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

Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

businesskorea.co.kr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 65 posts

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#11

Post by bentcorner »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #7
themanmaran wrote: post #2

Video of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JiOAqNpxlE

It is ridiculous to attribute intent to the motion, but I understand why people do — it really does give the impression of an aggressive, upset human. That’s unfortunate.

Agree - it looks like low-quality robotics code, probably one-off written for this festival.

This article seems to try to ride the fears of AI and "bots are taking our jobs" but really this looks like plain old badly written software.

Large machines operating near people should always have failsafes. Having handlers who are expected to drag the bot around IMO isn't enough.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#12

Post by pj_mukh »

Why does this article read like the robot actually got angry at a spectator. It did not, it does not have that capacity.

This was definitely a glaring safety issue and the company should review all its failure modes that show up in public but an ”emotional” response this was not.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#13

Post by themanmaran »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #7
themanmaran wrote: post #2

Video of the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JiOAqNpxlE

It is ridiculous to attribute intent to the motion, but I understand why people do — it really does give the impression of an aggressive, upset human. That’s unfortunate.

Yea, likely this was some kind of trip + glitch that happened to look like an attack. But it really did have a "boxing" style movement.

I saw a video of the Unitree [1] robot doing a kung fu routine the other day. I imagine developers are constantly programming in some pre-scripted moves. Similar to all the Boston Dynamics demo videos. They're great for showing off movement. Conceivable that someone could run the wrong demo routine. Imagine the Atlas robot doing it's classic backflip in the middle of a crowd.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iULi4-qz22I

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#14

Post by janalsncm »

The video is pretty unsettling, kind of showing how strong robots can be compared with humans. (We already knew this, but it’s good to remember.)

Reminds me a bit of the chess robot that broke a child’s finger: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jul/24/chess-robot-gr...

What annoyed me at the time was them describing the child as having broken some “rule” about waiting for the robot or something.

We should reject this framing. Robots need to be safe and reliable if we’re going to invite them into our homes.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#15

Post by Havoc »

There is a video floating around of it. It's a sudden forward movement that certainly looks alarming but wouldn't call it "unexpectedly displayed aggressive behavior".

More like it's hardcoded to do something (maintain balance or whatever) without limits on how fast it can move to achieve the goal.

i.e. bad safety controls rather than malice

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#16

Post by mattlondon »

Years ago when I was a student at uni I volunteered to take part in a research study with robots.

I went to a rented house near campus where they had a normal living room set up and sat me down on a dining chair in the room and handed me a box with a button on it.

"The robot will approach you. Just press the button when you feel like it is getting too close" they said.

They left the room so I was alone, and a few minutes later the wheeled robot entered the room and started slowly but deliberately to move towards me.

Let's just say the robot got too close.

I was sat there alone as the robot moved towards me. I was frantically mashing at the button but it did not stop until it actually collided with my feet and then stopped.

To this day I am not sure if it was meant to stop or not, or even if it was a robotics research project at all or actually a psychology research project.

In hindsight it was as terrifying as it sounds. Still, I got £5 for it.

Re: Tianjin robot incident raises alarm over public safety and robotics

#20

Post by rwmj »

hkmaxpro wrote: post #3

Another news article with video: https://www.odditycentral.com/news/humanoid-robot-appears-to...

Could they have made them more creepy? It's way too much like the terminator from Terminator: Dark Fate (https://collider.com/terminator-dark-fate-images-featurette/)
Post reply on HN