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Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

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Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#41

Post by melling »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #32
melling wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they against militarizing robots? It pays the bills. They could start with consumers or business but it's harder to build a market. This makes it harder to fund further development. Once the technology is developed by anyone for non-military use, transitioning to the military is easy. There's not some magic that prevents consumer developed technology from reaching the battlefield.

I think it's just a principle thing. The founders built Google on a policy of "Don't be evil", and war-robots may be considered evil depending on your own perspective.

My point is that you are still building war-robots, you just aren't getting paid for it. The military will just pay someone else to build the military version.

In 2015, we made great progress in identifying a person with a gun:

http://www.bidnessetc.com/59108-microsoft-corporation-beats-...

Bet this technology soon makes it into drones.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#42

Post by JabavuAdams »

lmm wrote: post #6
homerowilson wrote: post #2

There are these things called "mules." They're quiet, can carry about 200lbs., and can refuel themselves as they go by eating grass and drinking water...

The logistics of keeping them fed and watered, having trained handlers, and treating them for injuries are nontrivial. And they're prone to unhelpful reactions in a firefight. There are good reasons they've largely been displaced by motor vehicles. Combining the go-anywhere ability of legged propulsion with the advantages of motor transport seems like a good enough idea to merit study.

Much easier than the logistics of keeping a robot operational in the field. You don't care whether the Taliban captures your flesh and blood mule, but you really don't want them capturing your world's-most-advanced robotic mule.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#43

Post by melling »

ceejayoz wrote: post #40
melling wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they against militarizing robots? It pays the bills. They could start with consumers or business but it's harder to build a market. This makes it harder to fund further development. Once the technology is developed by anyone for non-military use, transitioning to the military is easy. There's not some magic that prevents consumer developed technology from reaching the battlefield.

> Why are they against militarizing robots? It pays the bills. Because money isn't everything? > There's not some magic that prevents consumer developed technology from reaching the battlefield. That doesn't mean you're required to actively help it along.

You are actively helping it along, you simply lack the ability to connect the dots.

Over the next 10 years, the military should fund building World Cup robotic soccer teams so people such as yourself can feel comfortable with the non-military technology. In year 11, they can add the weapon.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#44

Post by grogenaut »

Animats wrote: post #33
jt2190 wrote: post #18

For those who don't understand the U.S. military funding process: This is being shelved because there isn't money to continue work, not because of a fundamental problem with the technology. [1] It's more of a "We'd LOVE to give you this cool thing... Too bad we don't have any money to work on it. Oh well!" [1] The article mentions that they built a quieter version of the robot that carried less. More interesting were…

BigDog's power pack was originally a constant speed gasoline engine driving a hydraulic pump and an electrical generator. That's the noisy engine in the earlier videos. The LS3 was supposed to have a new, quieter power pack developed with a small variable-speed Diesel engine. That was subcontracted out by Boston Dynamics. This is as good as it ever got: [1] It still sounds like a dirt bike. The hydraulic system used…

One big drawback not called out to electric is you have to power it to have it hold still. Hydraulic can just leave a valve closed which may or may not require power.

Then again just have it "sit". This may not be the best tactically though in small group engagements as "sit" is movement and freeze is dead stop.

I'll let people who know more about that debate it though.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#45

Post by gene-h »

jarmitage wrote: post #14

Can anyone in robotics weigh in on whether new approaches like pneubotics / otherlab [0, 1] make Boston Dynamics' super heavy/noisy/expensive robots irrelevant or not? That's what Saul Griffith has been saying at least [2], I'd like to hear an impartial take on it [0] http://www.pneubotics.com/ [1] https://otherlab.com/projects [2] "[...] we're the only game in town." 21:00 onwards https://youtu.be/gyMowPAJwqo?t=1263

In my opinion, I don't think inflatable robots are very practical.(except for niche applications)

One of the most important things in robotics is reliability, the more work your robot does before breaking down or needing maintenance the more money it makes you. In industrial robot arms the gold standard for this is a Mean Time Between Failures of more than 100,000 hours. That's more than 10 years of continuous operation!

