Atlas robot does parkour • Hacker News Board

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#31

Post by hmottestad » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #18

What can I do to defend myself against killer robots? Seriously, is there something simple that I can put in my glovebox of my car to use in case these robots start getting scary? Is there a simple household good that will work well against these, until they start explicitly shielding against stuff?

Paint ought to do it. Chuck a bucket of paint at one of these and the sensors will be knocked out instantly.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#32

Post by jacksonkmarley » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

The thing that looks weird imo is when the robots are running on flat ground, something looks off about their feet. Can't tell what it is but they look like they're floating. Anyway it's pretty amazing, and interesting to see the improvements over the years in how the robots move.

And clearly the two robots should fight.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#33

Post by mastax » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

scythmic_waves wrote: post #16

dane-pgp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one of the comments on the video says, that feeling is an example of the "uncanny mountain" effect.

I'm not so sure. 1. [EDIT: IGNORE THIS POINT] They've done this before. [1] 2. To get more specific, look at the robot's legs around 0:09-0:16. They don't seem to be moving normally. I don't have professional video analysis chops, but I'd put some money on this being fake. Happy be to be proven wrong, though. EDIT: It appears I remembered this story incorrectly, and posted a link without reading it. I retract my firs…

That CGI gag was done by Corridor Digital, not Boston Dynamics.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#34

Post by prepend » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

frozenport wrote: post #10

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

firefighters, nurses, construction workers

All these positions involve life and death decisions that freak me out.

I want the source code to firefighting bots to be public so I know whether my town buys the ones that prioritize babies over elderly. Or stuff like it’s easier to save 5 dogs than 1 human.

Nurses too have great power for good and harm. Currently when nurses decide on mercy killings [0] it requires lots of deliberation to figure out and it’s just one person. If a robonurse is programmed to put lethal morphine into a patient under certain conditions, that’s a big deal.

[0] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122054...

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#35

Post by jvanderbot » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

This is awesome, but until someone solves the real-time sensing and modelling problem, it'll never fly in the real world. The use case is still warehouses.

Here's my logic / assumptions: How does the robot "know" (have sufficient model information to predict the response) that the board will hold it when it does a vault? It doesn't -- it is told to vault by placing one limb on top. As we've seen with self-driving cars, where the sensing is 99% of the problem, that's the barrier between a closed set and the real world.

Don't get me wrong. The fact that Atlas / Boston Dynamics is in a state where the sensing is _mostly_ what remains a problem is astounding.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#36

Post by D13Fd » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

I think the key is recognizing that these have nothing to do with true AI or replacing humans in any profession.

This is just a semi-autonomous vehicle that is bipedal or quadrupedal instead of having wheels. That's it.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#37

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #25

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

If they were ever deployed as auxiliaries to law enforcement, my hope would be any weapon would have to have a human approve a request. Robots should be able to swarm and restrain uncooperative suspects so there should be less need for lethality unless the perpetrator is an active threat against other people -a hostage situation, mass shooting, etc.

Robots will be the new zip ties to restrain you while your rights are violated. It’s not a tech failure though, it’s a governance and accountability failure.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#38

Post by thatguy0900 » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

I think the future headlines will be that widespread rebellions will be always put down because the army can't be convinced to switch sides. I think we're very close to a situation where current governments in power can only be deposed by external armies.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#39

Post by tlyleung » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

retSava wrote: post #2

This is the video with the blog post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk To me, I like to see when they stutter or slightly-fail, since that to indicates the dynamics and real-time part of the thing, that it is not a 100% scripted thing (although the blog post mentions the engineers fine-tuning the celebratory arm-pump, to what extent is that scripted then?)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk&feature=youtu.be

This behind-the-scenes video says it is choreographed and scripted. It also contains instances where things go wrong as well.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#40

Post by tshaddox » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

I don’t know. That just sounds like pessimism about the direction of society, which means that any technology that can be used for a wide range of tasks can obviously be used for bad things. Slowing the progress of technology is not going to solve or even improve the outcomes if society is moving in a bad direction, unless you are somehow able to very precisely predict the outcomes of each specific technology and slow progress very selectively. And if you were able to do that, I don’t think technologies like this one would be a likely candidate for something that would disproportionately help the bad actors in society.