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Do You Love Me? [video]

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Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#221

Post by hmottestad »

hmottestad wrote: post #220
renewiltord wrote: post #194

So what's the deal with these guys? Obviously their tech is pretty cool since I remember the control and feedback problem for bipedal bots being described as really hard when I was growing up. Obviously their consumer marketing is great since everyone looks at these things and loves them. But they don't have a product. What's the problem? My guesses: * No one really needs this shit * They have a control/feedback prob…

They are still trying to figure out their market. They are essentially selling a product the world isn’t quite ready for. If it was dirt cheap I would buy one, attach a vacuum to it and have it clean my place. But they are super expensive, so fat chance of that. Spot, the yellow dog, seems to be targeted at the notion of human safety. Think something like a building demo job gone wrong, send in the robot to pull out…

Found a relevant link: https://akerbp.com/exploring-the-potential-of-robotics-in-th...

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#222

Post by reportingsjr »

joe_the_user wrote: post #104
bozzcl wrote: post #87

I love how there were people in the upper floor just walking by without even looking. "Oh, the robots are dancing again." In between the advances in "holographic" displays (not quite as sci-fi as we would want, but they are progressing), commercial space flight, cybernetic prosthetics, CRISPR and this... we are living in the future. It's amazing. It makes me a little sad more people are not aware of the ridiculously…

My sister used live next to the Boston Dynamics facility in Waltham. She'd walk her on the nearby river path and generally disliked the way Boston Dynamics would periodically take over the path and keep her from using. Part of the reason the robots evoke little excitement is because after a short look, you can realize they're just large puppets. We've had dancing puppets like Walt Disney's Small World. The reason Bos…

> you can realize they're just large puppets. We've had dancing puppets like Walt Disney's Small World.

This is hugely understating just how difficult it is for a biped/quadruped robot to move around in the world without continuously falling, getting stuck, etc. Like seriously, seriously underestimates it.

Watch this video to see spot walk over some terrain that even people struggle with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7s1sr4JdlI

Doing it without a tether for a reasonable timeframe (30+ minutes) is insane! Disney animatronics don't even come close to the complexity of these robots (even though what Disney has done is for sure impressive).

> robots still generally can't interact with humans or the environment in an unstructured way.

I think this is pretty short sighted, and you're going to have your mind changed quite rapidly in the next couple of years. This style of robot has definitely hit a threshold of price and usefulness, not unlike what happened for drones just ten years ago.

I could be wrong, but I hope I'm not! It really feels like things are moving at a crazy speed in the robotics field right now.

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#224

Post by pjc50 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #189
neilpanchal wrote: post #106

I am a huge fan of spartan-like no-bullshit brutalist approach towards their marketing/PR: - No studio setup, just their lab - No artificial lighting - No fucks given about hiding the mess - Robots going through surgery in the background - Song is classy af IMO - Can see the camera man - Can see the engineers/employees - Framing/cinematography isn't as polished (this is a feature, not a bug) - Chipped paint, beaten u…

It’s all very cool looking. However when I watched this video my first thought was “my god they’re going to bring the drone wars to the ground.” I am a robotics engineer and have been focused on robotics my whole life. I worked at Google X on a robotics team with some great ex-Boston Dynamics people, and some of my friends have since gone to work for them. So I do understand what they have achieved. It’s fantastic fr…

I was under the impression that the military were the main funders and intended clients; the robo mule in particular for offloading some of the increasingly heavy tech and supplies for infantry.

What happens in 20+ years when surplus ones are handed out like MRAPs to careless police departments?