I am skeptical that inflatable robots will be able to last this long. The fabric/elastomer combo is certainly not going to last through 10 years of continuous operation. Sure this part may be cheap, but you still need expensive valving and pneumatics to control said robot. Not to mention that maintenance costs money too. The payback period for robots is also shortening,

The other problem that pneumatic robots suffer from is that air is compressible. This means that moving it around to drive pneumatics is gonna be inefficient and that pneumatic structures aren't that rigid. Higher rigidity means higher resonant frequency which means your robot can operate faster without wobbling around. The inefficiency might be compensated for because the robot is so light, but I have yet to see any hard numbers on this.

This lack of rigidity is touted as a feature by the people who make inflatable robots. Because they are so light and aren't rigid they aren't going to hurt people if they fuck up. There are other ways to solve this problem that are currently used in the robotics industry. One of them is to put a spring on every link in the robot, which is what the Baxter robot does. Another is to make the robot as light as possible and limit speed which is what one of Kuka's human safe robots does[0]. Better control also fixes this problem, if you don't hit the human then you don't have any problem.

But there might be niche applications. Maybe they will find use in the medical field where having anything rigid touch a human is unacceptable or where you need a weird shape to grab a human on a bed. Entertainment might be another, a while back a japanese company made giant inflatable robots for parades.

[0] http://www.phriends.eu/URAI_08.pdf

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#46

Post by jonmrodriguez »

grogenaut wrote: post #44
Animats wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BigDog's power pack was originally a constant speed gasoline engine driving a hydraulic pump and an electrical generator. That's the noisy engine in the earlier videos. The LS3 was supposed to have a new, quieter power pack developed with a small variable-speed Diesel engine. That was subcontracted out by Boston Dynamics. This is as good as it ever got: [1] It still sounds like a dirt bike. The hydraulic system used…

One big drawback not called out to electric is you have to power it to have it hold still. Hydraulic can just leave a valve closed which may or may not require power. Then again just have it "sit". This may not be the best tactically though in small group engagements as "sit" is movement and freeze is dead stop. I'll let people who know more about that debate it though.

> you have to power it to have it hold still

Is it common to work around this by supplementing the electric motor with a disc brake?

Depending where you want to be on the tradeoff between complexity vs energy-efficiency, you could use a hydraulically-powered disc brake in order for the brake to not need power except during state transitions.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#47

Post by deathhand »

These will be turned into mounted auto targeting gun platforms if they haven't been already. This is the 2nd time reading about this topic so the DOD PR team is in full spin. This might be a intelligence counter-measure to show the world 'see we dont want to use this tech!' when in reality it has been taken over into black ops world.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#48

Post by varjag »

outside1234 wrote: post #8

is it range anxiety that drives using a gas motor versus battery pack and solar panels?

It takes more energy per mile for a walker versus a car, so apparently batteries are ruled out so far.

Solar is not an option in practical transportation. The energy yield per surface area is way too low.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#49

Post by jonmrodriguez »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #42
lmm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logistics of keeping them fed and watered, having trained handlers, and treating them for injuries are nontrivial. And they're prone to unhelpful reactions in a firefight. There are good reasons they've largely been displaced by motor vehicles. Combining the go-anywhere ability of legged propulsion with the advantages of motor transport seems like a good enough idea to merit study.

Much easier than the logistics of keeping a robot operational in the field. You don't care whether the Taliban captures your flesh and blood mule, but you really don't want them capturing your world's-most-advanced robotic mule.

Is it common for military electronics to have a self-destruct feature to protect technology secrets?

E.g., when damaged beyond repair or abandoned in a hasty retreat, the hardware could ignite a little thermite to incinerate the electronics boards.

Re: Marine Corps Shelves Futuristic Robo-Mule Due to Noise Concerns

#50

Post by dingaling »

homerowilson wrote: post #2

There are these things called "mules." They're quiet, can carry about 200lbs., and can refuel themselves as they go by eating grass and drinking water...

> and can refuel themselves as they go by eating grass and drinking water...

Try finding 30 litres of water and 8 kg of grass ( plus a portion of salt ) per mule per day, minimum, in the mountains of Afghanistan.

To move 90 kg of payload? There are many more efficient methods.

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