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An electric new era for Atlas

bostondynamics.com

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Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#411

Post by meindnoch »

boo-ga-ga wrote: post #406
meindnoch wrote: post #405

This moves like a real robot. In contrast, the Figure 01 video was clearly a fake one ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq1QZB5baNw ).

Why do you think that was fake?

Low quality motion. The robot's movements have no inertia. Too smooth, too artificial. Like how video game characters move without motion capture.

There's also too much ambient occlusion in the rendering, but they were careful with the materials and the scene that it looks somewhat plausible.

Compare it with an actual video of their real robot: https://youtu.be/48qL8Jt39Vs?si=Kkb7oTnYf-GllRJv

The difference in the movements is clearly visible.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#412

Post by ben_w »

koolba wrote: post #407
ben_w wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing "no more jobs" in the "worry" list is surprising. State pensions exist, and the only reason the pension ages are rising is not enough workers to pay for them; having so many robot workers that there is no demand for human labour* would lower the "pension" age down to zero, AKA "UBI". * which definitely requires human level general AI at fairly low electrical power demand

> having so many robot workers that there is no demand for human labour* would lower the "pension" age down to zero, AKA "UBI" Why would the super villains operating these armies of human-capable robots bother paying into an upside down pension system? At the very least they can defend themselves from the torch wield masses with even more robots.

> Why would the super villains operating these armies of human-capable robots bother paying into an upside down pension system?

Because the governments will, in order of effort needed for compliance, fine them, eminent domain their robots, arrest them, shoot them for resisting arrest, or fire a cruise missile into their secret volcano lair.

Also because if you have a self replicating robot army, you can give every man, woman, and child their own personal O'Neill cylinder and still have 99% of Venus left over, let alone the remainder of the solar system's resources.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#413

Post by matthewfelgate »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #252

I would love to see how well it does the simple job of sweeping and cleaning floors with a broom and dust pan. This is such a wicked and non-trivial task that it would be a good indicator of overall progress.

Didn't someone say that a basic test of if humanoid robots are useful if they pass the garbage test: can they take out the garbage in an average American house.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#414

Post by Corrado »

jvanderbot wrote: post #308
Animats wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work that way. Hydraulic systems have very little "give", unless you put a hydraulic accumulator (an air tank with a fluid/air barrier) in the system. Electric motors have plenty of "give". Forcing a motor to turn backwards won't hurt it. The gear train is usually the weak point. As motors and controllers have improved, robot gear reduction ratios have decreased, which reduces the load on the gear train an…

I stand corrected! Thank you. I'm still mostly convinced that harvesting the energy and re-using it ala elastic tendons is a decently good idea. But probably far too complex.

Actually, that's a pretty good idea. Regenerative motion. Sort of like regenerative braking in an EV, they could capture some electricity with each step to help reduce the energy requirements.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#415

Post by some_random »

threeseed wrote: post #317
Tarq0n wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korean society and government are deeply co-opted by an oligopoly of wealthy families. While that leads to a great environment for safe investment, I'll gladly give it up for a more egalitarian society. You doubtlessly know more about life in South Korea than I do, but i found this video [0] and its sequel [1] very enlightening. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Im4YAMWK74&t=1050s 1: https://www.youtube.com/w…

To be fair the situation isn't that much better in most Western countries. Murdoch family for example has huge influence in US, UK and Australia.

That simply is not true, you do not understand the amount of influence the Chaebols have over Korea.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#416

Post by robertlagrant »

chefandy wrote: post #313
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.

That's different. Most PR justification of anti-consumer behavior deliberately avoids what the topic is really about to control public perception... While complexity is what the PR campaign is about, it's still really about control and artificially creating new revenue streams.

I don't think it's worth declaring what things are really about. There can be various factors involved. It's more likely to be it costs way more to make as nice a device that people want, that's also repairable. How many people would pay that premium when they're never going to service it anyway?

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#417

Post by robertlagrant »

rozap wrote: post #335
kaba0 wrote: post #329

Earlier 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…

They're much more complicated today. Much more. My Dad rebuilt the engine of our old Morris Minor, but even in the 1990s he would say he wouldn't have a hope of doing the same thing in a modern car.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#418

Post by quadsteel »

joshspankit wrote: post #334
sparky_z wrote: post #228

Earlier 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…

Nonsense, there's nothing here that betrays a CG look. This is very obviously real footage.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#419

Post by sitkack »

iandanforth wrote: post #388
sitkack wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, because Data (from Star Trek) mentions that his joints can move like that but he refrains because it disturbs humans.

Source?

I believe it was in "The Arsenal of Freedom", the episode where an entire planet wipes themselves out with autonomous weapons.
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