MPH
| vehicle. Hell, the Optimus engineers said they were considering
| doing the first demo on a road since the software was so
| similar lol.
|
| With FSD 12.3.3 released, it's clear FSD is getting smarter and
| smarter. How many of those releases left until people trust
| Optimus to fold their laundry? 1.0 Optimius will still be
| pretty dumb, but could still be worth the price (especially
| with continuous software upgrades!)
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| A road (most) has marked lanes and signage to provide a huge
| amount of contextual information. The world (and human
| interaction) is highly ambiguous and dynamic. Tesla is
| optimizing for the road.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Tesla can't even figure out how to make FSD work with their
| latest model...
| aerophilic wrote:
| The best resource I have found for "news" has been Andra Keay's
| newsletter:
| https://www.linkedin.com/comm/newsletters/710308591124398489...
|
| In it she covers the latest and greatest robot news, with
| occasional commentary/perspectives.
|
| However to more directly answer your question, you need to
| know/talk to someone in the industry at the moment. I am not
| aware of a single "spot" that gives an honest in depth
| appraisal of where we are.
|
| From my experience there is a ton of new "hardware" coming out,
| not just in the humanoid space (Agility Robotics being imho the
| most "real"), but also in lower cost robot arms, end effectors,
| sensors, and compute.
|
| Where things are harder to track is where we really are in the
| software realm. If you look at software driving this hardware,
| most of it is early stages. Perhaps TRL level 3 to 5 at best.
| The higher TRL is non-intelligent control software (that is
| based on decades of work). The newer, AI/Machine
| Learning/"Smart" software tends to only have limited roll out.
| At best it will be a startup at the relatively early stages,
| but more often then not it is still a researcher sitting at a
| University or a large corporations research lab. In either of
| those cases, you will see single to at most double digit
| examples of those systems actually doing work.
|
| However, to your point, it is super easy to create a single (or
| even a series) of cool videos... it just takes one success in
| 100s of takes. It is harder to make something that will perform
| day in and day out and really change the industry/world.
| adriancooney wrote:
| Lex Fridman has a long interview [1] with Marc Raibert, CEO of
| Boston Dynamics, which is really excellent. It might partially
| or wholly answer your question.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VnbBCm_ZyQ
| krisoft wrote:
| > What's the best way/resource to get an honest/pragmatic view
| of where things stand with the "robots market" in general and
| how much and fast things are really progressing?
|
| Like with every other market check if the product is available
| for sale and at what price point. And then look up what failure
| points people actually using the system are complaining about.
| (Because every system has problems and weaknesses. If you don't
| see reports about any then the system hasn't left the lab where
| the PR of it is controlled.)
|
| worked examples: washing machine (that's a robot alright, has a
| computer, actuators, sensors). Readily available commercially
| for 200-500 GBP. Usually works reliably, occasional reports of
| flooding the room.
|
| robotic vacuum: Readily available commercially for 300-1k GBP.
| Works okay, reports about it spreading pet's poop around rooms.
|
| spot from Boston Dynamics. Not as readily available as the
| above, but can be purchased. Reported price 74,500 USD[1] Seems
| to trip over its own legs sometimes in a hard to explain way:
| [2][3] (not to count as a dig against spot, seeing these issues
| is actually a great thing. It means third party people in the
| real world use it.)
|
| atlas from Boston Dynamics. You can't buy it. No price
| advertised. You can't see third party reports of it
| malfunctioning. Not because it is perfect, but because nobody
| has access to it.
|
| 1: https://spectrum.ieee.org/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-dog-
| now... 2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8bTo9Q3FWzE 3:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJHAJm3uMEI
| charlesabarnes wrote:
| Seems like they just posted a video about the new Atlas
| https://youtu.be/29ECwExc-_M
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Wow, the ways All New Atlas can move in are really something
| else. Really channels that Star Wars battle droid vibes.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I actually find it less creepy than the original atlas for
| some reason ha. It looks like there is a chance this one will
| be able to unpack the dishwasher, until it decides it doesn't
| want that job anymore :)
| pdpi wrote:
| The original was at the edge of the uncanney valley in the
| way it moved. This one seems a lot less human-like in its
| movement so doesn't conjure up those feelings for me.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| I found it creepy at first, then I saw a comment saying it
| looks like the lamp from the Pixar intro and now I can't take
| it seriously. Beautiful movement, though. I hope one day
| they'll be simple and powerful enough to replace people in
| high-risk jobs, where you could even just control one
| remotely and perform tasks that way.
| huytersd wrote:
| Years of sci-fi made the "wait till the light on its head
| turns red" comment resonate more for me.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Ah, the Robots movie meets the Exorcist.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| could they have come up with a more terrifying way for it to
| standup? I can't think of one.
| y04nn wrote:
| I think this is on purpose to show the extra freedom of
| movements of the new model compared to the hydraulic one.
| philwelch wrote:
| Also, it can get up off the ground by itself. I don't think
| I ever saw any of the previous Atlas robots doing that, and
| it's an important feature, since the primary failure mode
| of a bipedal robot is falling down.
| qwertox wrote:
| Interesting how left and right arm are exactly the same.
| Probably also applies to the legs.
| the_biot wrote:
| ... a rendered video, i.e. it doesn't exist.
| charlesabarnes wrote:
| What makes you think this is a rendered video?
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Because he's seen a few 'shops in his time.
| sparky_z wrote:
| This doesn't look like a rendered video to me at all. I'm not
| enough of an expert to point to specific reasons, but the
| lighting, reflections, shadows, etc just seem 100% real to
| me. I feel it in my gut.
|
| You apparently disagree? Was there something in the video you
| think marks it out as CGI? Or do we just have differing gut
| instincts about it?
| joshspankit wrote:
| > the lighting, reflections, shadows, etc just seem 100%
| real to me. I feel it in my gut.
|
| I'm the exact opposite. My gut says it's rendered. The
| graininess, the odd chromatic aberrations, the shadows that
| are too clean, the "head" being way too physically clean
| (like if the modellers got sloppy with the thousands of
| pieces), something odd about the fps of the robot vs the
| fos of the background, and there's something odd about the
| physics of how it gets up (yes, beyond it's horror-movie
| sequence)
| hinkley wrote:
| I should post this to r/nightmarefuel
|
| This is going to haunt my dreams.
| xnx wrote:
| "Legendary"? Definitely a cool novelty/tech-demo/research-
| platform, but nothing about it seems "legendary".
| DonnyV wrote:
| I still can't believe Google sold this company. What an absolute
| horrible decision.
| dkobia wrote:
| If all Boston Dynamics did was make Youtube videos, they'd have a
| pretty good business.
| fforflo wrote:
| Do they list Sora as a potential competitor?
| simplicio wrote:
| Is that their business? They've been around for 30+ years and I
| don't think they've ever successfully commercialized a product.
| So far as I can tell, they just hop from DARPA grant to DARPA
| grant and make cool videos of the results.
|
| I don't have any particular problem with that, but its a little
| weird? I figured they were a more traditional industrial
| robotics company that just did the humanoid robots as a side
| line for publicity, but googling, I guess that's not the case.
| colingoodman wrote:
| They've sold some of their robots (particularly the dog) to
| PDs and manufacturing companies. Not sure if they've ever
| been profitable, though.
| yuck39 wrote:
| Personal data point, I see their dogs at defense-adjacent
| trade shows all the time.
| InSteady wrote:
| They have been on the bleeding edge of autonomous robotics
| R&D for a very long time now. If they were more focused on
| commercialization for the past 20 years then they wouldn't
| have pushed the tech forward as far and as fast as they have.
|
| The whole point of the article is speculating that they are
| specifically retiring their hydraulic robot because it was
| never going to be commercially viable. Which makes it look
| like they are finally ready to pivot from pure R&D to
| commercial production. Thus they want fully electronic robots
| instead of hydraulics that are messy and require more (almost
| constant?) maintenance.
|
| I'm not an engineering guy but I assume the hydraulics were
| more useful for pushing the boundaries of possible motion
| with such a heavy, robust, and versatile design. Now that the
| AI systems controlling vision, motion, proprioception/spatial
| awareness, etc are more fully developed, they can create more
| specialized and scaled down versions of the robot for
| specific applications that are lighter and don't require
| hydraulics to perform their tasks reliably? Just guessing
| here, am happy to be corrected or given more a nuanced take.
| hinkley wrote:
| My ex worked at a company where their head grant writer was
| making as much or more than the CEO because all their revenue
| came from grants and they were terrified he was going to
| leave. They just kept throwing money at him.
