That video is Cirque de Soleil meets The Mitchells vs the Machines.
An electric new era for Atlas
381–390 of 443 posts
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
...and Hong Kong, until it was returned to communist China.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
This is a bad analogy because the hardware in engines of today is actually not that different or hard to work on fundamentally, but manufacturers do intentionally lock down software to make diagnostics very tricky. They became more efficient and complex, but people still hack on even the most modern engines, usually by tossing the OEM software. Aftermarket ECUs (even the open source ones like rusEFI and speeduino) sh…
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Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#384So as robots became more capable and less contained (like current industrial robot arms). What novel tools/techniques there are to stop misbehaving robot?
Will casting a net stop robot like this or do you have to somehow dismember it?
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
This doesn't look like a rendered video to me at all. I'm not enough of an expert to point to specific reasons, but the lighting, reflections, shadows, etc just seem 100% real to me. I feel it in my gut. You apparently disagree? Was there something in the video you think marks it out as CGI? Or do we just have differing gut instincts about it?
> the lighting, reflections, shadows, etc just seem 100% real to me. I feel it in my gut. I’m the exact opposite. My gut says it’s rendered. The graininess, the odd chromatic aberrations, the shadows that are too clean, the “head” being way too physically clean (like if the modellers got sloppy with the thousands of pieces), something odd about the fps of the robot vs the fos of the background, and there’s something…
The new video might help you see it.
It is a bit funny though, the company renowned for walking robots posts a video of a robot walking and many people just can't believe it.
To me it was way more surprising that they got walking (and more) working with hydraulics, a much more unwieldy and heavy technology than servos and batteries. This is obviously more refined but perhaps to me, a little less surprising and so definitely believable.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their press release actually says electric atlas is more powerful. Though I wonder if that's higher peak torque, and not so much explosive power required for jumps. A commercial robot doesn't need to do parkour.
In that case the question is why did they use hydraulics in the first place.
Here is a quote from Ben Katz [1], who wrote a dissertation on building the mini-Cheetah at MIT, before joining Boston Dynamics:
"The hydraulic legged robots from Boston Dynamics, starting with Big Dog, have set the standard for the performance capabilities of modern legged robots. Hydraulic actuators tend to have high force density and high robustness to impacts, as impact loads are distributed over the large surface area of the hydraulic channels, rather than, for example several small gear teeth. Another compelling reason to use hydraulics, especially for high degree-of-freedom machines, is the relative ease of adding high-force degrees of freedom. For an electric motor driven robots, each actuator needs to be sized for its peak performance, which makes building systems with many degrees of freedom needing high peak power and force at all the joints (and especially at distal joints) very challenging. With a hydraulic system, it is easier to build high-force distal links (ankles, wrists, fingers, etc) without adding significant mass and inertia to the limbs."
[1] https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/118671/105734...
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#387Earlier 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…
You are absolutely right. And this is reflected in the choice of robots deployed in warehouses.
For example, Amazon uses hundreds of thousands of simple wheeled floor-jack like robots to move the shelves around [1], and they started doing this many years ago.
Meanwhile, they have only a handful of humanoid robots, on experimental basis, trying to decide if they are useful [2].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULswQgd73Tc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8IdbodRG14
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#388That first video of the bot standing from the floor and turning towards the camera one joint at a time does something strange to the uncanny valley horror movie part of my brain.
Funny, because Data (from Star Trek) mentions that his joints can move like that but he refrains because it disturbs humans.
Source?
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#389FANUC robots are the dominant species across the world.
Boston Dynamics robots have good marketing, but are yet to make a profit for their owners.
Re: An electric new era for Atlas
#390FANUC robots are the dominant species across the world. Boston Dynamics robots have good marketing, but are yet to make a profit for their owners.
What about KUKA? In Europe they seem to be quite dominant although I don't have numbers.