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How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#61

Post by amelius »

unixhero wrote: post #27
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

She did an amazing job and is talented for sure. I still absolutely hate those robots. This won't end well.

People won't accept them on the streets, that's for sure.

Perhaps they'd have a chance if they used a different form factor, though.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#62

Post by amelius »

cbozeman wrote: post #7
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.

> There's nothing scary about these robots

How would you feel if the dance contained some choreographed "mow the people down" moves?

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#63

Post by ralfd »

cbozeman wrote: post #7
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.

They are more scary the same way a tiger is more scary than a cat even though both are Felidae.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#65

Post by jjbinx007 »

unixhero wrote: post #27
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

She did an amazing job and is talented for sure. I still absolutely hate those robots. This won't end well.

Without wishing to spoil anything, the robot video reminded me very much of the final scenes of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from a decade ago.

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#66

Post by anoncow »

jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

Art > Science

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#67

Post by amelius »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #25
aj7 wrote: post #15

Awful interview. Almost nothing of interest revealed.

I concur, I was hoping to see more detail on how they actually train Atlas to do things. Do they use a software simulator? Can it mimic a motion capture of a human? Is it rigged like a video game model?

> Do they use a software simulator?

“We used simulation to rapidly iterate through movement concepts while soliciting feedback from the choreographer to reach behaviors that Atlas had the strength and speed to execute. It was very iterative—they would literally dance out what they wanted us to do, and the engineers would look at the screen and go ‘that would be easy’ or ‘that would be hard’ or ‘that scares me.’”

—Aaron Saunders, Boston Dynamics

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#68

Post by [deleted] »

cbozeman wrote: post #7
jessep wrote: post #2

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference…

There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.

[deleted]

Re: How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance

#69

Post by rendall »

wiz21c wrote: post #49
rendall wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some hints with this excerpt: "Atlas’ current dance performance uses a mixture of what we like to call reflexive control, which is a combination of reacting to forces, online and offline trajectory optimization, and model predictive control. We leverage these techniques because they’re a reliable way of unlocking really high performance stuff, and we understand how to wield these tools really well. We haven…

"offline trajectory optimization" this doesn't sound good... I read this as : "we've made those robots do things they won't be able to do autonomously thanks to massive amounts of offline optimization". Sure it's impressive, but I wonder how it helps the casual viewer to get an idea of what these robots can actually do. One could say that's the whole point of PR but... It sure helped BD engineer to push their robots…

Personally, I like seeing these baby steps and starts. As you and the article pointed out, this initiative let them see what they need to do before they can get to a purely autonomous dancing robot. Exciting times
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