| Animats wrote:
| Boston Dynamics needs a sugar daddy to subsidize them. First
| it was DARPA. Then Google. Now Hyundai. Their real
| achievement is that their management has been able to keep
| the money flowing for three decades.
| Solvency wrote:
| boston dynamics is a govt psyop whose sole purpose as a
| company is to familiarize society with seeing robots before
| for the military & police industrial complex uses them to
| control us.
|
| it's quite literally succeeding at it in front of our
| faces.
|
| this is why their core product is video demos laced with
| cynical terror disguised as humorous pop culture
| references.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| A govt psyop wholly owned by a Korean conglomerate?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Spot seems to be a genuine product for routine inspection
| now. By the looks of that promo video they have at least an
| extensive trial deployment at Chevron.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I got the impression they sold lots of dogs as cargo-carrying
| robots for US defense organizations.
| ragebol wrote:
| That is a very good-looking robot and no doubt very capable. But
| did I see correctly that it can just turn it legs 180 degrees to
| move backwards, as well as it's head? Talk about super-human
| abilities! Bit creepy though
| neom wrote:
| Very cool actuation indeed. I'm not in robotics, so this could
| be fan fiction, but: I guess they have figured out the physics
| engines for these things meaningfully, so I guess innovating on
| hardware can be the next focus? I feel like a lot of the early
| bots were just to understand the real word implications of the
| physics they simulated, now that they understand robot physics
| extremely well and seems to have built a whole OS around that,
| I suspect they can plug it into any hardware that they want?
| They have it to the point where they might be somewhat
| decoupled? If anyone who works in robotics sees this and can
| say if that is correct thinking or not, I'd be very curious.
| ragebol wrote:
| I suspect that they have something like that indeed. In
| robotics, there is the concept of a Whole-body-controller,
| and I think BD has one of these for their robots, which can
| be calibrated for each individual robot. And the tools &
| skills to make such a controller for new robot variants
| fairly quick.
|
| Such WBC then makes sure that the robot reaches both it's
| task goals (eg. grab something, with 1, 2 arms), as well as
| it's (dynamic) stability goals so it doesn't fall over. They
| are also capable of choreographing the robot pretty
| accurately as we say in earlier videos. But what is most very
| impressive to me is the robot using the mass and momentum of
| things it grabs to keep stable or move itself. In one of the
| videos it grabs a big piece of wood and uses it to turn
| itself around while jumping. Amazing! Controlling that in
| terms of dynamics is... wow!
| neom wrote:
| That's what it seems like to me too, and let me tell you, i
| am right there with you on that last point ragebol, that
| stuff I also find really really amazing, because it's so
| thoughtful I guess, and I wish my brain was good enough to
| hack physics like that. People get real hyped up about
| GenAI etc, but I'm like a kid waiting for christmas when it
| comes to robotics, i sense their industry in a positive
| feedback loop and going to get better and better quicker
| and quicker. Cool time to be alive for sure. :)
| K5EiS wrote:
| They also posted a farewell to the previous robot yesterday
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EM5_VFlt8
|
| Looking forward to see some more robot parkour/dance
| tivert wrote:
| > They also posted a farewell to the previous robot yesterday
|
| > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EM5_VFlt8
|
| I wasn't expecting to see a robot bleed, several times.
| stanski wrote:
| It's also cool to see it tuck in its appendages when it
| falls; to prevent that.
| jader201 wrote:
| HN thread:
|
| _Boston Dynamics Retires Its Legendary Humanoid Robot_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063766
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Are there any Boston Dynamic robots currently in use?
| Specifically the biped ones, but I'm also interested in the
| quadrupeds, which they seemed to be pushing for military/search
| and rescue/packhorse uses.
| defrost wrote:
| The quadrupeds saw use in Singapore during COVID (2020) to
| remind people about social distancing, today (2024) they're
| being used in car manfacture plants to "fetch" for other fixed
| robots.
|
| https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/boston-dynamics-robot-d...
|
| so they do have non-military applications.
| r0ckarong wrote:
| New York and Los Angeles at least use them (Spot) already.
| Nestle and AB InBev in their facilities apparently. Paris uses
| it for Metro inspections.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFRcle4Szo4
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Y52zjZYXo
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9pZQ29RSz4I
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XPOpnJSldUg
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p535RRR5MqM
| nebula8804 wrote:
| SpaceX has one for what I imagine is PR purposes.
|
| [1]:https://youtu.be/aajbFO7xwBM?t=36
| chasd00 wrote:
| They use flying drones all the time, you can see them
| flying around in the Starbase live streams. I can't think
| of anything off the top of my head that a flying drone
| can't do but spot would be able to do at Starbase. Unless
| Spot can crawl into a pipe or tank maybe.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Like I said, Spot can do one thing that the drones can't:
| Get more upvotes on his Twitter post showing how
| futuristic he is.
|
| An oldie but a goodie, heres one of my favorite displays
| of how "ahead of the curve" Tesla is:
|
| https://youtu.be/ib1KKHGYmLQ?t=1689
| cess11 wrote:
| The IDF has the quadrupeds and there has been some videos of
| them being deployed. Can't search Twitter for you, but if you
| have an account there you'll likely be able to find some
| examples.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Ontario Power Generation is experimenting with Spot:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyjYIgnsIeY
|
| This one is actually pretty interesting cause handling big
| breakers is quite hazardous.
| prime09 wrote:
| They found the bottom of the uncanny valley and started digging.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| That was my first thought.
|
| Shock value PR stunt? Moving the Overton window for the general
| public's aversion to what comes next?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Marketing. It's attention grabbing.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| They worked on it long enough to not notice it.
| josemanuel wrote:
| Really scary feelings watching the clip. I think we need to
| make robots either neutral, or somewhat cute. Otherwise society
| will distrust these entities. This is the opinion of someone
| strongly rooting for the success of AI/ML and its symbiotic
| integration with actuators, either on an isolated basis or as a
| large hive mind.
| ortusdux wrote:
| You say distrust like it is a bad thing.
| beau_g wrote:
| These are inherently dangerous machines and you should
| distrust them - we don't dress up lathes and excavators to be
| "cute"
| modeless wrote:
| Does anyone remember the scene in Terminator 2 where the T-1000
| turns around instantly by swapping its face from front to back
| on its head? It reminds me of that. It's like they were
| consciously trying to evoke the Terminator.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| You're thinking of a fight scene in terminator 3.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hSZkU9Yyp0w
| modeless wrote:
| Actually I was thinking of the Terminator 2 scene, but this
| one is closer to what the robot does with the head turning
| 180 degrees. Creepy either way.
| Karellen wrote:
| The _Terminator 2_ effect:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pq9F5f8kyE&t=119s
| 3dsnano wrote:
| feels incredibly eery. it doesn't move like how my brain expects
| a humanoid being to move. reminds me of how the EMMI's move in
| Metroid Dread... especially when it goes from the prone position
| to standing. maybe its my DNA or i've played enough video games
| to realize that this thing is probably not my friend and will not
| end well. uncanny valley vibes.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| oh wow, this looks much more like a commercial product -- quite
| uncanny
|
| I bet it talks
| solardev wrote:
| I bet it cackles quietly while plotting your demise. All while
| it's looking the other way.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| A hill I'm willing to die on: bipedal robots are an evolutionary
| path that machines don't need to go down, we have lovely bearings
| and wheels that work perfectly with electric motors.
|
| Yes obviously there are limitations i.e. stairs and uneven
| terrain but there are wheeled/tracked solutions for those too
|
| Most of these robots will be used in factories that have very
| nice flat concrete floors
| dcchambers wrote:
| If we ever see a world where robots need to be useful outside
| of a factory with perfectly flat concrete floors, then yes -
| there needs to be continued evolution in traversal over uneven
| ground and around unanticipated objects. Bipedal locomotion is
| useful for this (although not the only solution).
|
| Right now the hardest jobs to replace will be those of
| plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc where they need to
| operate with fine motor skills in unique and challenging
| locations - no two ever being the same.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i think search and rescue is a great application of humanoid
| robotics, you need something very versatile and a human body
| is not a bad model for a universal terrain form factor.
| snek_case wrote:
| The ultimate goal is to produce general-purpose robots. If we
| want robots that can do everything a human can, then legs are
| definitely useful.
|
| One simple example: getting in and out of a car. Another thing
| to consider is that a legged robot can tilt itself for balance
| while carrying heavy objects. To carry a similar weight with a
| wheeled robot you'll need a much wider wheel base.
