Not to rain on anyone's parade BUT what about the battery life ?
Big Dog had a gasoline engine for longer endurance, but was heinously noisy.
How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
121–130 of 207 posts
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.
> It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know. > But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and h…
Still, it's a nice way to shift blame to scientists and engineers, away from people who actually use these tools for evil, or commission development of technologies to use in their evil business models.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally would have loved to see a human dancer dancing alongside the robots, that would have given an interesting comparison.
Me too. Wouldn’t be cool if the robots dance along humans, replacing iconic videoclips or scenes? Like the scene of Jerry (from Tom & Jerry) dancing with Gene Kelly https://youtu.be/2msq6H2HI-Y Or Paula Abdul “Opposites attract” https://youtu.be/xweiQukBM_k
This duet between a human dancer and an industrial robot might interest you as well: https://youtu.be/Q-sK-s_TzN0
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#124Ah yes, doing fortnite dances while committing war crimes
People won't think they're cute when the DOD awards a contract to strap a belt-fed .50 cal to each arm. Hell, why stop with two arms?
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#125Not to rain on anyone's parade BUT what about the battery life ?
The battery life is abysmal. These machines use the same batteries as every other piece of contemporary tech. Spot can walk about for 90 minutes top and the more it needs to do (e.g. running additional sensors, performing autonomous functions, etc.), the shorter its battery life will be (I'd guess around an hour is more realistic). Bipedal prototypes like Atlas wouldn't last that long. Think 20 minutes or so for a he…
Robots who could replace some manual labour work within a specified area (say: factories), don't need to rely on batteries. We could attach them with a huge wire and plug it into power supply.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#126Not to rain on anyone's parade BUT what about the battery life ?
The battery life is abysmal. These machines use the same batteries as every other piece of contemporary tech. Spot can walk about for 90 minutes top and the more it needs to do (e.g. running additional sensors, performing autonomous functions, etc.), the shorter its battery life will be (I'd guess around an hour is more realistic). Bipedal prototypes like Atlas wouldn't last that long. Think 20 minutes or so for a he…
Then all you need is a centralized "depot" where all of the Spots can come back to and have their batteries swapped out by another robot.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#127My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…
I'm extremely interested to learn how the dance moves were programmed - I'm guessing the standard tablet controller probably doesn't cut it for the level of control necessary.
More generally speaking, I'm especially curious if "anyone" buying a Spot would have adequate access to be able to do similar things.
I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to not been possible for warranty reasons...
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#128Fascinating! On a separate note, I was reading up on Boston Dynamics just the other day and was surprised to see that they are now owned by Hyundai (Google X sold BD to SoftBank who sold them to Hyundai). I guess was surprised to see non US-based ownership because I had always assumed the US government had some interest in the core technology.
Funniest thing is that is Hyundai the carmaker and not Hyundai the robot maker.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#129I, for one, welcome our new dancing robot overlords.
I'm glad that I'll get to witness a live ED-209 in my lifetime.
Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Goofing off, most likely. I haven't really thought of a use case for the home, although there's literally dozens of them. I actually wonder if it could function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped with work to do so. The thought of attaching a leash to my dog and the leash to Spot while I'm indisposed is actually kind of attractive. I would have to make sure my dog has already do…
I wonder, would the time spent programming and integrating all this be less than just walking the dog? For me, this would defeat the purpose of having my dogs my our life. Having worked in robotics quit a bit this is a common trap. There are plenty of things that we can think of for a robot to do, but most of them would require more concessions, programming and maintenance time than it takes to just do the task, or h…
> The value prop just isn't there until our ability to control, program and integrate these complex robots (cobot stuff) gets better.
When you ultimately drill down to brass tacks though, you're left with a chicken and egg scenario. We need better programming and integration for this to be time-effective. We need more time programming and more time integrating for this to be a value proposition.
You don't get there without some idiot like myself saying, "I could spend 1000 hours walking with my dog... or I could spend 1000 hours programming my robot to walk my dog..."