They also posted a farewell to the previous robot yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EM5_VFlt8 Looking forward to see some more robot parkour/dance
HN thread:
Boston Dynamics Retires Its Legendary Humanoid Robot
An electric new era for Atlas
131–140 of 443 posts
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#132Are there any Boston Dynamic robots currently in use? Specifically the biped ones, but I'm also interested in the quadrupeds, which they seemed to be pushing for military/search and rescue/packhorse uses.
The IDF has the quadrupeds and there has been some videos of them being deployed. Can't search Twitter for you, but if you have an account there you'll likely be able to find some examples.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#133OMG. When he got hydraulic lines raptured or severed his foot I felt like I was watching human being hurt. Insane.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#134A hill I'm willing to die on: bipedal robots are an evolutionary path that machines don't need to go down, we have lovely bearings and wheels that work perfectly with electric motors. Yes obviously there are limitations i.e. stairs and uneven terrain but there are wheeled/tracked solutions for those too Most of these robots will be used in factories that have very nice flat concrete floors
I think you're unnecessarily short-circuiting your imagination.
For one, there are many applications in dangerous environments that could benefit from the dexterity and ability of bipeds - rescue missions, mining, space walks, etc.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#135A hill I'm willing to die on: bipedal robots are an evolutionary path that machines don't need to go down, we have lovely bearings and wheels that work perfectly with electric motors. Yes obviously there are limitations i.e. stairs and uneven terrain but there are wheeled/tracked solutions for those too Most of these robots will be used in factories that have very nice flat concrete floors
The ultimate goal is to produce general-purpose robots. If we want robots that can do everything a human can, then legs are definitely useful. One simple example: getting in and out of a car. Another thing to consider is that a legged robot can tilt itself for balance while carrying heavy objects. To carry a similar weight with a wheeled robot you'll need a much wider wheel base. And then of course, if you want to bu…
Worth noting that none of this points exclusively to bipedalism. It's possible bipedalism is one of the more difficult ways to solve these problems.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#136Quite scary, but can't hold a candle to this one ;)
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#137I guess the big news is, that it runs on batteries
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#138That is a very good-looking robot and no doubt very capable. But did I see correctly that it can just turn it legs 180 degrees to move backwards, as well as it's head? Talk about super-human abilities! Bit creepy though
Very cool actuation indeed. I'm not in robotics, so this could be fan fiction, but: I guess they have figured out the physics engines for these things meaningfully, so I guess innovating on hardware can be the next focus? I feel like a lot of the early bots were just to understand the real word implications of the physics they simulated, now that they understand robot physics extremely well and seems to have built a…
I suspect that they have something like that indeed. In robotics, there is the concept of a Whole-body-controller, and I think BD has one of these for their robots, which can be calibrated for each individual robot.
And the tools & skills to make such a controller for new robot variants fairly quick.
Such WBC then makes sure that the robot reaches both it's task goals (eg. grab something, with 1, 2 arms), as well as it's (dynamic) stability goals so it doesn't fall over. They are also capable of choreographing the robot pretty accurately as we say in earlier videos. But what is most very impressive to me is the robot using the mass and momentum of things it grabs to keep stable or move itself. In one of the videos it grabs a big piece of wood and uses it to turn itself around while jumping. Amazing! Controlling that in terms of dynamics is... wow!
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we very much do. Robots are currently very expensive, so where do you want to send a robot that you can't use a worker? Probably somewhere at least potentially dangerous. You want to use the robot to inspect a tunnel in danger of collapse, or a factory that may be leaking a poisonous chemical out of a pipe. And in such cases you very much want something that can navigate obstacles about as well as a human. Yo…
drones, my friend
Even a tiny payload is very loud and high energy use
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ultimate goal is to produce general-purpose robots. If we want robots that can do everything a human can, then legs are definitely useful. One simple example: getting in and out of a car. Another thing to consider is that a legged robot can tilt itself for balance while carrying heavy objects. To carry a similar weight with a wheeled robot you'll need a much wider wheel base. And then of course, if you want to bu…
Why do I want a general purpose robot? I don't need one robot that does it all, I'm happy with a separate robots for washing my dishes, and vacuuming my floors. Sure both can be improved on, but they don't need to converge. In fact I'm glad those two are separate as I can let both of them run at the same time and get the work done faster, while a general purpose robot can only do one at a time. The goal is to make my…
You want a separate robotic appliance for every thing you want done? That sounds... hectic.
I'm also not sure it's important that laundry and dishes get done at the exact same time - if it is, you should probably do 1 of those tasks yourself - especially since a robot would be able to stuff at night, etc, giving it more time to complete tasks
Also, GP mentions stairs, and adding wheel support to that. So not only do you want a half dozen robits rolling around your home, you'll also need to remodel your home to support it.
Or, of course, we could develop bipedal robots, which seems to have little downside as compared to wheeled robots.