|
| And then of course, if you want to build robots that can be
| useful inside a house, then they need to be able to cope with
| stairs. There's also construction... At some point, you don't
| have elevators... Or just circulating between buildings out on
| the street where the pavement isn't great.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| In my opinion your argument assumes there would be a single
| form factor for robots that will be used everywhere. This
| assumption has generally been false for most technology, look
| at the different cars or personal computer. In my opinion, we
| will have as many kinds of robots as there are breeds of
| dogs, some of which will be bipedal, but most of them will
| make do with wheels.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Exactly. We don't need robots that replace humans 1-for-1.
| If there's a building site that currently needs humans to
| scale ladders etc then a combination of lifts, loading
| bays, cranes, drones and tracked robots can do it, not
| legged robots that carry everything up ladders etc.
|
| Of course that needs very smart systems that can co-
| ordinate but that's my point, there's an opportunity cost
| for everything, and I think that's better spent on AI and a
| multitude of other systems rather than a schoolboy sci-fi
| fantasy of bipedal robots
| riversflow wrote:
| > look at the different cars or personal computer.
|
| this feels like a flawed example to me. ~100 years on and
| all cars are starting to look the same.[1] Personal
| computers, after like 30 years, have mostly converged
| around something that's essentially a 3x5 touchscreen with
| cameras on both sides. Sure, there are laptops and PC's,
| work and semi trucks, but that's 3 form factors? meh.
| Manufacturing at scale is much more efficient, and form
| follows function, can't really escape either.
|
| [1]https://windingroad.com/articles/features/why-do-all-
| new-car...
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Prediction: we'll have self-driving cars that can match our
| driving before we have legged robots that can match our
| stability, agility etc.
|
| Have you not seen Boston Dynamics tilting wheeled robots that
| work very well? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iV_hB08Uns
| snek_case wrote:
| That tilting wheel robot is huge compared to a person, and
| it seems to me that the potential for it accidentally
| injuring a person while moving would be much greater than
| with a humanoid, if only because of its mass and its need
| to perform large, rapid motions to maintain its balance.
| Solvency wrote:
| whose ultimate goal?
| bluGill wrote:
| Why do I want a general purpose robot? I don't need one robot
| that does it all, I'm happy with a separate robots for
| washing my dishes, and vacuuming my floors. Sure both can be
| improved on, but they don't need to converge. In fact I'm
| glad those two are separate as I can let both of them run at
| the same time and get the work done faster, while a general
| purpose robot can only do one at a time. The goal is to make
| my life better, robots are only an implementation detail.
| Maybe some robots need legs (construction robots?), but most
| don't. If the robot with wheels is cheaper I'll take that in
| many cases.
| squigz wrote:
| You want a separate robotic appliance for every thing you
| want done? That sounds... hectic.
|
| I'm also not sure it's important that laundry and dishes
| get done at the exact same time - if it is, you should
| probably do 1 of those tasks yourself - especially since a
| robot would be able to stuff at night, etc, giving it more
| time to complete tasks
|
| Also, GP mentions stairs, and adding wheel support to that.
| So not only do you want a half dozen robits rolling around
| your home, you'll also need to remodel your home to support
| it.
|
| Or, of course, we could develop bipedal robots, which seems
| to have little downside as compared to wheeled robots.
| bluGill wrote:
| I just want the tasks done without thinking about them.
| How it happens doesn't matter to me, just get it done. 1
| robot, 1 million - I don't care, just so long as I can
| afford them and they stay out of my way.
|
| While I don't care if everything gets done at once, I
| care that things are done right and not otherwise
| inconvenient for me. Maybe the best way to have robots
| that work slow and then apply a lot of then.
|
| The important thing to note here is robots for many of
| the things I want do not exist. When they come we will
| see. Maybe is a a specialized robot, maybe it is more
| general purpose. That is irrelevant.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| _Why do I want a general purpose robot?_
|
| Why do you want a smart phone, instead of the telephone,
| contact book, camera, clock, alarm clock, radio, mail,
| credit card and so on?
| bluGill wrote:
| My phone is not 100% general purpose, it is a compromise.
| I'm typing this on a computer not my phone that is right
| next to my keyboard because my phone is a bad compromise
| for typing comments. The phone works well enough that
| I'll use it when on the go, but only because there are
| times when hauling my full size computer isn't a good
| option, as soon as I'm using it I prefer the computer.
|
| There is a lot of room for special purpose tools to
| handle more than one purpose while not being fully
| general purpose. I'm suggesting we never have a need for
| full general purpose, but there is for sure room for
| robots that do more than one thing but don't do
| everything. I might want the robot that sets and clears
| my table after meals to also gather my dirty laundry and
| when clean bring it back - but offload the actual
| cleaning process for both to specialized robots.
| kaibee wrote:
| I don't think you want a vacuuming robot. Those already
| exist, its called a Roomba, and they have a lot of
| limitations that are completely intractible in their given
| form factor. You have to modify how you use your house to
| make it actually useful enough. Some examples:
|
| 1. Stairs. Roomba's can't vacuum stairs, so you still need
| to do those yourself.
|
| 2. Stairs, Roomba's can't traverse stairs, so you need one
| for each floor.
|
| 3. Doors. If you want the Roomba to vacuum the whole house,
| you have to have all the doors open for it.
|
| 4. Can't have anything on the floor, the Roomba will either
| get stuck or avoid it. But I shouldn't have to never leave
| a backpack on my floor if I want it vacuumed.
|
| 5. Corners. Roomba's can't vacuum in corners or in tight
| areas between furniture and walls. or any other weird
| geometry. ie: I have a wire shelf. Roomba doesn't fit under
| it but its easy to use a stick vacuum to get between the
| wires and to the floor.
|
| And this is before we get to the limit on suction and
| capacity in that form factor.
| bluGill wrote:
| The roomba isn't the only possible form of robot vacuum.
| There may be other options for a design that isn't
| general purpose but eliminates those issues. Perhaps we
| should just install elevators or dumb waiters in houses
| (dumb waiter may be cheaper because it doesn't have to be
| human rates for safety, while elevators are also useful
| for humans in wheel chairs which at some point in your
| life is likely to be someone you are close enough to that
| you would want to invite them into your house). Likewise
| doors that can open themself are an option that can solve
| other problems (think star trek - not current technology)
| tshaddox wrote:
| To me the killer app would be basic house chores: cleaning,
| doing dishes, etc. For industrial applications I suspect we
| will retrofit factories for whatever robot tech we have,
| instead of needing humanoid robots to use interfaces designed
| for humans. The same goes even for commercial applications
| like stocking grocery shelves. Driverless cars are an obvious
| example already. But people probably don't want to
| significantly retrofit their homes with less human-friendly
| interfaces.
| runako wrote:
| Worth noting that none of this points exclusively to
| bipedalism. It's possible bipedalism is one of the more
| difficult ways to solve these problems.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Agreed. It seems to go hand-in-hand with people wanting to
| demonstrate humanoid robots doing domestic chores like shirt
| folding.
|
| I'd go out on a limb and say that we will NEVER have humanoid
| robots at home folding laundry, walking upstairs to put it
| away, or putting away the dishes in the kitchen. This is a
| 1960's sci-fi vision of the future, similar to that of flying
| cars. Any robot capable of fully navigating the human world
| will always be too expensive and unreliable as a home helper.
|
| In a factory a stable wheeled robot is way more practical than
| a bipedal one. It doesn't need a humanoid head either - but I
| guess that makes for nice PR photos.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| The problem with that "1960s vision" is thinking to literally
| about having robots do exactly what humans do now. Likely
| there is a creative way to solve the need for humans to do
| those tasks via automation, but it's not likely to look like
| a humanoid robot folding laundry.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| On the other hand, it'd be highly amusing if the future did
| involve humanoid robots out mowing the grass with a push
| mower, or getting into their car to drive to the grocery
| store.
|
| I'm reminded of this Adam Savage video of BD's Spot pulling
| a rickshaw (23:00).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyaocKS3sfg
|
| Maybe in the future the passenger will be a humanoid robot
| being taken to its laundry folding job?
