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How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#31

Post by anonytrary »

BotJunkie wrote: post #11
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

I wrote the article; thanks for this info. Since your sister has posted this publicly on her Twitter account, I'll happily add her name to our article if I can get in touch with her/BD to confirm. [Edited to add that we'll contact her before doing so.]

Wow this is extremely wholesome and coincidental. Glad to see the artists are going to be getting the credit they deserve, pretty crazy to see this transpire over HN comments!

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#32

Post by llamataboot »

aresant wrote: post #9
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

Often the people who are doing the actual PR work have no idea about the story details and piece stuff together third party I would encourage her to reach out to the marketing/PR department and have a conversation avail herself for interviews etc. I would imagine that a young woman doing something this dynamic in a relatively dry field would actually be a PR dream.

And i imagine there were lots of folks involved in all phases of doing this at Bostons Dynamics that consciously or unconsciously thought of her as just another hired person to promote their technical brilliance.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#34

Post by systemvoltage »

Shared404 wrote: post #8
cbozeman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.

> or for the benefit of mankind. Unfortunately, I don't know that I can trust any of the organizations that would have the budget to control enough of these robots to make a difference in any direction. Which is sad to me, as I love this from a technological perspective and looking at a best case scenario.

Humanity's goal should be to build AGI and let robots take over - we're doing it, willingly or unwillingly. No need to have blobs of meat hanging around. Intelligence itself is human thing. Whether it needs to have a body / physical metabolic processes to run by injesting cheetos all day, is totally absurd. Evolutionary processes have given us so much unnecessary baggage. Pure abstract intelligence is pretty damn human. There is already Neuralink and other hybird tech going on. I believe humans will willingly give up physical bodies in the long term (millenia scale).

This is bound to happen. There is no way it wouldn't I believe, ofcourse in short term, we gotta worry about stuff like politics, solving hunger and world peace.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#35

Post by Technically »

wrnr wrote: post #22
aj7 wrote: post #15

Awful interview. Almost nothing of interest revealed.

Yea I still don't know what the input level is for the robots, did they use some sort of dance notation[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation

I think it's safe to say they don't give a shit about tradition.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#36

Post by totetsu »

jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

Can't be every day she gets to choreograph for a quadruped.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#38

Post by b112 »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #30
Shared404 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or for the benefit of mankind. Unfortunately, I don't know that I can trust any of the organizations that would have the budget to control enough of these robots to make a difference in any direction. Which is sad to me, as I love this from a technological perspective and looking at a best case scenario.

For the price of one of those robots you can hire a minivan full of armed goons that will do exactly as you tell them todo with less supervision.

During development, and initial per-unit sales? Sure.

Once mass produced, not even close.

Think of:

- training costs (training grunts isn't 100% free) - pay as soldiers wait to go on missions - and here's the BIG one, medical care - and lastly?

PR! PR, no more "soldiers coming home in body bags". Why, you can fight any war you want, and no one will get upset about your soldiers dying. Yet beyond that?

How do you negotiate with one of these things? How do you trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to them, and blowing them up?

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#39

Post by rendall »

fctorial wrote: post #26
wrnr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I still don't know what the input level is for the robots, did they use some sort of dance notation[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation

Probably limb positions at discreet instances in time, and bots know how to move from one position to another.

There are some hints with this excerpt:

"Atlas’ current dance performance uses a mixture of what we like to call reflexive control, which is a combination of reacting to forces, online and offline trajectory optimization, and model predictive control. We leverage these techniques because they’re a reliable way of unlocking really high performance stuff, and we understand how to wield these tools really well. We haven’t found the end of the road in terms of what we can do with them"

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#40

Post by wiz21c »

jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

Very good sense of humor indeed. I caught the "do you love me" question instantaneously and wondered who got that very good idea. As always, the good idea didn't came from the PR department :-)
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