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New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

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Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#81

Post by pchristensen »

huherto wrote: post #80
s3graham wrote: post #42

Wow, really impressive. The ice was amazing (though as someone with bad knees, transferred anthropomorphization makes me cringe). Does anyone know why 4 legs was chosen? 4 seems better than 2 for stabilization, but why not 5, or 6, or 8? Maybe looking like a familiar friendly animal is an end goal?

Probably the 8 leg design was already tried by nature and it was not successful for large animals.

Whether in nature or manufacture, those legs aren't free. Is four more legs worth the energy required to grow/build them, and could the mental processing power necessary to run them be used better somewhere else?

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#82

Post by pchristensen »

sabat wrote: post #79
sabat wrote: post #26

Skynet became self-aware at 2:14am EDT March 28, 2008.

Aw, c'mon. I can't believe people voted me down for this one. No one else thought the 'bot seemed eerily self-aware?

I thought the way its legs moved and the way it stumbled and rebalanced were extremely lifelike. I was wondering how they control it - is it as simple as a remote joystick? Just point in the direction and it figures out how to get there?

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#83

Post by lastone »

ericb wrote: post #29

One thing that struck me was when it was kicked or almost fell, I felt a little bad for it. I can see where the general public might someday award robots rights because we instinctually anthropomorphize them. I felt silly--I "know" it's just software, but what about the rest of the world with the same instincts and no understanding that's it's mindless code?

machines are our slaves, get over it

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#84

Post by mechanical_fish »

jonah wrote: post #51
mattjones wrote: post #24

This excites me. If they become common, people are going to spend a lot of time exploring the world -- an antidote to sitting behind your laptop all day. These things would make great pack animals. When you go hiking, you'll be able to toss your gear into one of these things and have it trot along behind you. You'll be able to take more risks because robots will be able to rescue you from tight places. If you get tir…

My question is why not a real mule? More flexible refueling options, has already been through many iterations, and not nearly as expensive. Seriously.

The price tag is not a bug, it's a feature. What, you think DARPA would pay you millions of dollars to invent a real mule? Buck Rodgers movies didn't have mules!

I will say, though, that compared to the typical military-industrial spendthrift extravaganza, this project looks really worthwhile. Think: powered prosthetics for quadriplegics. Think: remote exploration of Martian mountains. Think: lots of generally applicable algorithms for real-time physics.

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#85

Post by mechanical_fish »

cheponis wrote: post #34

I worked on the original hopping/jumping/running robots at CMU and later MIT with Marc Raibert. I can assure you that everything done was above-board, published, and open. Dr. Raibert is one of those rare scientist/engineer/entrepreneur types who is interested in progress for people. He was asked by DARPA to develop this vehicle, so he wanted to help them out. The Sci-Fi stuff in these comments are, well, crazy.

I've got to say, this just looked like yet another in the line of CMU robot videos -- impressive, but only to someone who actually knows how hard this is -- until the kick. And then the ice-patch sequence, which is just awesome.

Kudos to you and your coworkers. This obviously represents one hell of a lot of patient work.

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#86

Post by carpal »

iamwil wrote: post #74
carpal wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not necessarily. Those devices aren't biped specific- they're specific to thing with grasping mechanisms. Who's to say a quadruped robot can't have 4 feet + 1 or 2 grapsing mechanisms? Or have two front feet that are also capable of grasping?

While you can certainly have a 4 legged robot, 2 armed helping you around the house or a hospital, only using grasping mechanisms to climb the ladder to adjust the satellite dish on the roof, help you with the dishes, or get you out of bed, I think it's important to consider the reaction people have to a robot's form factor given its job. You and I might think it's really cool to have 4 feet and two arms (like a cent…

Good point.

Personally, I'd love to have a robotic centaur helping me around the house.

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#87

Post by dejb »

jonah wrote: post #51
mattjones wrote: post #24

This excites me. If they become common, people are going to spend a lot of time exploring the world -- an antidote to sitting behind your laptop all day. These things would make great pack animals. When you go hiking, you'll be able to toss your gear into one of these things and have it trot along behind you. You'll be able to take more risks because robots will be able to rescue you from tight places. If you get tir…

My question is why not a real mule? More flexible refueling options, has already been through many iterations, and not nearly as expensive. Seriously.

Ever heard the expression - 'Stubborn as a mule'

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#88

Post by Prrometheus »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #84
jonah wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question is why not a real mule? More flexible refueling options, has already been through many iterations, and not nearly as expensive. Seriously.

The price tag is not a bug, it's a feature. What, you think DARPA would pay you millions of dollars to invent a real mule? Buck Rodgers movies didn't have mules! I will say, though, that compared to the typical military-industrial spendthrift extravaganza, this project looks really worthwhile. Think: powered prosthetics for quadriplegics . Think: remote exploration of Martian mountains . Think: lots of generally appl…

>Think: remote exploration of Martian mountains.

Think: Donkey in spacesuit

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#89

Post by motley_fool »

astine wrote: post #57
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, i'm usually against conspiracy theory bullshit myself. using robots on the battlefield is the only subject I get a little spooked over.

Robots on the battlefield doesn't spook me at all. It seems to me to be an improvement over sending people to risk their lives.

This is an overly simplistic and dangerous view of warfare. Increasingly, warfare is not about soldiers being sent to fight each other in some empty battlefield.

The pattern of U.S. wars since WWII has been expeditionary warfare where the U.S. sends its troops to fight with irregular forces, among civilians of other countries.

No war is clean, but this is a particularly evil setup, because the worst that American non-combatants experience is the return of their dead or wounded troops. On the other hand, the host country feels the full horror of war.

So, frankly, I don't care nearly as much about the volunteers who are sent to risk their lives as the civilian non-volunteers who are necessarily and inevitably harmed.

This is not a U.S. specific thing. It's just that as citizens of the top military power, Americans are spared the full horrors of war, yet have the ability to visit those horrors on others.

There is a reason why Europeans are not nearly as accepting of warfare.

Re: New Video of BigDog Quadruped Robot Is So Stunning It's Spooky

#90

Post by motley_fool »

gills wrote: post #77
SwellJoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It seems to me to be an improvement over sending people to risk their lives." So, who are the robots fighting then if not people? I'm just thinking what a frightening thing it would be for an empire builder like GWB to have a conscience-less army of mechanical killers. At least our armed forces generally want to avoid killing innocents. Big Dogs with M50 machine guns don't care about such fine distinctions. So, yes,…

Because maybe, just MAYBE, when we realize our robots are fighting their robots and it's really just an expensive video game, we'll quit fighting and actually sit down and talk. That is, if the robots don't join forces and turn on us first. oops..spelling edit.

Nonsense. People don't sit down and talk when they have less to lose. They negotiate when they have more to lose.

So what will actually happen is that these ultra-tech tools will just further shield voters from the nastiness of war, and allow their leaders to visit horror on those less technologically advanced.

What I'd like to see happen is the creation of some kind of independent news agency that uses UAV and robot technologies to bring back uncensored, uninvited news back from warzones. Of course if this were truly effective, that news agency itself would become a target.

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