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Humanoid robots making buggy whips to control ornery LLM-
| based robotic horses. With private/pair key encryption in
| the whips themselves- they can send a digitally signed
| wireless "threat" before actual contact is needed.
| cdchn wrote:
| I don't think its too outlandish to see these getting to a
| price point where they're cheaper than a human. The goal
| might not be an appliance Rosie the Robot in every household
| but having a robot that can help the infirm, elderly or
| disabled.
| atonse wrote:
| I strongly disagree.
|
| One of my pet peeves is the idea of asking the world to
| accommodate a situation rather than build solutions that adapt
| to the world.
|
| Big example: the best we have for mobility nowadays is a
| wheelchair of some sort. That requires building special ramps
| and elevators everywhere.
|
| If we had a four legged chair that could climb stairs, etc,
| like what BD is doing, it could transport people ANYWHERE. you
| could literally go for a stroll in the woods with it. People
| that are injured for 6 weeks in their home could go up and down
| steps, etc. The elderly could go for walks in a park.
|
| So I for one fully support more research into smarter mobility
| that doesn't require the world to accommodate it, but instead
| adjusts to its surroundings.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > One of my pet peeves is the idea of asking the world to
| accommodate a situation rather than build solutions that
| adapt to the world.
|
| While I understand and respect the sentiment, in my opinion
| human history has been a trend in molding our environment to
| our advantage. I can drive to a remote hill in Bangladesh
| from the capital because there are roads that we humans built
| and maintain. If we kept molding to the environment, such an
| accomplishment would never be possible.
|
| So yeah, maybe mold to the environment a little bit, but also
| mold the environment a bit, is the ideal solution.
| dmd wrote:
| > I can drive to a remote hill in Bangladesh from the
| capital
|
| You say this like it's a good thing.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| I think this is an absolutely horrible thing for the
| environment. My point was to make a testament to the
| human will, and also to counter arguments that try to
| wield the cost of accessibility against people with
| disabilities. We could make a global network of ships,
| planes, and cars, so why is making a tiny ramp such a big
| deal afterwards?
| Solvency wrote:
| it's hard enough for disabled people to get a non-shit wheel
| chair, you think the world is going to give them the most
| advanced quadripedal robotic walking system of all time for
| nature walks in the woods?
| seydor wrote:
| > it could transport people ANYWHERE
|
| Not really, not fast nor convenient. Any machine will always
| add extra volume and weight in the most inconvenient ways.
| There should really be no limitation on the designs, just
| optimization under the constraints at hand
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Segway make wheelchairs that are far more versatile than
| traditional ones. I'm not sure of the capabilities of their
| current commercial models, but years ago they had demo videos
| of them driving up steps and a scissor-like design whereby
| they could lift the occupant up to reach things.
| ta8645 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure human's role, in the grand scheme of things, is
| to generate the next step in evolution. We should do the best
| job we can for the universe.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Why? Does the Universe care? Why not concentrate on those
| that have the capacity to care?
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean you are an emergent phenomenon of the universe and
| you care, so there is a case to be made the universe cares.
| ta8645 wrote:
| It was mostly tongue-in-cheek, just to offer a different
| perspective. But since you ask, how should we employ our
| capacity to care? On fleeting comfort, or grand visions?
| Personally, I vote for creating a superior life form, that
| can carry on the long history of evolution into amazing new
| realms and abilities. We could be the "bacterial" precursor
| of an amazing new stage of evolution.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I think we very much do. Robots are currently very expensive,
| so where do you want to send a robot that you can't use a
| worker? Probably somewhere at least potentially dangerous.
|
| You want to use the robot to inspect a tunnel in danger of
| collapse, or a factory that may be leaking a poisonous chemical
| out of a pipe.
|
| And in such cases you very much want something that can
| navigate obstacles about as well as a human. You can't count on
| the area being devoid of rubble, and rebuilding a factory to
| make it wheeled robot friendly could be an enormously expensive
| and impractical proposition.
|
| Now humanoids? We already designed everything for us. A good
| enough humanoid robot can go anywhere a person can, and
| manipulate anything a human was intended to touch.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| drones, my friend
| dale_glass wrote:
| Drones are cool, but would have a hard time getting through
| a closed door, or turning a valve.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| A combination of a tracked vehicles and drones then.
| There's something quite short-sighted and uncreative
| about assuming bipedal 1-for-1 replacements are the only
| solution
| pixl97 wrote:
| Oh no, my old enemies, the stairs!
| cdchn wrote:
| Also, loud.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Even a tiny payload is very loud and high energy use
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I would invest in the spider-legged robot to crawl around
| spaces.
|
| I think human physiology is amazingly multi-purpose, but we
| don't need to compromise on balanced skills with robots.
| Every action can have a physiologically tailored robot to do
| it. Sure, I can see that I would want my personal butler bot
| to be humanoid, but I think for the vast majority of cases,
| humanoid is not the optimal solution.
|
| But I also suppose that if I was going for wooing the general
| public, I would go humanoid for sure. People compare
| technology against science fiction, not actual practical
| considerations.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| But a humanoid isn't the optimal form factor to be able to
| navigate those kinds of terrain. A quadruped robot like
| Boston Dynamic's Spot is much more stable than a bipedal one,
| and is already being used for those sorts of applications.
|
| For rougher types of terrain, hexapod robots do great (not
| the spider-type ones - ones with three legs either side, that
| fully rotate in the vertical plane), or for that matter just
| use a tracked tank-type design.
| melling wrote:
| Sounds like a meaningless debate where we can't determine if
| you're right or you you're wrong. "Don't need" is also a bit
| vague.
|
| I'm gonna pass.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Once they get walking wit legs perfected, they can install
| wheels on those or do whatever wheel thing they want. That will
| probably be an easier addon.
| kmacleod wrote:
| This. I've seen kids with wheelies these days. They can go
| from climbing to zipping around the place with the simplest
| of natural transition.
| paxys wrote:
| What about when a robot is carrying an uneven load and has to
| rebalance?
|
| What if it is knocked over and needs to get back up?
|
| What about Steep inclines? Stairs?
|
| What if it needs to climb on to a different platform? A
| conveyer belt? A vehicle? A beam?
|
| Even in a factory or warehouse setting wheels are useless for
| anything but the most ideal cases. And there are already
| countless robots successfully operating in that space. A
| general purpose robot is the holy grail, and legs are a
| requirement for that.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I think it really depends on where the robots will be used. yes
| short term they will be in factories, shipping centers, etc.
| Places that can be tailored to the robot.
|
| But the long term prospects of robots would be in your home,
| maybe going to the store for you, whatever. We see the
| limitations of wheeled robots with robot vacuums. They do a
| decent job but are severely limited trying to do its job in a
| place that was designed for a human. (On the flip side it can
| also get some places easier than a human would, so it's a bit
| of a trade off).
|
| By focusing on mimicking humans, we end up being in the best
| situation for both of these. Factories can try them out with
| minimal changes to how they operate.
|
| Plus, it seems like the biggest hurdle isn't really walking. It
| seems like we have gotten that one down fairly well (not
| perfect obviously) and the bigger issues seem to be hands,
| object recognition, and just "general" AI. Can it actually do
| anything with the hardware it has on its own.
| alfor wrote:
| I too think it's a distraction too but it's won't be the
| limiting factor. Planes don't flap their wings, cars don't have
| legs yet are faster and more powerfull than animals.
|
| The important part lagging is the brain. Understanding the
| world, reacting to it learning. Even an ant can navigate the
| world pick-up objects and do tasks.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I think you're unnecessarily short-circuiting your imagination.
|
| For one, there are many applications in dangerous environments
| that could benefit from the dexterity and ability of bipeds -
| rescue missions, mining, space walks, etc.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Boston Dynamics makes all kinds of robots. None of them are
| consumer products, so I don't think the very good arguments,
| like Angela Collier's, against having one in the home will be
| an impediment to developing very capable humanoid robots.
|
| Seeing how this one moves, it is human-ish, being bipedal, but
| it isn't mimicking human movement range.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Well yes. There's always a robot that can be specifically made
| to handle a specific task in the most efficient way possible.
|
| But the fact is, the world has mostly been built by humans for
| humans. Pretty much any task you can think of can be
| accomplished by a human with their arms, legs and some tools.
|
| A generalised robot would look like a human.
| giva wrote:
| > Most of these robots will be used in factories that have very
| nice flat concrete floors
|
| Are you sure? We had robots in factories for more than 50
| years, and they don't usually move.
| bfung wrote:
| If we're using NN's to get fine motor skills right, like final
| steps in an assembly line, the simplest and most abundant
| source of training data are humans. :shrug:
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sure, but you don't even need a lower body for that, and if
| you do want to let the robot move around than a stable
| wheeled base that doesn't negatively impact the fine-motor
| skills needed when it is in position seems preferable.
| bilsbie wrote:
| You raise good points and I used to agree.
|
| What changed my mind is thinking of humanoid robots as the
| "last mile" of robotics. All the thousands of use cases where
| there are no easy patterns and we need something that can fit
| into any human task without planning or modification.
| visarga wrote:
| Androids are human-compatible. An android could go any place a
| human could go and operate any machinery a human could operate
| - that widens the space of possible applications. A wheeled
| robot is capable of many tasks, but it can't dance with you,
| play piano, wear your wardrobe or sit in a plane seat.
