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Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

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Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#111

Post by dyauspitr »

billconan wrote: post #2

do they really have this kind of jobs of moving parts from one shelf to another in a real factory? I think a more impressive demo would be last-mile package delivery, since it can climb stairs and operate elevators.

This is a job that currently employs a massive number of humans in Amazon warehouses. When you order a product on Amazon, they currently have autonomous robots that bring in entire shelves of that product up to a person standing at a counter, who picks the product from the shelf, puts it into a box and sends it off for shipping. This could take all those jobs away.

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#112

Post by dyauspitr »

jemmyw wrote: post #58
modeless wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unitree is catching up to Boston Dynamics in locomotion, but has not surpassed them yet I think. Unitree's real advantage is the much lower cost of their hardware and their ability to mass produce their robots. But IMO manipulation is harder than locomotion, both in hardware and software, and neither company is convincingly ahead there. I think the uncut laundry demo from Physical Intelligence a few days ago is bette…

I don't really want a robot wandering around doing laundry. I think what most people want is a box you dump clothes in and they come out folded, an extra machine next to the dryer. That would be a genuine time saver. I hate scaling Mount Foldmore.

Clearly it’s not easy to solve the folding machine problem because otherwise we would have one of those already. I absolutely wouldn’t mind a robot helper walking around the house and going what my maid currently does.

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#113

Post by laichzeit0 »

chollida1 wrote: post #33

Kind of shows just how far behind Telsa is with their "robot"

The BD demos are cool and I’ve been seeing them for probably a decade or more now, but what exactly do these robots do? Besides for cool demos, where are they actually used?

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#115

Post by snek_case »

dyauspitr wrote: post #108
Jupe wrote: post #105

How long before someone can buy a robot to do a manual labor job for them? I mean, buy a robot and send it to some company to do a daily job where the company pays the robot owner for the use of the robot?

The company is just going to buy the robot directly. Why would they middle man things like that? Alternatively if they just need the robots for shifts, they will rent them out from some central provider.

I think you would have to start a small business like rent your robot to do housecleaning for your neighbors, that being said housecleaning will probably quickly become way more competitive and you would have to undercut bigger businesses.

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#116

Post by firecall »

fracus wrote: post #101

I'm impressed but I'm also surprised to see the robot stop and appear to think. I would have thought the computing and sensors wouldn't take so long to form decisions.

It's required to pause and give the parts 20 Seconds to Comply!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1uR-OFLGCE

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#117

Post by numpad0 »

Anyone who don't know what manufacturing automation looked like for past decades should go watch those "factory tours" video or two. Then write down what are shared characteristics of manually handled objects in it and what are deltas between those videos and this. There are just way too many fantasies around here.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQeQWGqfFN0

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csifG1AM5d8

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg8YYuLLoM0

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#118

Post by snek_case »

lvl155 wrote: post #44

Still find it comical that Masayoshi sold it to Hyundai instead of Tesla. BD was the perfect fit for Tesla at the time. Now not so much and I am glad BD isn’t under Tesla umbrella.

So in 2013 Google bought Boston Dynamics, then later sold them in 2017. The rumor is that BD didn't play nice with the rest of Google. They wanted to just keep doing whatever they wanted and not be told what to do.

I think that if Tesla had bought BD, it may have been more trouble than it's worth. They might have had to fire a lot of the staff, and then I'm not sure what they would have been left with. Tesla is trying to optimize for production cost and mass manufacturing whereas BD doesn't care about cost. It also seems to me like BD hasn't done much in the AI realm. They've focused a lot more on the locomotion and have been using classic robotics techniques.

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#119

Post by FabHK »

dartos wrote: post #99
bamboozled wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this but I just think it’s silly, for basically any factory, it’s trivial to change the configuration of a space so a better suited robot can operate rather than build robots that can fit into human sized spaces. Yes there will be use cases but it just seems like a problem looking for a solution most of the time.

Well, you can buy a very specialized machine for one task, or but a less efficient machine that could handle very many tasks.

And the latter has (at least in IT, where you had Moore's law) generally won out fairly quickly.

Re: Boston Dynamics robot Atlas goes hands on [video]

#120

Post by beefnugs »

Jupe wrote: post #105

How long before someone can buy a robot to do a manual labor job for them? I mean, buy a robot and send it to some company to do a daily job where the company pays the robot owner for the use of the robot?

Funny you mention the only possible future capitalism model where we aren't mostly all dead in a ditch... (companies forced to pay people for using "their" bot) but it will never happen.

The companies buy the robots, and just shoot the employees in the head as they leave the robot store as an act of mercy.

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