Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 212 posts

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#131

Post by shabble »

IgorPartola wrote: post #122
rebootthesystem wrote: post #119

All of this is neat stuff. That said, for some reason I am still bothered by the use of laser range finders. To me it makes it all feel like a parlor trick. The easiest way to produce machines that can be used in "Oh, wow! Look at that!" videos that continue to bring in grants. These robots should use binocular vision and nothing else. Oh, wait a minute, that's hard, isn't it? Yup.

Why should they use binocular vision?

The bad reason is "Because we do, and we're the best. Those researchers are just slackers".

One good reason would be to prefer passive sensing, because LIDAR is equivalent to waving a laser across the entire landscape, precisely announcing your own position to anyone watching. Multi-ocular systems can be entirely passive assuming enough ambient light, so they're much harder to detect.

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#132

Post by whyaduck »

tugberkk wrote: post #3

Aside from being a great development; I am really scared that robotics is improving this much. It feels like we are creating our own potential enemy.

We need to work on creating robotic civilians (bystanders | peasants | victims), too. Then the circle will be complete and the war-makers can burn through their $trillions without actually killing anyone.

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#133

Post by whyaduck »

ajbetteridge wrote: post #45

So they can spend millions developing the robot, but the best they can do for tracking while they film from the side is a guy pushing another guy in a big plastic box on wheels. Way to go geeks!

I wish they'd spend a few bucks on a head, too. That thing looks like it was just decapitated and is in its death throes, running on reflex.

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#135

Post by anthony_d »

IgorPartola wrote: post #120
deepnet wrote: post #88

Stuart Russel of AI a Modern Approach fame ( with Norvig ) asks us to consider the ethics of AI research - killer robotics, & hunter drones. http://www.nature.com/news/robotics-ethics-of-artificial-int... He calls for a moritorium until we can get a neural net to learn Asimov's 1st Law. Should the self driving car swerve into you to avoid greater moral hazard ? Humour aside as researchers and robotocists do we have a…

> Should the self driving car swerve into you to avoid greater moral hazard? The self-driving car's first priority should be to protect those inside it. Anything else is more complicated. I read an article a little while ago about this topic and it posed a question along the lines of "should a self-driving car do the thing that'll kill its own passengers, yet save a larger number of others around it?" Think about how…

I'm not sure about that. If your car had uncontrolled acceleration, for instance, would you consider use a crowd of people to slow you down or would you put it in the ditch? For the sake of argument that amounts to a left or right turn.

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#137

Post by bduerst »

kolbe wrote: post #104
tagawa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the problem. It was quick and easy and got the job done - a nice avoidance of over-engineering.

It's not a problem. It's amusing. Juxtaposition is a common form of humor, and whether or not MIT indented the humor, it is funny to see a multimillion dollar autonomous robot get filmed with such a primitive technique.

Next up: Throwing wrenches at the robot to see if it can play dodge ball.

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#138

Post by cortesoft »

IgorPartola wrote: post #120
deepnet wrote: post #88

Stuart Russel of AI a Modern Approach fame ( with Norvig ) asks us to consider the ethics of AI research - killer robotics, & hunter drones. http://www.nature.com/news/robotics-ethics-of-artificial-int... He calls for a moritorium until we can get a neural net to learn Asimov's 1st Law. Should the self driving car swerve into you to avoid greater moral hazard ? Humour aside as researchers and robotocists do we have a…

> Should the self driving car swerve into you to avoid greater moral hazard? The self-driving car's first priority should be to protect those inside it. Anything else is more complicated. I read an article a little while ago about this topic and it posed a question along the lines of "should a self-driving car do the thing that'll kill its own passengers, yet save a larger number of others around it?" Think about how…

Eh, I don't know. Lots of people would swerve their car into a tree to avoid hitting a person. They put themselves at risk to avoid killing someone.

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#139

Post by [deleted] »

anthony_d wrote: post #135
IgorPartola wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should the self driving car swerve into you to avoid greater moral hazard? The self-driving car's first priority should be to protect those inside it. Anything else is more complicated. I read an article a little while ago about this topic and it posed a question along the lines of "should a self-driving car do the thing that'll kill its own passengers, yet save a larger number of others around it?" Think about how…

I'm not sure about that. If your car had uncontrolled acceleration, for instance, would you consider use a crowd of people to slow you down or would you put it in the ditch? For the sake of argument that amounts to a left or right turn.

[deleted]

Re: MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

#140

Post by IgorPartola »

anthony_d wrote: post #135
IgorPartola wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should the self driving car swerve into you to avoid greater moral hazard? The self-driving car's first priority should be to protect those inside it. Anything else is more complicated. I read an article a little while ago about this topic and it posed a question along the lines of "should a self-driving car do the thing that'll kill its own passengers, yet save a larger number of others around it?" Think about how…

I'm not sure about that. If your car had uncontrolled acceleration, for instance, would you consider use a crowd of people to slow you down or would you put it in the ditch? For the sake of argument that amounts to a left or right turn.

Say there are 10 people in this crowd. The optimal solution for the 11 of us is obviously to have my car drive off a cliff to the right, not into the crowd on the left. However, for me, the optimal solution is obviously to not drive off a cliff.

However, your argument omits a couple of interesting details. First off, if a car can have uncontrolled acceleration, it can likely have any number of glitches. It may for example think it's accelerating uncontrollably, and try to throw me off a cliff. Or it may think that the cliff is a small ditch. Or it may think that a bunch of balloons tied to a mail box is a crowd. If you are a programmer, what would you rather debug: code that prevents uncontrolled acceleration or code responsible for killing the driver by recognizing crowds and cliffs?

The other details is whether the metaphorical crowd should even allow me to buy a car that has logic built into it to drive over them. What if instead of a cliff and a crowd it's actually two different crowds of different sizes? What would a human driver do in these cases?

Post reply on HN