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| Much more training data (videos) available for bipedal
| organisms performing useful tasks...
| michelb wrote:
| Fantastic movement, not bound to human anatomy.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| That uncanny valley effect tho..
| dcchambers wrote:
| Lmao of course they had to make him get up off the ground in the
| creepiest way possible.
| dcuthbertson wrote:
| Oh the horrors! Please use "it", not "him"! These machines are
| creepy enough w/o being anthropomorphized more than they
| already are! 8-)
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| This guy seems less creepy than his predecessor. He looks
| more like a hobby servo-motor robot. I liked the aesthetics
| of hydraulic Atlas better - somehow fitted well with the
| character they gave him in all the choreographed demos.
|
| I can't see them really being creepy unless/until we get to
| "uncanny valley" territory with realistic faces and
| expressions.
| huytersd wrote:
| I don't find him creepy at all. The movements are smooth and
| pleasing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm not sure that when the robot overlords look through
| their training data if they will decide that "huytersd" was
| being serious of facetious. This may not have the effect
| you were looking for.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Then it trots off looking for john connor cause the terminator
| films were in the training dataset
| Narretz wrote:
| They did stress that one advantage of electric motors over
| hydraulics is better mobility. On the other hand, the motors
| probably do not yet have the power to make jumps and the like.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Looks like they were able to miniaturize a lot of the components.
| Looks much cleaner and the dexterity looks much improved too.
| Mizza wrote:
| Jesus fuck. I guess the war machine is hungry again so they've
| fired all the people who made the cute dancing videos and brought
| in the nightmare engineers.
|
| I'm thinking more and more that that "Terminator" was the most
| accurate of all the sci-fi dystopias.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Or perhaps "A.I.".
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| the war machine is never not hungry, Boston Dynamics has
| received some funding from the Department of Defense and has
| sold robots to various police departments and other government
| agencies
| zzzeek wrote:
| The circular screen is supposed to display the words "PLEASE
| DISPLAY YOUR PAPERWORK, CITIZEN", otherwise what's the point
| really
| zzzeek wrote:
| holy crap you people are HUMORLESS. so sad.
| squarefoot wrote:
| ...a robot make up artist with built in mirror?
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| 1. Amazing technical ability. 2. Feels scary, both the
| beyond-human movement, and the design of the 'face'.
| systemz wrote:
| I was excited when I saw the title. Now I'm scared due to this
| hardware and being aware of LLM possibilities and mixing it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm excited at the yet unexplored military applications.
| Karellen wrote:
| You're excited... at the yet unexplored military
| applications... of humanity finding ever more efficient ways
| of killing each other?
|
| FML, that's dark.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| War is already dark and more precision makes it less dark.
| Winning faster saves lives.
| Karellen wrote:
| Making war feel less risky to politicians who want to
| wage it for domestic jingoistic bullshit reasons[0] makes
| war more likely to happen in the first place, which costs
| lives.
|
| Also, bold of you to assume you're going to be winning.
| Does the excitement about this new tech hold up if you
| consider it from the perspective that it's going to be
| used against you and your troops?
|
| [0] as opposed to actual defence against invasion -
| despite the euphemism commonly used by western
| governments for their military political departments. And
| what %age of military actions in the last 50 years that
| your country was involved in count as one, or the other?
| doodda wrote:
| I don't know enough about robotics to judge BD's technology or
| innovations. What I can be sure of is that they have an
| incredible marketing function.
| I_ wrote:
| It's hard to judge from any video like this because you can't
| be sure what's pre-programmed.
|
| Their hardware is second to none.
| alfor wrote:
| Funny, just after the all electric Optimus.
|
| For sure they have been working on this for a long time.
|
| I predict that they will also move toward neural nets for all the
| vision, control and understanding of the world (like Tesla)
| hiddencost wrote:
| "move towards neural nets ... like Tesla"
|
| You sound confused.
| alfor wrote:
| why?
|
| FSD is based on neural net so is Optimus vision
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _FSD is based on neural net so is Optimus vision_
|
| Do you think Tesla invented neural nets or something?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Where on Earth did they imply that?
| yareal wrote:
| I think the parent and gp poster are more like, "Tesla is
| an odd reference. Not wrong per se, just odd."
|
| It's like saying, "they are building a search engine,
| just like Netflix!" Sure, Netflix does build search, but
| like... are they the canonical example for the domain?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What do you mean? This sounds like a low-effort, hostile
| reply unless you provide more reasoning for your dismissal.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nbzso wrote:
| So it begins. John, where are you?
| tivert wrote:
| The VCs said "don't be afraid," AI wasn't going to be Skynet.
| Rather it would a tool that would bring about a utopia of human
| flourishing.
|
| But it was always going to be Skynet.
|
| I bet the next version will have teeth.
| ok_dad wrote:
| AI and robots like this may be how the wealthy will replace the
| problematic plebeians.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| I'm thinking the humanoid approach to robotics is now a gimmick.
| In most--if not all--cases, a robot in human form is not
| necessary at all if the approach is to get work done.
| pixl97 wrote:
| It turns out the humanoid shape when making a general purpose
| robot is useful because humans have designed all the things
| around us, for humans.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| That's kinda a weird conclusion to reach. They discontinued
| this (old, hydraulic) humanoid robot to focus on their new
| (fully electric) humanoid robot.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ECwExc-_M
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm assuming you didn't read the parent comment to mine
| saying "humanoid robots are dumb", so I'm not sure what
| you're trying to say.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| I did read it. I'm trying to say they are not dumb, and
| no one is giving up on this form factor.
| wdh505 wrote:
| If a robot were to pilot a analog aircraft, it would need
| to be roughly human shape or specifically designed.
|
| If a robot were to reach an AED without frying it with
| magnets, it would need to be tall enough and have fingers.
|
| I agree with you that there are more efficient shapes out
| there (like the robot from interstellar) but a humanoid at
| slightly shorter than the average adult (for fear related
| reasons) shape is the best general purpose shape because it
| is so backward compatible in all sorts of not yet imagined
| emergency scenarios.
| Fricken wrote:
| In environments designed for humans it seems humanoid robots
| would be the natural choice. What do you think would make for a
| better form factor?
| bamboozled wrote:
| I think so too but I can see how it's desirable as a drop in
| for spaces where a person would normally work.
|
| Mostly wheels just seem like a better idea. For rough terrain,
| why not just fly ?
| lukan wrote:
| "For rough terrain, why not just fly ? "
|
| Weight
|
| (You need way more energy to do anything)
| bamboozled wrote:
| True but how much can a bipedal robot carry ?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Maybe there's a natural 'wisdom' to the humanoid shape after
| countless iterations over millions of years, though?
| wdh505 wrote:
| The golden ratio is found throughout nature and specifically
| the proportions of limbs to each other. The golden ratio is
| an observation that the fibbonacchi series occurs in nature
| and that the next step is 1.618. For a generalist robot,
| applying these kinds of "natural efficiencies" make sense,
| but constraining to the human shape is probably just to get
| investors to empathize enough for funding.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Something like GERTY from Moon would be all you need around the
| home. And you wouldn't need to worry about charging him either.
| Fricken wrote:
| BD is done with hydraulics. I wonder how good this new robot will
| be at powerful, dynamic movements such as leaps and flips.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Their previous humanoid robot, Atlas, was using hydraulics. But
| Spot (the dog like one) is not.
| itishappy wrote:
| Right, and I believe only Atlas was capable of leaps and
| flips.
| klowrey wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNeZWP5Mx9s
|
| different configuration, but electric motors are fine if
| you get momentum on your side. Humans use their entire
| range of motion get build up velocity to jump; this is
| motion control thing.
| chaostheory wrote:
| What I find funny is just like with generative AI, this was under
| the Google banner first until it got struck with office politics
| related to Andy Rubin. I still don't understand why someone else
| at Google didn't take it over. They really lost their way a long
| time ago.
| exodust wrote:
| I wonder if you could send a robot to the store to buy cigarettes
| in the UK, or indeed the robot may decide it wants to buy
| cigarettes.
|
| "Sorry we can't sell cigarettes to anyone born after 2009, or
| robots".
