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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]

#181

It's a nice piece of machinery. Looks like they finally went all-electric and got rid of the hydraulics. The new model is much less bulky. The task it is doing is undemanding. It's just moving things from one set of large slots to another. No need for precision placement, unstructured bin-picking, or object separation. If it could pick up engine covers from the messy pile seen atop one of the racks and slot them into…

In [2], it's very surprising that the system is designed so that the worker must use steps to access bins on the transporter. Since this seems so obviously and counterintuitively bad for the workflow I assume there must be a very, very good reason for it. Would be interesting to know what it is.

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

#182
post #160
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first, humanoids will not be used for these inflexible, old-style mass manufacturing factories. Humanoids can automate where flexibility is needed. E.g. a baker baking 5000 breads a day for a local community cannot afford the capital expenditure to automate every step in his pipeline with these ABB machines. He could afford to automate with one of these new humanoids though, as the same machine first does step 1,…

> to automate every step in his pipeline with these ABB machines. That's still too much "inside the box" thinking. That baker doesn't need "automate everything", in fact, no-one does. What "that baker" needs, is to rank work on effort, cross sectioned with "costs to automate". And then automate the top item or items only. The baker needs a machine to knead the dough. Special tools to cut the dough of twenty cookies a…

Whenever I think about automation, I, of course, think about having toddlers in the house.

Toddlers are a transient disruption to the household logistics operation. They induce novel challenges. Their clothes are have different form factors, and may be dirtied in novel and interesting ways. Their nutritional demands are only partially-overlapping with the preexisting household diet. They introduce hundreds of small toylike objects into the environment. Even their dishware is smaller, flimsier and more numerous, disrupting any existing dish-washing workflows. And the development (or purchase) of permanent solutions to these problems is in some sense wasteful because the toddlers will stop being toddlers before too long, and you will have to pivot again.

The holy trinity of washer, dryer, dishwasher solves a relatively high percentage of household labor but the tail is very long. The purpose of the above digression on toddlers is to illustrate that some household labor disruptions are transient and really not worth developing specific solutions to permanently resolve.

This household example is both a true example of the problem and a metaphor for this type of situation which occurs in all human environments. There is always a long tail. There are always changes to processes with knock-on effects that leave gaps in preexisting workflows. And the solution of final resort has always been human manual labor. There are always transient solutions that require transient workarounds. And this long tail is where it will be enormously helpful to have humanoid form factor robots. This is true for exactly the same reasons that a young parent would appreciate having a humanoid robot in the house, to pick up clothes off the floor and fold clean ones, gather up toys and put them in their appropriate storage bin, and clean the table and floor and nearby walls (and possibly ceiling) after meals.

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

#184

skin reaction: useless! unfortunately the world is full of sooooo many much smarter slaves to exploit

But can you buy them, not pay them, feed them for pennies, keep them alive forever, work them 24hrs/365days, and never fear they will organize and revolt?

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

#185

It's a nice piece of machinery. Looks like they finally went all-electric and got rid of the hydraulics. The new model is much less bulky. The task it is doing is undemanding. It's just moving things from one set of large slots to another. No need for precision placement, unstructured bin-picking, or object separation. If it could pick up engine covers from the messy pile seen atop one of the racks and slot them into…

The visualization of a 3d model of the engine cover and the points of the racking system highlighted as spheres in the visualization shows quite how much task-specific code there must be in this demo.

I don't think you'd be able to get this to move other objects or to other types of shelves without getting a programmer involved for a few days at least.

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

#186
post #179

It's a nice piece of machinery. Looks like they finally went all-electric and got rid of the hydraulics. The new model is much less bulky. The task it is doing is undemanding. It's just moving things from one set of large slots to another. No need for precision placement, unstructured bin-picking, or object separation. If it could pick up engine covers from the messy pile seen atop one of the racks and slot them into…

On the shift from hydraulic to electric: for years Marc Raibert and others at Boston Dynamics expressed doubts that a non-hydraulic humanoid could be made to perform as well in that package. Because of actuator density- a humanoid has a high number of actuators. Also power density, and they did a lot of work in molding the hydraulic actuators directly into the arms and legs to make them compact. The bulk is all in th…

Hydraulics have a massive benefit that the actual actuators have amazing power density - and the actual bulky hydraulic pump and valves can be far away. Also, the pump can be shared with many actuators, making the whole system smaller and lighter when you have 50 actuators and only need to use 5 of them at full power at a time.

Electrics win for energy efficiency and no-leaky-fluid, and also are improving pretty quick.

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do robot companies insist on beating up their robots?

They put a lot of work into the control algorithms that allow the robots to move. From a control theory perspective, being hit is a disturbance that the control system is able to reject to maintain the intended pose/motion.

It also shows the strength of the hardware. Unitree sells the hardware so it's a hardware demo as much as a software one.

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

#188
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much time the robot can work without recharging / maintenance? What's the throughput for the tasks? In the demo it only carried one object and it took it several seconds to move it. A person could do that faster, better, etc. It's real nice, but if you can convince a factory owner to replace people with this you are the best salesman in the world.

I'm not a salesman but I imagine if you're trying to sell them to a factory owner, you'd play up the problems with the worst humans. Humans come in hungover, still drunk, or not at all. And don't call in. They complain about every. little. thing. "Why do I have to do it this way?" "I don't want to do it like that". They take long bathroom breaks (and think you don't notice, because they think you're stupid.) They ste…

Scheduling, vacations and HR also go out the window.

Reliable production numbers are also a thing.

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

#189
post #7
post #5

While humanoid robots are neat, if not uncanny, I would love to see robots with forms optimized for their work. A large octopus with legs would be ideal for this sort of parts handling job.

I think the exact point they’re trying to make is that a humanoid robot can pick up one shift exactly where a human left off. No custom robotics, no workplace changes, etc. This is huge for the industry. Smarter Every Day visited a frisbee factory and they had automated a bunch of things. However, every automation point was extremely protected (fenced off) so that a bumbling human couldn’t walk somewhere and get a li…

I think you're right, but the humanoid phase in manufacture will probably be an intermediate phase, for the reasons krunck points out. A 100% adapted to the function robot is where productivity is.

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

#190

what a relief it will be to be released from doing manual tasks for a living and to be able to finally engage every waking moment in an all against all struggle for power.

In the future we'll all get to be "idea men". (And be famous for 15 minutes.)

half of the population has IQ below average. what 'idea' are you talking about?

Actually that's getting interesting. For non-physical jobs we already got significant boost from LLMs. Robots will be another wave when they get cheap enough. For robot like on the video $20K price for mechanics looks achievable.

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