That dog thing is way creepy.
Do You Love Me? [video]
231–240 of 478 posts
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The military has been the main funder, but as of late they've been purchased by non-military groups and have suggested their products will have use in warehousing and package delivery. I am being optimistic to hope they wouldn't see military use, but I think it'd worth discussing in any case.
> What happens in 20+ years when surplus ones are handed out like MRAPs to careless police departments?
Good question indeed.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#233So 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…
> We had a mountain side in Norway that was near collapsing and all the residents below it were evacuated every two weeks. The geologists wanted to use dynamite to dislodge it, but it was too dangerous for humans. In the future we might send a versatile robot like Spot up in a drone and have him plant the explosives. If he blows up in the process that would obviously suck, but still fairly cheap for what he would have accomplished.
Why not just drop a bomb from an airplane? That's already pretty well established technology. I'm pretty sure I've read about various places throwing hand grenades or dynamite from helicopters by hand to do that. Or let the nearest friendly air force drop a few of their lightest bombs on it for practice.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
This was my first thought as well. Watching them dance, I was thinking, non-jokingly “if they can do this now, what happens when these robots are dancing faster than the human eye can see?”
The Rat Thing has stopped. Which they never do. It's part of their mystery that you never get to see them, they move so fast. No one knows what they look like.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#235If I didn't know who Boston Dynamics was, I would have said that this is just CGI. The animations look so fake. I think the issue is that they're aggressively smoothing the motion since mechanical systems don't have the ability to accelerate & jerk as fast as biological systems. Cheap mocap animation has the same problem because the frame rate of the capture system is too low. They interpolate between captured keyfra…
> The animations look so fake. Let’s talk about why it looks fake. I think it comes from the use of hydraulics. Biological muscle is way less linear (it works more like a second-order control system, where things often overshoot their target before dampening). But one part of it may also be algorithmic: the robot’s Kalman filter (?) may correct for errors from sensor fusion much faster than a human would. I would lov…
It can't just be hydraulics though, because to me the most telling moments that look fake are when the robots are jumping - they have too much hang time/too much uniform velocity for the relatively small amount of vertical distance they get. In particular, see the initial jump at 15 secs in the video. It's like the robot is floating instead of jumping.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#236that video hits my uncanny valley
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really scary. Whenever I see the latest Boston Dynamics video, I’m always thinking ‘and now imagine it’s hunting you’.
Meh. If someone wants to "hunt" you with a robot they can already do so with a UAV (think MQ-1 Predator, not an off-the-shelf quadrocopter). It is an already existing true and tested technology. Large governments around the world already maintain literal armies to maintain them and efficiently employ them to kill people. The fact that that weapon is not aimed at you or me is merely a political decision. With legged r…
Bombs cause infinitely bigger international uproars for good reasons.
Robot assassins that cannot die change the calculus. Governments don't have to risk losing their human assets in order to take out a target. They can just send out a 4-legged drone to prick them with polonium and call it a day.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#238I 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.
What makes you think benefits won’t spread? We’re on track to producing vaccines by the billions, the biggest mobilization and logistical effort in the history of mankind. Good luck buying a vaccine and cutting the line, even if you have $10k to spare.
I think the risk that the wealthiest few will rule the world is largely misplaced and overblown. We’ve lifted millions out of poverty and made tremendous progress in last few decades. And continue to do so. Yes, inequality has grown and accelerated due to the pandemic (Russell 2000 vs S&P500, retail is screwed but there is nothing we can do about it besides giving relief). We need to fix tax laws and corporate loop holes, not instituting marxism in our society.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most of their robots are more research than product, except maybe most recent models like spot. It's first and foremost an amazing engineering for the sake of engineering.
BD is basic research. Figuring out what can be done and what the potential applications are. I’m surprised BD has gone through so many sales. Whoever owns them in the end is going to make a ton of money I reckon.
In the case of BD, the question seems to be what exactly is the end. Making walking robots is an incredible feet of engineering but one that doesn't seem to solve an actual industrial problem.
For a lot of use, as a mean of locomotion, they are fighting not only tracks but also flying now that multicopters are ubiquitous. Is there still a market for them? Cool research anyway.
Re: Do You Love Me? [video]
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What makes you think benefits won’t spread? We’re on track to producing vaccines by the billions, the biggest mobilization and logistical effort in the history of mankind. Good luck buying a vaccine and cutting the line, even if you have $10k to spare. I think the risk that the wealthiest few will rule the world is largely misplaced and overblown. We’ve lifted millions out of poverty and made tremendous progress in l…
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