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| If we're sending these robots to buy cigarettes at the store,
| then we've failed horribly
| linsomniac wrote:
| Two words: Nightmare fuel.
| waltbosz wrote:
| How long before we have the YouTube remixes of this video with
| horror film music and a jump scare in the end blackness after
| the Boston Dynamics logo fades away?
|
| Is feels like they almost designed this video with that
| eventuality in mind. Like that wanted a second wave of organic
| 3rd party viral advertising.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| It's such obvious horror bait there will be something good up
| by tomorrow.
| Karellen wrote:
| As someone did with one of the previous ones?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4jKSdfRtxk
| Isamu wrote:
| The success of old Atlas was partly due to the compactness and
| high power of hydraulic actuators. There's a lot of actuators to
| pack into a humanoid robot and it takes a lot of power to do
| backflips.
|
| I am betting that this one is less powerful, no backflip.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| They did say it's for commercial use. Probably for warehouses
| and such where sadly backflipping is not relevant
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| You'll know AGI has really arrived when we do have factory
| robots backflipping and doing stupid stuff to amuse
| themselves.
| geodel wrote:
| I feel Robot Unions will have to make backflipping as part
| of collective bargain agreement.
| kevindamm wrote:
| What do we want??
|
| BACKFLIPS.
|
| When do we want them?
|
| [ _backflips_ ]
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| And posting that to robot tiktok
| jiminymcmoogley wrote:
| see what i find puzzling is that warehouses have flat floors
| right? so what benefit does the upfront cost of building
| something with a bunch of extra actuators for all the joints
| in 2 legs, and the ongoing running costs of far less
| mechanically efficient bipedal locomotion have over wheeled
| movement like their other robot, the Handle, offers? i should
| mention i know nothing about robots so i'm sure there must be
| a good reason for it, but this thought has been on my mind
| ever since I saw george hotz bring it up in the Comma Body
| reveal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhvt0ZmqmGQ as a
| layperson, i feel like biomimicry only makes sense for hands
| and arms, at least for the vast majority of commercial use
| cases
| philwelch wrote:
| Stairs.
| adius wrote:
| In this interview, Robert Playter actually says, that the new
| electronic Atlas is stronger than the old hydraulic one:
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/atlas-humanoid-robot-ceo-interview
| guugugu wrote:
| Their press release actually says electric atlas is more
| powerful. Though I wonder if that's higher peak torque, and not
| so much explosive power required for jumps. A commercial robot
| doesn't need to do parkour.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| In that case the question is why did they use hydraulics in
| the first place.
| klowrey wrote:
| Static holds. Once you pressurize the cylinder to make it
| move to a certain position, it can hold that position
| without using more energy.
|
| This makes sense for quasi-static systems but obviously is
| a limiting factor for dynamic robots.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I still can't search the word "hydroaccumunoid" on Google, that
| appeared once in one of their promo reels, and still am
| wondering if the word was literal corporate secret.
| semireg wrote:
| Love how they applied first principles to standing up. Can't wait
| to see how the robot deals with "disarm human."
|
| Spoiler alert: dis-arm.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| "Atlas, please deliver this to John."
|
| "Understood, now de-livering John."
| trollerator23 wrote:
| Why, like this of course:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYsulVXpgYg
| dylan604 wrote:
| Non-sequiter, but the 80s era Dallas skyline is a fun
| throwback
| russdill wrote:
| Oh, you mean this gate key?
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzbT0Q2jh_w
| hentrep wrote:
| Maybe it's just the lighting, but this look like CGI to me.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Would you bet any money on this?
|
| Boston Dynamics is not run by bozos, they have a pretty
| consistent track record of showing the real stuff.
| hentrep wrote:
| No, I wouldn't. And I appreciate the Boston Dynamics track
| record. That said, they do have a reputation for viral video
| releases. Curiously, they usually show some sort of human
| interaction with their new robots, but maybe too early here?
| Particularly loved the video of the engineer shoving the
| robot as it negotiated an obstacle course.
|
| Would you bet money that it isn't CGI? The fact that we are
| asking these questions is just as terrifying and impressive
| as the malicious potential of the robot itself. Wild days
| we're living in!
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Yes I am sure this is not CGI.
|
| I would bet.
|
| Their marketing style is built around viral Youtube video
| showing their prototypes being impressive or simply
| entertaining. Including when the fails.
|
| They got a lot of recognition and attention thanks to this,
| I would not blame them, I prefer this to sterilized
| marketing we're seeing most of the time.
| Karellen wrote:
| Boston Dynamics: Hey everyone, we're really excited to show you
| the great progress we are making in our attempts to re-create the
| Torment Nexus, from the classic cautionary sci-fi novel _Don 't
| Create The Torment Nexus_.
|
| Too many responses: Oh, wow, it's so creepy, just like the book!
| Lol. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it won't turn out as bad as DCTTN.
| ;-) Best just get on with my day and mostly forget about it
| then...
|
| (With apologies to Alex Blechman)
| solardev wrote:
| OK well, guess I ain't sleeping this week.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I am much more excited to see the progress of what Boston
| Dynamics is doing than by the next iteration of AI Chat.
|
| Of course this is not directly comparable, but I think robotics
| is harder and more less open to brute force approaches.
| p1esk wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the next iteration of "AI chat" (multimodal
| generative models) will enable the next iteration of robotics.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Would you bet on that?
| andsoitis wrote:
| Robots can also _learn_ about their environment and the results
| of their interactions in a direct way. Embodied learning and
| competence, if you will.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Nothing to worry about here.
| andsoitis wrote:
| At least you can hear it coming.
| cess11 wrote:
| The cyberpunk authors warned us. We should have listened.
| realce wrote:
| But money!
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| just in time for the civil war :)
|
| Geoffrey Hinton suggested that by 2030 the US military wants 50%
| robot
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| No expensive VA payouts for robots
| FpUser wrote:
| OMG. When he got hydraulic lines raptured or severed his foot I
| felt like I was watching human being hurt. Insane.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Quite scary, but can't hold a candle to this one ;)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3RIHnK0_NE
| eddieroger wrote:
| Using my human brain, I can't tell if this is real or not. One
| day the robots are going to watch this video and decide they've
| had enough, and that's how we all end, joke video or not. I
| really do hope it's a joke, but there's not enough money in the
| world for me to start smacking around a robot holding a live
| firearm.
| jlv2 wrote:
| That link is CGI.
| mklarmann wrote:
| I guess the big news is, that it runs on batteries
| aap_ wrote:
| Recently got a tour through boston dynamics, but mostly saw the
| spot department, the atlas department was off limits. I guess
| this was the reason then :) very cool
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Boston Dynamics Retires Its Legendary Humanoid Robot_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40063766
| p1mrx wrote:
| > a [still looking for a collective noun for humanoid robots] of
| Atlases
|
| a logic of Atlases?
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Sorry for the non technical, but the comments in that YouTube
| video have significant LOL value.
| luckyou wrote:
| As usual, science fiction predicted everything exactly the
| opposite. It was thought that robots would handle hard physical
| labor while humans would engage in creative work...
| relaxing wrote:
| Good, the hydraulic version sucked ass. Jerky, unpredictable
| power delivery, when it wasn't broken. Was such a pain to model
| and design kinematics around.
| big_whack wrote:
| Were you working on that at BD? Who is designing kinematics
| around Atlas? I understood it to have no users.
| benjijay wrote:
| That first video of the bot standing from the floor and turning
| towards the camera one joint at a time does something strange to
| the uncanny valley horror movie part of my brain.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Well I think it's ironically mimicking The Exorcist or one of
| those movies so makes sense.
| WASDx wrote:
| It looks like CGI to me, the way to camera moves together with
| the depth of field and that things appear too shiny. They don't
| state anything about it so I don't know what to believe.
| porphyra wrote:
| Funny how the ubiquity of AI generated artwork plus the
| shitty quality of phone videos has made people to think that
| "high quality + depth of field = fake".
|
| However if you look closely the robot does have scuffs and
| scratches on it so I think it's real.
| lancesells wrote:
| I think it's real, but any good texture artist would
| include scuffs and scratches on the model.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Reminds me to how high framerate made (makes?) people think
| "Soap Opera", even though it's technically higher quality.
