It was all fun and games at first. Then the second robot came into the picture. I went LOL. Then Spot came into the picture, and my heart skipped a beat. Then the velociraptor on wheels came into the picture, and I just lost it. I think my brain just melted down. Next stop: Guns. Lots of guns. Time to be afraid. Very afraid.
The velociraptor on wheels is a good name.
I shudder to think what war variant machines will resort to when they are running low on ammo.
Looks like Atlas may have had an accident during filming, there's a hydraulic fluid stain on the floor: https://youtu.be/fn3KWM1kuAw?t=163 And it must also be said that these are preprogrammed maneuvers on a closed course...
> there's a hydraulic fluid stain on the floor: The robot equivalent of performance anxiety.
luckily it doesn't wear pants, that could've been embarrassing
If I didn't know who Boston Dynamics was, I would have said that this is just CGI. The animations look so fake. I think the issue is that they're aggressively smoothing the motion since mechanical systems don't have the ability to accelerate & jerk as fast as biological systems. Cheap mocap animation has the same problem because the frame rate of the capture system is too low. They interpolate between captured keyfra…
sound would help, and maybe someone can dig up the real audio version if it is available. because hearing those engines roar and servos buzz, you appreciate there is indeed more going on than meets the eye
If I didn't know who Boston Dynamics was, I would have said that this is just CGI. The animations look so fake. I think the issue is that they're aggressively smoothing the motion since mechanical systems don't have the ability to accelerate & jerk as fast as biological systems. Cheap mocap animation has the same problem because the frame rate of the capture system is too low. They interpolate between captured keyfra…
Agree that if anyone except BD put out this video I’d bin it as fake immediately. I still have a hard time saying I believe it - it feels like such a jump from where my mental model of their robots was and CGI is so good at this point that it feels easier for this to be a fake than real.
Same, and I've been working with some of the latest and greatest collaborative and industrial six-axis and SCARA robots. There's definitely a back and forth between innovation and legacy in this industry. For example, FANUC famously refuses to deprecate or drop service for any of its equipment, you'll pay through the nose for some of it but they're willing to keep you supplied with parts, service, and bug fixes for 40-year-old equipment if you've got it. Also, a lot of it is clearly designed for "what's the most we can get an average maintenance tech to understand after a 40-hour certification class", not for programmers and engineers. But with a demo like this, it's obvious that BD is working on a level that the industrial automation competition won't reach for decades.
It's all fun and games until they install the guns on these things.
It's a shame I can't look at this amazing tech without thinking the same thing. I suspect in reality future soldiers will wish they were fighting these instead of what I assume is more likely in a swarm of flying grenades, though.
We don't need to have full AI to have "death bots".
Do you have a source for that? I’m genuinely interested what kind of AI can act 100% autonomously on the battlefield.
I think he meant something of the sort of exploding drones are deadly and don't require that level of AI. and I guess if one of these bots ran towards you, you wouldn't be reluctant to dance with it, while it inconspicuously arms it's self-destruct mechanism. the future is here! STILL NO FLYING CARS.
If I didn't know who Boston Dynamics was, I would have said that this is just CGI. The animations look so fake. I think the issue is that they're aggressively smoothing the motion since mechanical systems don't have the ability to accelerate & jerk as fast as biological systems. Cheap mocap animation has the same problem because the frame rate of the capture system is too low. They interpolate between captured keyfra…
I would go further than that and say that it's obviously CGI, though I don't know if that actually means it is CGI - it could be, as you mentioned, some sort of post-processing. Or maybe it's greenscreened and composited together? More than the smoothness, there just seems to be something off about the weight and momentum that you tend to see in high-end, big-budget-movie CGI, but it's hard to put a definite finger o…
I think what happened is they used a fancy camera with a big lens and a 30 FPS frame rate, giving a very high quality image reminiscent of Hollywood films, but they set a faster shutter speed than Hollywood generally uses, giving less motion blur than is normal in high quality footage like this. The relative lack of motion blur despite the low frame rate gives it a jerky appearance similar to sped up or timelapse video, or animation. Combined with the slightly odd motion of the robots, it has an uncanny look.
It's kinda funny because most robot demo videos are sped up and/or CGI, but this one isn't.
If I didn't know who Boston Dynamics was, I would have said that this is just CGI. The animations look so fake. I think the issue is that they're aggressively smoothing the motion since mechanical systems don't have the ability to accelerate & jerk as fast as biological systems. Cheap mocap animation has the same problem because the frame rate of the capture system is too low. They interpolate between captured keyfra…
> The animations look so fake.
Let’s talk about why it looks fake.
I think it comes from the use of hydraulics.
Biological muscle is way less linear (it works more like a second-order control system, where things often overshoot their target before dampening).
But one part of it may also be algorithmic: the robot’s Kalman filter (?) may correct for errors from sensor fusion much faster than a human would.
I would love a more informed opinion than mine though.
If I didn't know who Boston Dynamics was, I would have said that this is just CGI. The animations look so fake. I think the issue is that they're aggressively smoothing the motion since mechanical systems don't have the ability to accelerate & jerk as fast as biological systems. Cheap mocap animation has the same problem because the frame rate of the capture system is too low. They interpolate between captured keyfra…
I would go further than that and say that it's obviously CGI, though I don't know if that actually means it is CGI - it could be, as you mentioned, some sort of post-processing. Or maybe it's greenscreened and composited together? More than the smoothness, there just seems to be something off about the weight and momentum that you tend to see in high-end, big-budget-movie CGI, but it's hard to put a definite finger o…
Change playback speed to 50% and it looks more realistic. That's probably realtime and they sped up the video.