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Atlas robot does parkour

blog.bostondynamics.com

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Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#111

Post by konart »

qiqing wrote: post #45
jvanderbot wrote: post #35

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 car…

Wouldn't it be great, though, if humans were no longer working warehouse jobs that strain their backs and their bladders?

I don't think we need anything humanoid for this though.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#112

Post by nofunsir »

rkagerer wrote: post #101

What's that dripping from the right robot's right thigh near the end? https://youtu.be/tF4DML7FIWk?t=49 Also are the layers of foam over the landing surfaces they backflip onto needed for dampening?

Sweat, clearly. Hardcore parkour’s not easy.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#113

Post by handrous »

narrator wrote: post #28
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…

The military will just use aerial drone slaughterbots. The Azerbaijanis did this in the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan war and it was a total blowout against 20th century tech. Here's what I'm thinking the good future looks like: Let's say I have a big back yard and would like to have that be a productive farm. AI bot comes over, surveys the land, does soil tests, orders seeds, fertilizer and garden equipment off Amazon.…

> The military will just use arial drone slaughterbots. The Azerbaijanis did this in the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan war and it was a total blowout against 20th century tech.

It hadn't occurred to me that drones let despots wage high-tempo modern wars (at least, partially) without the associated risks (of devolved control) and costs (of very expensive training and equipment for your soldiers)—but they totally do. That's a pretty big deal. Wonder if we'll see 2nd-tier, regional powers gain influence through this effect, as they can afford quite good drone programs while weaker neighbors might not be able to.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#115

Post by djrogers »

nostrademons wrote: post #46
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…

Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for military uses, so you're not wrong. The weird thing is that the more I study history, the more I think that the real dystopia started a century (and perhaps a couple millenia) before I was born, and we're just so adapted to it that we think it's normal. Take the "[Ro]bot" out of your headlines and those would be headlines from today, and if you ignore that t…

> We were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and then large numbers of us were killed in the wars that followed.

We were depersonalized loooong before that - read up on the 30 years war, or any other conflict before the Industrial Revolution.

“Soldiers” of the time were mercenaries, many of whom were pressed in to ‘service’ when their village/town/farm was destroyed by said mercenary company. These mercenaries fought at the whims of princes and kings who squabbled over whims and privilege, and the princes and generals are the only ones who are remembered.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#116

Post by thefreeman »

ArtDev wrote: post #87
nostrademons wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for military uses, so you're not wrong. The weird thing is that the more I study history, the more I think that the real dystopia started a century (and perhaps a couple millenia) before I was born, and we're just so adapted to it that we think it's normal. Take the "[Ro]bot" out of your headlines and those would be headlines from today, and if you ignore that t…

My favorite scifi series is the Polity Universe by Neal Asher. The Polity are these benevolent AI that rule humanity after "The Quiet War". It is called that because not a single shot is fired because they just take control of all hightech weapons and technology one day. The books would be considered utopian scifi if the rest of the universe wasn't so gritty. Which is why it is my favorite series.

what is the first book in this series?

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#117

Post by sirsinsalot »

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…

Part of the issue in tech is we shrug off the control we have over the future. "If it can be done then it is inevitable" seems to be a common attitude.

A bit like the GitHub AI coding controversy. Yes, we maybe could AI ourselves out of a job, maybe? We can decide not to tho.

We have complete control over what we DO and DO NOT.

If humanity could organise well enough, we could collectively decide a weaponless utopia.

But alas, we are stupid.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#118

Post by johnnyb9 »

cs702 wrote: post #51

An impressive accomplishment -- and beautiful in its own way. Alas, I can't help but keep imagining a Terminator climbing and jumping over barriers, instead of those smaller, less-threatening robots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSXl_XKXZAI I'm rather surprised no one else has mentioned James Cameron's robot-from-the-future nightmare so far.

I can't help but listen to the terminator theme song in my head while watching these ala https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCeb5DfENaY

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#119

Post by Animats »

sandworm101 wrote: post #76
jvanderbot wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised people look at this human-like and try to attribute human-like responsibilities. It'll be a marketing trap that many fall into. But for now, the sensing, state estimation, and energy density problems preclude the use of these robots in the real world. There's far too much uncertainty in the structure of the world or the modelling of unknown areas to do parkour outside -- unless I've missed something…

>> hybrid control scheme with a human controlling a smart-ish legged vehicle Much depends on scale. BD is working towards a robot-donkey, something that can follow soldiers over rough terrain. At scales much larger than a horse, such robots already exist and are already much more mobile than soldiers in most terrains. These robots are called tanks. Or trucks. Once a vehicle is carrying a large enough load that it wil…

BD is working towards a robot-donkey, something that can follow soldiers over rough terrain.

That was done years ago, as the Legged Squad Support System.[1] It sort of worked, but was too expensive and too noisy, being powered by a small IC engine. The USMC abandoned the project in 2015.

Boston Dynamics' big accomplishment was to get enough funding to actually do anything useful in mobile robotics. Most university robotics projects were a professor and a few grad students, and took forever to get anything. BD spent upwards of $100 million of DARPA money over a decade and got some working demos. Then they were funded by Google, and now Softbank.

Big walkers have been built. The Timberjack, from John Deere, is probably the best example.[2] This is a large six-legged off-road machine equipped with a long arm with a chainsaw. It worked but was not cost effective vs. wheeled systems.

The message is that with enough money you can do legged locomotion, but so far, there are few profitable applications.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legged_Squad_Support_System

[2] https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#120

Post by Zababa »

imglorp wrote: post #102
claudiulodro wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would argue that it started with agriculture: > According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation and social stratification. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

This sounds like it resonates with Ted Kaczynski's thesis.

You can actually see in the linked article that it's the opposite. He is mostly against "global" technology (technology at a larger scale than what you can make in a village for example).
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