| porphyra wrote:
| Yeah lol I love all things that deliver more information
| to my eyes like higher resolution and framerate so I
| dislike it when people complain about high frame rate.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I thought so too. The movement seems a little slowed down too
| and maybe too smooth.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| An incredible testament to Boston Dynamics Engineering that
| commentators think it's CGI. I'm sure it's real because BD
| never releases CGI and this looked real to me.
| barrenko wrote:
| Video games should have prepared you to better detect CGI.
| gmuslera wrote:
| The future T series will move much better, you won't have a
| reason to be scared about.
| pbar wrote:
| Ah, quick and painless then
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Depends if you have any useful info to them. Just a tip:
| they can sense your heartbeat and know when you are lying
| snewman wrote:
| Yes, very strong T-1000 vibes - the way it keeps reversing
| "front" and "back" almost feels like a deliberate reference to
| that moment in Terminator 2.
| kevindamm wrote:
| It would be useful to have a robot made of that mimetic
| polyalloy though...
| ein0p wrote:
| Exactly what i was going to write as well. I think that's the
| reaction they were aiming for.
| ragebol wrote:
| Was thinking if The Ring, but might be due to the head,
| straight after
| peppertree wrote:
| They have out-sci-fied any sci-fi robots I have ever seen.
| rcarmo wrote:
| It's as if Pixar's Luxo was all grown up.
| hinkley wrote:
| If Pixar did horror movies.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Luxo Jr got jacked.
| kfarr wrote:
| Yeah that head design doesn't help things
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| At first look, it reminded me of the "Supervisor" robots from
| "Budget Cuts":
|
| https://budget-cuts.fandom.com/wiki/Supervisor
| pavon wrote:
| The full-face circular screen also reminded me of the robot
| from the Lost in Space 2018 remake.
|
| https://www.avforums.com/reviews/lost-in-space-
| season-1-tv-s...
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Always!
|
| It looks amazing in the video.. But of course Boston Dynamics
| chose the _most disturbing_ way of demonstrating its movement
| capabilities, as usual.
|
| I swear they do it on purpose at this point. Good lord! Put
| some googly eyes on these things at least.
| sitkack wrote:
| Funny, because Data (from Star Trek) mentions that his joints
| can move like that but he refrains because it disturbs humans.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I am really confused by their intentions with this video. Are
| they trying to freak us out? If so, succeeded!
|
| But I would have thought they'd rather not have us experience
| atlas as some kind of freakish terminator mixed with the girl
| from the ring.
| Solvency wrote:
| because boston dynamics is a govt psyop whose sole purpose as
| a company is to familiarize society with seeing robots before
| for the military & police industrial complex uses them to
| control us
| FabHK wrote:
| We've come a long way from the 2015 DARPA Challenge, where the
| robots succeeded only in falling down:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0TaYhjpOfo
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge
| FabHK wrote:
| The progress since the 2015 DARPA challenge (where robots
| succeeded mostly in falling down) is impressive. Less than a
| decade!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0TaYhjpOfo
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge
| aidenn0 wrote:
| looks like a game of qwop[1]
|
| 1: http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html
| ericfrenkiel wrote:
| I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
|
| Progress in robotics is beginning to look non-linear and it will
| have only positive impact on the world.
|
| Skynet won't be humanoid terminators. Or even drones. The real
| threat of AI is if/when it will be applied to the field of
| virology.
| modeless wrote:
| Does anyone else think the joints seem stiffer than the hydraulic
| version? The head and torso are receiving a lot of shock forces
| with each step. That seems like a downgrade from the previous
| one.
|
| It clearly has a much larger range of motion and if it is also
| stronger as claimed then I can't wait for the acrobatics videos
| that are surely coming.
|
| But I think the most exciting thing is that it has hands from the
| start. Atlas didn't have hands for most of its existence and so
| couldn't do much in the way of useful tasks. I think controlling
| hands is actually much harder than walking or doing backflips.
| Hopefully Boston Dynamics will be able to make this version
| useful.
| rimeice wrote:
| Some c3po vibes at the end there for sure.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I'd assume this is just a software problem. As long as we are
| talking about the stiffness of the joints and not the limbs I
| see no reason to not be able so simulate it.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Electric motors dont have a lot of "give", like hydraulics do.
| But yes force-torque controllers can be tuned to be squishier.
| Someday I think electric motors will be the muscles and we'll
| have some kind of elastic tendons. For energy efficiency, it
| seems obvious to harness impact energy in a mechanical spring
| system, as nature does.
|
| Or just use wheels / a wheel. This whole humanoid thing strikes
| me as an addiction to old sci Fi stories.
| klowrey wrote:
| Hydraulics shouldn't have any give, as the working fluid is
| considered "incompressible". Of course in the real world the
| tubing can expand slightly and there are friction losses, but
| the reason they went with hydraulics in the first place is
| they can set a position and not have to use more energy to
| hold it there (since the cylinders are pressurized).
|
| If the gear ratio on these motors is high, then there can
| only be faked compliance in the tuned force-torque
| controllers you mentioned. MIT's little cheetah robot, on the
| other hand, deliberately used low-gear ratios to keep things
| naturally squishy if needed. This is the way to go; putting
| elastic tendons or spring elements seems like a good idea but
| then you can't actually model the non-linearity well (the 1st
| order motor becomes a 2nd or higher order system).
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Ah, thank you. I understand
| fragmede wrote:
| It's not because of science fiction stories, it's because
| things designed for human to use, is designed for a humanoid
| form factor. If you want to accomplish a task, it's going to
| be reflected by that machine. Eg a conveyor belt doesn't look
| like a human. But if you want swap a robot where a human used
| to be, it's far easier if that robot is humanoid and has the
| same approximate capabilities. Thus, we have humanoid robots.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Can someone point out where "powered rollerskates" are
| strictly worse than legs in civilized urban human
| environments, to an extent that a few extra hundred billion
| dollars of R&D are warranted? The "approximate
| capabilities" of a human are: moving around, and picking
| things up / fine manipulation. Wheels + arms does that just
| fine, and eliminates a lot of power, complexity, fragility.
| And it also potentially adds.
|
| This is one of those 80/20 things that is just glaringly
| obvious. Like lvl 5 autonomous cars vs lvl 3-4.
| lanternfish wrote:
| The obvious answer is stairs. It seems like right now
| Spot is getting the most use as a highly mobile camera
| platform for automated inspection in industrial
| environments. Many of these have a lot of stairs.
| Animats wrote:
| It doesn't work that way.
|
| Hydraulic systems have very little "give", unless you put a
| hydraulic accumulator (an air tank with a fluid/air barrier)
| in the system. Electric motors have plenty of "give". Forcing
| a motor to turn backwards won't hurt it. The gear train is
| usually the weak point. As motors and controllers have
| improved, robot gear reduction ratios have decreased, which
| reduces the load on the gear train and lets the motor absorb
| shock loads. Direct drive robots eliminate the gear train
| entirely. Here's a nice one.[1] "You cannot strip the teeth
| of a magnetic field" - General Electric electric locomotive
| rep, around 1900.
|
| With modern motors, you can get huge torque with light
| weight, and cooling becomes the limitation. Schaft used
| water-cooled motors in their direct-drive robot. Google
| bought Schaft, ran them into the ground and killed them.
|
| [1] https://shop.directdrive.com/products/diablo-world-s-
| first-d...
