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 personally would have loved to see a human dancer dancing alongside the robots, that would have given an interesting comparison.
How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
141–150 of 207 posts
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
> The value prop just isn't there until our ability to control, program and integrate these complex robots (cobot stuff) gets better. When you ultimately drill down to brass tacks though, you're left with a chicken and egg scenario. We need better programming and integration for this to be time-effective. We need more time programming and more time integrating for this to be a value proposition. You don't get there w…
My point exactly. Its not 1000 hours and 1000 hours. Its 1000 hours and 1,000,000 hours. If we could program a complex robot like spot to do a highly complex task like walk a dog safely on an open ended "real world" in 1000 hours there are lots of other things we would do first (package delivery comes to mind). We're just not there. We have the hardware, but not the software infrastructure to apply them as is being expected here.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#143Earlier 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…
> function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped
Be wary of renting to any penguin, if you do buy Spot.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, Spot's power source only lasts minutes? Ah, its battery runs for 90 minutes.
> Ah, its battery runs for 90 minutes. Yep, and that's best case, too (e.g. not running Lidar or complex processing for autonomous function at the same time). Minutes sounds a bit shorter than it is, but nevertheless anything with an endurance under 2 hours cannot run for hours pretty much by definition ;)
It's about perspective. Imagine being pinned down by a squad of these things for "only" 60 minutes. Or being pursued through the forest or an urban environment. That 60 minutes would feel like a very long time.
For a glimpse of this, check out the videogame Generation Zero (1980's Sweden overtaken by armed robots, including robot dogs).
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging by the use of drones for "extrajudicial" assassination, the narrative of robots as merciful weapons sounds dubious at best.
A drone at 2 miles up isn't arresting anyone.
Interesting comparison, in times of militarized trigger-happy police...
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#146My 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…
She did an amazing job and is talented for sure. I still absolutely hate those robots. This won't end well.
I think that unfortunately, when it comes to the public perception, that the movie Terminator did to robotics and AI what Jaws did to the Great White shark. This seems to have permeated western culture in a way that makes it very difficult to have much serious and honest discussion about the technology and I suspect is actively holding the field back. My perception is that in other countries, like Japan for example, they have a very different perspective on what these technologies can do for them and they seem to be much more embracing of it, rather than scared of it.
Both here and anywhere else the Boston Dynamics robots are shown off, half of the comments always come back to the "scary robots" that will take your jobs and murder your family. I wish we could hit a big reset button on how the public at large perceives robots because I personally think that there is a lot of benefit to be harvested here, for the true benefit of mankind.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#147To all that are wetting their diapers at the _ridiculous_ thought of robots hunting you down (a rather pompous thought in my opinion — why would anyone expend any resources to kill _you_?): please remain in your bunkers for the sake of society.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#148"it’s about having a pipeline that lets you take a diverse set of motions, that you can describe through a variety of different inputs, and push them through and onto the robot." Remember that, when you think automation can come later.
That's useful for HN readers in general, but when specifically talking about robots, it needs to be communicated to legacy robotics manufacturers like Fanuc, Yaskawa, etc.
This dance happened because Monica Thomas could drag-and-drop motions as if she was programming a MIDI sequencer, generating text files on her laptop, pushing data from the PC to the robot with some Python and protobufs. Other manufacturers doing anything like this is rare, and they're nowhere near as fluid or graceful, because it involves a robot technician tediously jogging the robot around with a teach pendant in the way all industrial robots have been programmed since the 70s.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#149To all that are wetting their diapers at the _ridiculous_ thought of robots hunting you down (a rather pompous thought in my opinion — why would anyone expend any resources to kill _you_?): please remain in your bunkers for the sake of society.
It must be nice for you that you've never felt persecuted or treated unjustly by human systems and therefore can't extrapolate to how that might play out when autonomous killer robots are thrown into the mix.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to ask a question. In the article they say the following: > We definitely learned not to underestimate how flexible and strong dancers are—when you take elite athletes and you try to do what they do but with a robot, it’s a hard problem. It’s humbling. Fundamentally, I don’t think that Atlas has the range of motion or power that these athletes do, although we continue developing our robots towards that,…
As a parent of small kids who just watched the video, I would say 2–3 year old seems about right, assuming kids who do a lot of running around. 3-year-olds can move with significantly more grace (the motions are more intentional, fluid, subtle, and steady, and seem less scripted) than these robots, but definitely can't do a jump precisely the same 10 times in a row, so it's not really apples to apples. Maybe age isn'…
Probably need to be more specific about 'skill as a dancer' too though - I think you're responding mainly about motor control (?) but try choregraphing a bunch of three year olds to actually perform that routine!