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An electric new era for Atlas

bostondynamics.com

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Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#361

Post by defrost »

pants2 wrote: post #360
delfinom wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self replicating humanoid robots sound like I should start researching the building of electromagnetic weaponary for the coming war.

In theory, what's the best way to take out a robot like Atlas (or next year's more advanced military model)? It seems like they could be made electromagnetically shielded, waterproof, bulletproof, etc. Maybe just armor piercing rounds fired in the right spot? A net? A special taser? A paintball to it's main cameras? Cover it in some gluey substance?

Run over with a haulpak should pretty much clean one up.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#362

Post by ryandrake »

kaba0 wrote: post #329
serf wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely about complexity. Complexity always allows companies to explain why they should be the only hands that touch something, lest a laymen fumbles it.

Could you materially affect a half-century old internal combustion engine? Sure. Can you do so after decades of miniaturization/optimization, to make it as efficient as they are today? Mobiles are similar, they are filled to the brim with various electronics, connected together into a huge mash. why would you even expect to fix that?

OK so why don't these companies let the users try? If you are right, they won't be able to do it anyway, so no harm done. Why do companies use every technical and legal trick in the book to prevent people from even trying? It's obviously about what makes the company more money.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#363

Post by hanniabu »

lanternfish wrote: post #311
jvanderbot wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone point out where "powered rollerskates" are strictly worse than legs in civilized urban human environments, to an extent that a few extra hundred billion dollars of R&D are warranted? The "approximate capabilities" of a human are: moving around, and picking things up / fine manipulation. Wheels + arms does that just fine, and eliminates a lot of power, complexity, fragility. And it also potentially adds. T…

The obvious answer is stairs. It seems like right now Spot is getting the most use as a highly mobile camera platform for automated inspection in industrial environments. Many of these have a lot of stairs.

And non hard/flat surfaces like carpet, grass, gravel, mud...

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#364

Post by hanniabu »

jiminymcmoogley wrote: post #336
coffeebeqn wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did say it’s for commercial use. Probably for warehouses and such where sadly backflipping is not relevant

see what i find puzzling is that warehouses have flat floors right? so what benefit does the upfront cost of building something with a bunch of extra actuators for all the joints in 2 legs, and the ongoing running costs of far less mechanically efficient bipedal locomotion have over wheeled movement like their other robot, the Handle, offers? i should mention i know nothing about robots so i'm sure there must be a go…

> warehouses have flat floors right

"Flat"... with a bunch of cracks, joints, pallet chips, and other debris

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#365

Post by theossuary »

delfinom wrote: post #355
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally standing in front of a proprietary Fanuc industrial 6-axis arm waiting for Roboguide at the moment... this is already a wide scale industry and shows low probability to trend towards open and repairable technology. There have been some efforts for vendor-agnostic robot software like RoboDK and other warehouse execution systems, but the default is proprietary vendor software. It would be nice for society if…

Personal experience. Fanuc robots are straight forward to service, they make the parts very available to do it yourself if you want. We order them here and there no problem. But they are beasts and it can take an entire day just to replace a part. Then you have to reassemble it in the right order. None of it is made difficult on purpose. It has tight tolerances, and fancy shit like harmonic drives for zero backlash a…

I don't know. I remember trying to get lower level servo metrics out of Fanuc arms into a historian and they laughed and said they had their own preventative maintenance service I could sign up for; but they wouldn't expose the same info to me to use.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#366

Post by drusepth »

tivert wrote: post #55

The VCs said "don't be afraid," AI wasn't going to be Skynet. Rather it would a tool that would bring about a utopia of human flourishing. But it was always going to be Skynet. I bet the next version will have teeth.

To be fair, teeth would help it pre-chew food for humans.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#367

Post by drusepth »

chasd00 wrote: post #277
nebula8804 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX has one for what I imagine is PR purposes. [1]: https://youtu.be/aajbFO7xwBM?t=36

They use flying drones all the time, you can see them flying around in the Starbase live streams. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that a flying drone can't do but spot would be able to do at Starbase. Unless Spot can crawl into a pipe or tank maybe.

Anything that involves adding weight to the robot (e.g. carrying something from point A to point B) seems like something more suited for Spot than a camera drone.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#368

Post by neom »

Invictus0 wrote: post #348
neom wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imho, Nobody does capitalism better than the Americans the South Koreans, and the Japanese(I guess because of the lack of natural resource in their geographies for KR/JP?). I've been privileged enough to build in those countries for an extended period of time, and work with builders in many other countries. I strongly believe nobody bruit forces ideas into existence better than them, they make the resources happen in…

Japan, the country whose GDP hasn't grown in 30 years, has 0 major tech companies, still uses fax machines for everything, and has numerous stagnant, conglomerates/trusts/monopolies, does capitalism really well? I feel like this comment comes from another planet.

How are you thinking about the application of capitalism and capitalism more generally?

Here is the definition I'm working from: "private ownership of capital and means of production meets market competition, driving resource efficiency, innovation, and maximizing profit while respond to consumer demand resulting in GDP growth."

If you take that definition then look at the last 100 years, only 4 names come up:

Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. No countries in the world in the last 100 years have applied capitalism, then grown, the way those countries have.

I'd be curious how you define capitalism, and then the countries you think have applied it better than the ones I've mentioned in my posts on this subject.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#370

Post by Klaus23 »

modeless wrote: post #231

Does anyone else think the joints seem stiffer than the hydraulic version? The head and torso are receiving a lot of shock forces with each step. That seems like a downgrade from the previous one. It clearly has a much larger range of motion and if it is also stronger as claimed then I can't wait for the acrobatics videos that are surely coming. But I think the most exciting thing is that it has hands from the start.…

They may be using very high ratio gearboxes to get the torque they need out of the limited space available, which makes them less backdrivable.
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