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I stand corrected! Thank you.
|
| I'm still mostly convinced that harvesting the energy and
| re-using it ala elastic tendons is a decently good idea.
| But probably far too complex.
| Animats wrote:
| It's mostly for distance running. Humans get about 70% of
| energy back in running. Cheetahs, about 90%.
|
| Variable compliance muscles are desirable, but hard to
| do. A pneumatic cylinder with adjustable pressure on both
| sides will do it, and Festo builds a lot of that for
| industrial automation. Two opposed springs pulled on by
| two positional actuators will do it, but that's kind of
| bulky. There's a hack called a "series elastic actuator",
| which is a rigid positional actuator with a stiff spring
| on the end. When it gets some pushback, the spring
| compresses, and the motor frantically tries to move the
| positional actuator before the spring bottoms out. This
| allows you to simulate a spring with off the shelf screw
| jacks.
|
| Those new direct-drive motors are a good solution.
| Direct-drive pancake motors have been around for a while,
| but they used to be about a foot across. Now they're
| smaller. Probably a spinoff of drone motor technology.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Wheels are useless in this world. If you've ever tried using
| a pushchair or a wheelchair on much of the planet, built
| environment or no, you'll find wheels are _useless_.
| mandibles wrote:
| NYPD probably has an order for 10k of these things, for your
| protection of course.
| ericfrenkiel wrote:
| I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
|
| Progress in robotics is beginning to look non-linear and it will
| have only positive impact on the world.
|
| Skynet won't be humanoid terminators. Or even drones. The real
| threat of AI is if/when it will be applied to the field of
| virology.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Only positive? What a fascinating optimism you have.
|
| There are a sizable percentage of people out there that would
| love to use this for subjugation and control. Will we let them
| win?
| thrwaway1337 wrote:
| _I 'm recording this, because this could be the last thing I'll
| ever say_
|
| _The city I once knew as home is teetering on the edge of
| radioactive oblivion_
|
| _A three-hundred thousand degree baptism by nuclear fire_
|
| _I 'm not sorry, we had it coming_
|
| _A surge of white-hot atonement will be our wake-up call_
|
| _Hope for our future is now a stillborn dream_
|
| _The bombs begin to fall and I 'm rushing to meet my love_
|
| _Please, remember me_
|
| _There is no more_
| dang wrote:
| Related links (from merged threads):
|
| _Farewell to HD Atlas_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EM5_VFlt8
|
| _Boston Dynamics retires its legendary humanoid robot_
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/boston-dynamics-atlas-retires
|
| _All New Atlas_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ECwExc-_M
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I would love to see how well it does the simple job of sweeping
| and cleaning floors with a broom and dust pan. This is such a
| wicked and non-trivial task that it would be a good indicator of
| overall progress.
| nirav72 wrote:
| Just 10 years ago, bi-pedal humanoid robots could barely walk
| untethered. If they could, like the Honda robot - even then
| they had limited mobility. So this is quite the progress. But
| yeah, it will be interesting to see if they can do mundane
| chores that require very little effort by humans.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Throwing more compute at MPPI controllers has been oddly
| successful, it'll just get more accurate over time with
| increasing samples on ever faster hardware.
| Tiereven wrote:
| As we enter an era of wide scale robotic deployment, we need to
| think long and hard about what the maintenance bottleneck will
| look like. We need to advocate now for reliable and open
| upgrades, replacement parts, service documentation, and
| diagnostics.
|
| Right to repair will be even more important for this technology
| than autos or general computing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Oregon model: https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/28/oregon-
| governor-kotek...
|
| https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/Publ...
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Right to repair will be even more important for this
| technology than autos or general computing.
|
| It's going to be kneecapped far worse than phones or tractors.
| A general purpose humanoid robot is orders of magnitude more
| complex than a simple gps farming tractor or a cheap android
| phone.
|
| Companies will absolutely NOT want to give up that moat after
| developing such tech for 10-20 years.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm not sure it has ever been about complexity or cost.
|
| Right now no regular user has the technical ability to fiddle
| with a phone's laminated screen glued to a touch matrix
| paired with a fingerprint sensor and a camera, so we're
| alreay past the complexity threshold.
|
| But we could still reuse a screen block from phone A on phone
| B, except that's been forbidden by technical measures
| specially added to prevent it.
|
| The same way we could probably replace a whole leg with
| another from a robot from the same series, except it will be
| DRMed to death.
|
| We'll have to eternally push for regulation I think,
| companies will always try their best to fuck with
| repairability.
| serf wrote:
| It's absolutely about complexity. Complexity always allows
| companies to explain why they should be the only hands that
| touch something, lest a laymen fumbles it.
| chefandy wrote:
| That's different. Most PR justification of anti-consumer
| behavior deliberately avoids what the topic is _really_
| about to control public perception... While complexity is
| what the PR campaign is about, it 's still _really_ about
| control and artificially creating new revenue streams.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Could you materially affect a half-century old internal
| combustion engine? Sure. Can you do so after decades of
| miniaturization/optimization, to make it as efficient as
| they are today?
|
| Mobiles are similar, they are filled to the brim with
| various electronics, connected together into a huge mash.
| _why_ would you even expect to fix that?
| rozap wrote:
| This is a bad analogy because the hardware in engines of
| today is actually not that different or hard to work on
| fundamentally, but manufacturers do intentionally lock
| down software to make diagnostics very tricky. They
| became more efficient and complex, but people still hack
| on even the most modern engines, usually by tossing the
| OEM software.
|
| Aftermarket ECUs (even the open source ones like rusEFI
| and speeduino) show that you can actually do the stuff
| required to make modern engines go vroom, but
| manufacturers have no desire to make that process easy
| out of the box.
| Teever wrote:
| I agree with this totally but it's a losing game.
|
| The second someone releases a general purpose humanoid robot
| that is capable of self replication but is locked out from
| doing so with DRM the race will be on to break that DRM.
|
| The self replicating humanoid robot will be a supreme game
| changer. It's a genie in the bottle that lets you wish for
| more wishes.
| fragmede wrote:
| Never mind right to repair, of all the advancements,
| maintaining the new machines has always been the obvious new
| job that gets created. We created the loom and fired everybody?
| Well now there's a loom engineer job waiting for (some) of you.
| What happens to society when, instead of having a robot-fixing
| job, the robots can fix themselves? AGI is a distraction; much
| like the Turing test turned out to be the wrong test. It's not
| the problem of how can I fix the one robot I've taken out a
| second mortgage to buy that I'm worried about, it's when can I
| buy _two_ robots and they can fix each other that I 'm worried
| about. Because then there is no new job being created.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Uh, what evidence do you have of this "wide scale robotic
| deployment"? More humanoid robots have been announced lately
| but that is all I know of.
|
| Humanoid robots have many, many challenges to deployment.
| Especially, creating a machine that people can safely operate
| near is extremely challenging. The amount of intelligence
| person uses to not bump another person is very under rated.
| robinhoode wrote:
| It's a hypothetical deployment but it's reasonable to expect.
| These robots will be very valuable, and everyone will want
| one. It's not going to become a housemaid in a few years. But
| will they be making car parts? Almost certainly. Moravec's
| paradox is still in play, but advancement in AI chips will
| slowly overcome it.
| Intralexical wrote:
| > But will they be making car parts? Almost certainly.
|
| What can humanoid robots making car parts do, that the
| already-existing and already widely deployed robots making
| car parts can't?
| wepple wrote:
| Re-tool an entire factory overnight in response to a
| change in design of the car, or in fact to produce
| airplanes instead
| ok_dad wrote:
| I don't think you understand how hard it is to retool and
| rearrange a factory.
| wepple wrote:
| I'm saying if you have a collection of humanoids and
| general purpose tooling, you can adapt much faster.
|
| I don't literally mean retool a conventional production
| line in one night
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Literally standing in front of a proprietary Fanuc industrial
| 6-axis arm waiting for Roboguide at the moment... this is
| already a wide scale industry and shows low probability to
| trend towards open and repairable technology.
|
| There have been some efforts for vendor-agnostic robot software
| like RoboDK and other warehouse execution systems, but the
| default is proprietary vendor software.
|
| It would be nice for society if this were true, but we'd need
| someone to exist whose complementary technology was robotics
| who found it worth commoditizing the entire ecosystem against
| their will. Or regulators who weren't entirely beholden to
| industry lobbyists.
| chasd00 wrote:
| doesn't it make more sense to have robots like these drive cars?
| Then any car, even an old clunker, can be a "self-driving car".
|
| You could offload the heavy processing to a larger computer in
| the back seat. Then even the robots get to suffer with backseat
| drivers :)
| lvl102 wrote:
| I am so glad Masayoshi sold BD to Hyundai so Elon didn't get his
| hands on them. They can easily go public for $10B.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Are there accessible and/or remote kill switches on these?
| smeej wrote:
| The Doctor Who fan in me is just glad it sounds like a Cyberman
| when it walks.
| GregDavidson wrote:
| I'm more interested in how they're automating the manufacturing
| of their robots. Robots making robots driving the learning curve.
| koko-blat wrote:
| But Amnon has a better solution...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJTf4JhGSsI
| e12e wrote:
| > This journey will start with Hyundai
|
| Wonder if that includes weapon systems?
|
| https://en.hyundai-wia.com/business/defense_business.asp
|
| > With its cutting-edge unmanned and automated weapons systems,
| Hyundai WIA upgraded the level of defense industry system.
| Ralfp wrote:
| In late 2022 they made a pledge together with few other
| companies to don't weaponize their robots tech:
|
| https://www.axios.com/2022/10/06/boston-dynamics-pledges-wea...
| chatmasta wrote:
| If a humanoid robot can assemble a car, it can probably assemble
| another humanoid robot...
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