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An electric new era for Atlas

bostondynamics.com

431–440 of 443 posts

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#431

As we enter an era of wide scale robotic deployment, we need to think long and hard about what the maintenance bottleneck will look like. We need to advocate now for reliable and open upgrades, replacement parts, service documentation, and diagnostics. Right to repair will be even more important for this technology than autos or general computing.

Never mind right to repair, of all the advancements, maintaining the new machines has always been the obvious new job that gets created. We created the loom and fired everybody? Well now there's a loom engineer job waiting for (some) of you. What happens to society when, instead of having a robot-fixing job, the robots can fix themselves? AGI is a distraction; much like the Turing test turned out to be the wrong test…

Respect this opinion, but concerned that it's a limiting one.

In my opinion, repair and maintenance is the most commonly overlooked aspect of an automated system deployment. Scaling is impossible without efficient tools to fix problems when they occur, especially if the number of authorized service people is limited.

The more serviceability can be automated and standardized, the greater the number of areas that will benefit from widespread robotics.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#432

As we enter an era of wide scale robotic deployment, we need to think long and hard about what the maintenance bottleneck will look like. We need to advocate now for reliable and open upgrades, replacement parts, service documentation, and diagnostics. Right to repair will be even more important for this technology than autos or general computing.

Oregon model: https://www.opb.org/article/2024/03/28/oregon-governor-kotek... https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/Publ...

Thanks for the references.

> Under the law, companies that make cellphones and other consumer electronics are required to provide the tools and know-how to repair those devices.

1. Do you think the Oregon law fell short by not requiring industrial electronics to be repairable as well? 2. Will the proliferation of tools and know-how for repair be sufficient to meaningfully extend the life of most electronics? 3. Is legal mandate sufficient or necessary to motivate companies to open their chests to the public? Or is a voluntary movement possible that still rewards the stakeholders?

My hope is that projects like Atlas will be sustainable and prices eventually come down to commodity levels - say the price scale of cars. If people are empowered with tools to develop on these machines in a safe way, I think we could see a revolution similar to the cell phone or PC. My fear is that these machines will become just an extra inefficient automation step in an overpriced supply chain one-off application.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#433
post #141
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…

I live in Canada and have found many Canadians lacking drive, curiosity and will. Also far from being straight in business to the point they feel like politicians. In average dealing with USians was much more to my liking (I am originally from the USSR). There are of course exceptions on either side.

I felt this way in Europe too, excluding perhaps London.

A lot of people just seemed content and satisfied with their lot in life, without much ambition or drive to improve their position. Is that a good or bad thing? I honestly don’t know. In this point in my life, I don’t particularly like it. I love visiting Europe but would not want to live (and work) there. Maybe I’ll think differently when I’m older and or retired.

Versus the US and Asia where many people are trying to claw their way to the top. Obviously most will not get to the top, but many do end up improving their socioeconomic status to varying degrees.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right and in most of those countries even the capitalists want better educated and/or skilled people but in the USA there are some states where there are billionaires (Tim Dunn, et.al.) actively trying to retard public education efforts and force tax payers to pay for private religious schools and have the highest officials in the state trying to push the agenda. Texas for example. So the past isn't always a good pre…

I don’t know anything about this but have heard interesting theories about the govt, military recruiting and education in the US

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right and in most of those countries even the capitalists want better educated and/or skilled people but in the USA there are some states where there are billionaires (Tim Dunn, et.al.) actively trying to retard public education efforts and force tax payers to pay for private religious schools and have the highest officials in the state trying to push the agenda. Texas for example. So the past isn't always a good pre…

This is an aggressively bad-faith interpretation of what school-choice advocates are doing. All school choice does is give poor parents the same kind of school choice that rich parents have. If you're rich and the schools around you suck, you just move to a neighborhood with good schools! That means you pay taxes in that school district, which fund your kids schools. If you're poor and the schools around you suck, yo…

Go read up a bit up on Dunn and his fellows and what his objectives are for pushing religion in school and tell me that I'm exaggerating. What he's pitching will do nothing to help inner city or poor rural districts. Public schools work as there are many great examples of them, but they need good teachers, good policies, and public support from parents.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#436

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.

Woah we can’t ask for the impossible. We just want the robots to _make_ all the things that end up as garbage in the average American home.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Odd to get downvoted for adding my perspective on why it feels rendered.

Even more odd to get a response like this that has certainty without any facts or debate.

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#438
post #5

What's the best way/resource to get an honest/pragmatic view of where things stand with the "robots market" in general and how much and fast things are really progressing? I remember seeing prototypes from Toshiba when I was 10 (20 years ago), and every few months, there is a company releasing an "amazing video." its mother company then spins it off like there's no adequate progress, and so on.

I like the IEEE Spectrum Video Friday blog posts. A regular fresh list of demos is not an overview, but it is an easy way to catch a glimpse of the long tail.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/video-friday

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#439
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.

Nintendo is a tech company and hugely culturally relevant

Re: An electric new era for Atlas

#440
post #412
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ma…

Except pension age is already going up around the world.

I had to stop myself from laughing when I heard an old lady in a restaurant complain about not getting enough money from her pension. Sure, I wish she had more money too but at this rate I'll be retiring 15 years older than she was when she retired.

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