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How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

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Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#41

Post by ben_w »

b112 wrote: post #38
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nego…

> How do you trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to them, and blowing them up?

Right now? Regardless of if it’s controlled by remote or by AI, the sensors are probably easier to fool than an in-situ human would be.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#43

Post by grogenaut »

b112 wrote: post #38
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nego…

How does one of these things identify civilians or hold a place like Baghdad? Armies occupy. Those weapons destroy infrastructure and people and not much else.

Or do you use them like drones paying soldiers to run them from a container in Kansas. In which case you have the soldier still.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#44

Post by b112 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #34
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.

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 hum…

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

There will never be world peace, unless humanity is no longer human, or alternately, under the boot of an all encompassing empire ruled by force.

To believe otherwise, is to believe history teaches us nothing, nor our knowledge of human behaviour. To assume that we somehow have a culture which "can do this", that our modern beliefs are "enlightened" enough to allow this, is the ultimate in hubris.

Sure... humanity couldn't do it before, but now? Now, we're just ever so enlightened and perfect enough to enable world peace.

There are only two real ways to enable world peace.

1) Genetically engineer the entire species to become more... social. Kill or prevent any 'old style' human reproducing. End the old species. There are innumerable issues here, including "we're just messing around with what we barely comprehend".

Yet our entire culture is predicated upon how the human brain works, and the human brain works more on genetics, than post-birth learning.

OR

2) Take over the entire planet, killing everyone who disagrees with you, and ensuring that due to the technology involved there can NEVER be a revolution. Further, destroy and hunt down every single person which does not swear fealty ; allow no external empires to form. Ever.

NOTE: I am not happy about this, yet, this is reality. Let me put this another way.

You want world peace? OK! Great!

First, you'll need to end all murders, thefts, all anti-social behaviour. "World peace" is denied because of the genetics that create this behaviour. They're the same problem.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#45

Post by iancmceachern »

cbozeman wrote: post #29
Rebelgecko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you use use it for if you had one?

Goofing off, most likely. I haven't really thought of a use case for the home, although there's literally dozens of them. I actually wonder if it could function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped with work to do so. The thought of attaching a leash to my dog and the leash to Spot while I'm indisposed is actually kind of attractive. I would have to make sure my dog has already do…

I wonder, would the time spent programming and integrating all this be less than just walking the dog? For me, this would defeat the purpose of having my dogs my our life.

Having worked in robotics quit a bit this is a common trap. There are plenty of things that we can think of for a robot to do, but most of them would require more concessions, programming and maintenance time than it takes to just do the task, or hire folks to do it. The areas where the value prop holds up it really works well, but these kind of low value, high complexity applications like walking a dog around the neighborhood without dragging it by it's collar if the dogs knee hurts and it walks slow that day.

A $75k robot arm with legs is not a completed application. We can already buy robots with the needed mobility to do things like walk dogs for far less. This is a classic hammer nail situation. I think this is the issue that BD keeps running into, they have an amazing team, amazing tech, amazing capabilities, but are still searching for that killer high value application. There are over 400k industrial robots sold every year, its a huge market. They sell well because it relatively straightforward to program and integrate them into workcells and factory lines to create value. To program and integrate one of these robots to do something so complex that it would necessitate a BD robot and not a standard industrial robot would be a huge development effort. It just doesn't hold up when we have folks that need work. The cost of one 75k robot plus two person years of engineering labor is 4 or 5 years worth of traditional labor. The value prop just isn't there until our ability to control, program and integrate these complex robots (cobot stuff) gets better.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#46

Post by Firerouge »

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.]

The Boston credits her by name in their article

>> There’s a lot of impressive moves in the routine, which was choreographed by dancer Monica Thomas in collaboration with the Boston Dynamics team.

https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2020/12/29/boston-dyn...

They also link her name to https://www.madkingthomas.com/

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#47

Post by b112 »

grogenaut wrote: post #43
b112 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nego…

How does one of these things identify civilians or hold a place like Baghdad? Armies occupy. Those weapons destroy infrastructure and people and not much else. Or do you use them like drones paying soldiers to run them from a container in Kansas. In which case you have the soldier still.

Just like drones used to bomb, as you suggest with Kansas.

As time passes though, especially on an actual open battlefield, raw 'kill everything that moves" becomes more of a potential too.

However?

My logic was predicated upon cost, and if implemented, cost reduction due to all those body bags. You think Nixon and Kennedy were purely motivated by the cost of US soldiers, when they wanted out of Vietnam?

They sent those troops there to begin with!

No. They cared about the PR issues, and re-election.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#48

Post by b112 »

ben_w wrote: post #41
b112 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nego…

> How do you trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to them, and blowing them up? Right now? Regardless of if it’s controlled by remote or by AI, the sensors are probably easier to fool than an in-situ human would be.

I'm not talking about fooling. Mass produced, these things would be 10k max. We're talking 10+, 15+ years out.

What sort of fear do robot soldiers have? None. How does it make people "upset", if a robot soldier is blown up.

Now think on the converse.

Right now, suicide bombers take out soldiers, but almost always take out innocents around those soldiers. Often, children are killed.

Now, imagine the locals knowing that absolutely no enemy will be killed, just a machine, but dozens or more of their friends, family may be killed.

How long will suicide bombing last, when the only human casualties are the local population?

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#49

Post by wiz21c »

rendall wrote: post #39
fctorial wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"offline trajectory optimization" this doesn't sound good... I read this as : "we've made those robots do things they won't be able to do autonomously thanks to massive amounts of offline optimization".

Sure it's impressive, but I wonder how it helps the casual viewer to get an idea of what these robots can actually do. One could say that's the whole point of PR but...

It sure helped BD engineer to push their robots forward (as said in the article).

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#50

Post by systemvoltage »

b112 wrote: post #44
systemvoltage wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hum…

This is bound to happen. There is no way it wouldn't I believe, of course in short term, we gotta worry about stuff like politics, solving hunger and world peace. There will never be world peace, unless humanity is no longer human, or alternately, under the boot of an all encompassing empire ruled by force. To believe otherwise, is to believe history teaches us nothing, nor our knowledge of human behaviour. To assume…

Spectrum of humanity spreads wide and there will never be absolute world peace - in the same way, there is no peace in the animal kingdom. As I write, thousands of animals are dying at this very moment, millions of insects are killed. Nature is fucking brutal, my friend. Unimaginable amount of pain was inflicted in the wilderness during this hour.

We're lucky to be able to communicate to each other in civil manner without ripping each other apart for food. Pretty incredible to be a human!

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