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#225

Post by cybertronic »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #65

So what's the main barrier to using these industrially? Is it reliability? Did this video a zillion takes? Is it manufacturing? Maybe it's hard to scale them up? Is it battery life? Maybe it can power itself for just a few minutes? Is it object manipulation or sensing/world understanding? Maybe it can't apply the right forces to a soft thing or a flexible thing or know what it can step on vs over or what will move or…

Entertainment, sport (remember the robocup?), and police of course

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#226

Post by joe_the_user »

reportingsjr wrote: post #222
joe_the_user wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister used live next to the Boston Dynamics facility in Waltham. She'd walk her on the nearby river path and generally disliked the way Boston Dynamics would periodically take over the path and keep her from using. Part of the reason the robots evoke little excitement is because after a short look, you can realize they're just large puppets. We've had dancing puppets like Walt Disney's Small World. The reason Bos…

> you can realize they're just large puppets. We've had dancing puppets like Walt Disney's Small World. This is hugely understating just how difficult it is for a biped/quadruped robot to move around in the world without continuously falling, getting stuck, etc. Like seriously, seriously underestimates it. Watch this video to see spot walk over some terrain that even people struggle with: https://www.youtube.com/watc…

>> robots still generally can't interact with humans or the environment in an unstructured way.

> I think this is pretty short sighted, and you're going to have your mind changed quite rapidly in the next couple of years.

Oh, I'd love to see that change. That would be a change in reality, not perception. It wouldn't force me to change my belief that as things stand now, walking have been an ongoing failure and disappointment.. See:

Edit: Also, I should admit I'm discounting the serious engineering challenge of just getting robots to walk on uneven ground by itself. Doing seeming simple stuff like has where the progress of idk 30 years has appeared. But anything more than those ultra-simple things really wasn't happened. I'd still stick with 90% of impressive is puppeting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Robotics_Challenge

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#227

Post by pjc50 »

bozzcl wrote: post #87

I love how there were people in the upper floor just walking by without even looking. "Oh, the robots are dancing again." In between the advances in "holographic" displays (not quite as sci-fi as we would want, but they are progressing), commercial space flight, cybernetic prosthetics, CRISPR and this... we are living in the future. It's amazing. It makes me a little sad more people are not aware of the ridiculously…

The great tech leaps of the mid20th century resulted in huge material improvements for huge numbers of people. The worry is that the benefits will no longer spread. And the robots in particular have a century of being hollywood villains to overcome.

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#229

Post by mkl »

Nicksil wrote: post #199
Kiro wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope it takes over the top spot on Youtube. It won't because for non-techies it's just a random video without any significance. I tried showing it to my girlfriend twice and she was extremely unimpressed and uninterested.

> It won't because for non-techies it's just a random video without any significance. What a bizarre thing to say. Surely "non-techies" are able to extract some value from the video. > I tried showing it to my girlfriend twice and she was extremely unimpressed and uninterested. Oh, well, if your girlfriend was unimpressed and uninterested, we'll just extrapolate from that and presume the same for everyone else (at le…

>> It won't because for non-techies it's just a random video without any significance.

> What a bizarre thing to say. Surely "non-techies" are able to extract some value from the video.

Movies and TV have stolen most of that value and wonder by showing fake robots moving like this for years. My thought watching the video was "this looks like CGI", not because I think it is CGI (or the lighting or background or anything), but because the only robots I have seen move that fluidly have been fake computer animated ones. Because I believe it's not CGI, I was amazed, but that takes a little domain knowledge.

I suspect a lot of people already think robots moving this well are fairly normal, and not impressive.

Re: Do You Love Me? [video]

#230

Post by 1f60c »

imglorp wrote: post #107
roughly wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that if anyone except BD put out this video I’d bin it as fake immediately. I still have a hard time saying I believe it - it feels like such a jump from where my mental model of their robots was and CGI is so good at this point that it feels easier for this to be a fake than real.

It might help to compare against video with less editing and effects. Several youtubers are playing with Spots and you can get a better idea of what they're really like. Adam Savage: https://youtu.be/-R8wUybrspo?t=2374 Marques Brownlee: https://youtu.be/s6_azdBnAlU?t=249

(A Spot, for those—like me—who didn't know, is the yellow 4-legged robot.)
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