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MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump [video]

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

#181

Post by mschuster91 »

paulmd wrote: post #117
codeshaman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is that this advanced tech creates a powerful lever for mad leaders. 1 clumsy cheetah robot at MIT may not be that scary, but 100.000 fully armed and armoured killing machines, which can avoid obstacles and track humans with all kinds of sensors, under the control of leaders wanting to 'right' the wrongs of history scares the shit out of me. At the same time, this progress cannot (and shouldn't) be sto…

At least at the moment, the limitation is power. Sure, they built a robot that can run and avoid obstacles, but its battery is probably dead in 10 minutes tops. There's a reason it's running on a power harness in the treadmill test. Unless they invent the Arc Reactor to along with it, those are a long way from the battlefield.

Scale it up a bit and fuel it with petrol. I can't imagine this thing using more than 3 kW of electric power, and petrol generators are quite small these days.

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

#182

Post by ArtDev »

IgorPartola wrote: post #168
malkia wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most-obvious, but a self-driving would be riding "alone" for long periods of time. For example "sending" car from one member of the family to another (or one client to another for use), or maybe delivering items from the store directly into a box. So in this case, the car should have the other mode, which is not safe for the car, but from whatever is outside, but now that I've typed it, even that I don't know the det…

Ooh, I really like this idea. Instead of me finding parking at the airport, I send my car to park in my own driveway, then have it pick me up a few days later. That's brilliant. I haven't even thought of the possibility of having the car drive empty.

It is amazing when you think about it at scale. Your car drops you off exactly where you want to go, then double-parks in a ultra-dense parking hanger.

What are we going to do with all the extra parking spaces? Turn them into parks/wildlife habitat/green space!

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

#183

Post by Panoramix »

methodover wrote: post #5
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.

Ugh, I really dislike this sentiment. Even assuming the most extreme possibility -- that we create a powerful, sentient machine -- this is no different than what every species on this planet has been doing for a few billion years now. Creating life is what we earthlings do. And yeah, maybe that life form you create goes on to do horrible things. But maybe it goes on to do really good things. You don't know until you…

How on Earth is it not different? Wolves/Lions have no machine guns, thermal sensors, armor, chemical weapons, and more importantly, are not controlled by a human third party.

This research is funded by DARPA. Not because of its potential to help the elderly, mind you.

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

#184

Post by omegaham »

jmagoon wrote: post #121
DanBC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in one sense people are better off with drones than they would be with land mines or cluster bombs or "shock and awe" style area-bombing. Those are (pretty clearly, IMO) war crimes. But still, it's useful to be worried about the potential "desensitising effect" of remote warfare. Is someone operating a drone subject to the same psychological pressure to avoid killing other humans as someone pulling a trigger? (T…

Drone operators have the same type of psychological pressure and results as ground troops: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-g... In terms of their superiors, isn't that how warfare has always been? My guess would be that ground troops replaced by robots would likely still have a pilot with a "finger on the trigger" for a long time. If the reaction is this mixed Hacker News, how do you think…

It doesn't help that drone pilots are treated absolutely miserably by the command. I had a friend who transferred from our electronics tech job (which was extremely laid-back and stress-free most of the time) to work in a UAV command, where the command effectively viewed its pilots as machines to work until failure. "Oh, another one attempted suicide because his wife left him? That's cool, tell the monitor that we need an extra body and we'll replace him when the next boot drop hits. In the meantime, just increase everyone else's hours from 14 hours a day to 16 hours a day. We aren't the FAA, we don't have rest requirements."

Incidentally, air traffic control had this same problem in the 90s until too many people started taking the quick way off the tower.

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

#185

Post by IgorPartola »

ArtDev wrote: post #182
IgorPartola wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh, I really like this idea. Instead of me finding parking at the airport, I send my car to park in my own driveway, then have it pick me up a few days later. That's brilliant. I haven't even thought of the possibility of having the car drive empty.

It is amazing when you think about it at scale. Your car drops you off exactly where you want to go, then double-parks in a ultra-dense parking hanger. What are we going to do with all the extra parking spaces? Turn them into parks/wildlife habitat/green space!

To be fair, we are probably going to just keep them as parking lots and pile more people into the cities. But yes, this type of thing is exciting.

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

#186

Post by kamaal »

snops wrote: post #33
codeshaman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is that this advanced tech creates a powerful lever for mad leaders. 1 clumsy cheetah robot at MIT may not be that scary, but 100.000 fully armed and armoured killing machines, which can avoid obstacles and track humans with all kinds of sensors, under the control of leaders wanting to 'right' the wrongs of history scares the shit out of me. At the same time, this progress cannot (and shouldn't) be sto…

Your going to need some pretty advanced manufacturing to be able to make these for the forseeable future. I certainly can't see it being cheaper than humans with AKs for a long while, especially in the kind of environment where your "mad leaders" operate. Besides, the majority of "gain" is being able to fight wars without putting yourself at risk of casualties. A "mad leader" would not care about such losses. The mor…

If there is sufficient demand, advanced manufacturing will just follow. Just see how much smart phone tech has grown over years and where it was before that.

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

#187

Post by ArtDev »

biot wrote: post #164
chinathrow wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those expensive machines makes not a single child soldier go away - why should it?

Your hypothesis was that machines lower the entry level for war. The counterexample of using untrained, disposable child soldiers indicates that the entry level is already zero. Consequently, your hypothesis is wrong; the entry level for war is actually raised via expensive machines.

Robots like the knight armor of long ago, are very expensive.

I highly recommend this TED talk about how the future of war could return us a feudal world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho...

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

#188

Post by fapjacks »

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…

These are some interesting points, but we can look for a peek into the future with airplanes which communicate through anticollision computer systems. I'm not an aviation person, but I believe the actual collision avoidance must be performed by a human being, however the devices themselves communicate with one another to determine the corrective flight path.

Also, you can enforce cars with directives to save "the most" lives with policy and law. Of course people are going to buy the crowd-plowing car if it saves their own asses. That's why you make it difficult or impossible to buy a car that will do this, instead only authorizing cars that make the better choice to drive the streets.

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

#190

Post by aeyler »

fapjacks wrote: post #188
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…

These are some interesting points, but we can look for a peek into the future with airplanes which communicate through anticollision computer systems. I'm not an aviation person, but I believe the actual collision avoidance must be performed by a human being, however the devices themselves communicate with one another to determine the corrective flight path. Also, you can enforce cars with directives to save "the mos…

I've worked on TCAS (collision avoidance for airplanes) in the past. The system will alert the pilot and ask them to do a specific route (such as climb, descend, do-not-climb). It's up to the pilot to respond (est. 2-5 seconds reaction time). The route decided upon by the airplane is in conjunction with the other plane.
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