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Extreme parkour with legged robots

extreme-parkour.github.io

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Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#71

Post by BWStearns »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #62
fuelfive wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see our universities making progress in this important area of national security.

What a naive statement. Do you really believe no other nation is capable of making such a thing? This doesn’t improve our national security at all. Just ups the ante for robotic infantry, whatever the hell that ends up meaning. Like advancements in war technology has ever been a positive in the world.

> Like advancements in war technology has ever been a positive in the world

Yeah, screw GPS, trauma surgery improvements and better prosthetics, IFF systems, radar/sonar, Internet, ToR, Epipens, and duct tape. /s

Really, I get having a generally anti-war position and wanting to spend money on other shit but pretending like there are no positive externalities to defense spending is childish.

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#73

Post by ctoth »

nightpool wrote: post #3

As a reminder: CMU and its robotics program is intimately associated with the US Department of Defense, and although there are certainly civilian applications for this technology, one of the most likely short-term applications is improving legged drones for battlefield deployment (often, it should be said, in humanitarian roles, including search and rescue, or support roles, such as ammo, food, and water resupply, bu…

This isn't the only time someone has written "armed legged" on the Internet, but according to Google it's definitely one of not many.

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#74

Post by beachy »

jiggawatts wrote: post #57
sbierwagen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artillery exists. Delivering explosive payloads is a solved problem. Detecting humans is a solved problem. The hard part is reliably distinguishing enemy solders from friendly soldiers or civilians.

Artillery is surprisingly inefficient. It takes about 15 rounds of 155mm artillery per battlefield casualty. Each shot costs about $5k. Robots like this might cost the same as a single artillery shot but have the ability to get multiple kills each. It’s a cold arithmetic, but I guarantee you someone at DARPA is thinking and planning the future of warfare in these terms.

I thought you must be wrong - $5K for a dumb arty round?

But some googling indicates this is about right, and prices have even gone up since the Russian invasion.

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#75

Post by croes »

gumby wrote: post #64
croes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, how does this improve national security? That's offense not defense. It worsens the national security of your opponent but doesn't strengthen your own.

That seems like a rather limited view of the word "defense", more appropriate to football or hockey than warfare. Even for that you could have these drones patrolling the territory/shooting intruders. But the word "defense" is much wider than that. Is the US supplying offensive weapons to Ukraine contributing to the national defense? Even if you feel the US should not be doing that, I hoe you can see the logic of peo…

>But the word "defense" is much wider than that. Is the US supplying offensive weapons to Ukraine contributing to the national defense?

In a war the line between offense and defense is blurred but the national security is at level zero.

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#76

Post by saulpw »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #66
roenxi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This tech is the stuff of nightmares. People are going to see this unfeeling little chitinous bug-dog-thing crawling in with them, then they die. And it is making it cheaper to kill people in exotic foreign lands. This is the tragedy of the commons. I'd rather see nobody making these advances, but if someone has to it'd better be people on my side. Can't stop progress :(

Maybe there's a glimmer of hope that someday both sides can send their robots to destroy one another, instead of their sons and daughters? I agree that initially there's an advantage to richer nations, but it's not like a $30M jet fighter, there could be parity.

That's not how it's going to work. There's no point in taking out a relatively cheap robot that can be replaced in a day, when you can take out a person that will take 20 years to be replaced.

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#77

Post by croes »

XorNot wrote: post #53
croes wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, how does this improve national security? That's offense not defense. It worsens the national security of your opponent but doesn't strengthen your own.

What do you think defense actually is in the current technological era? You don't defend territory with static defense's or force fields or walls.

Yeah, but do you think these technology can't be copied by others?

Drones and robots made attacks easier, did that help national security?

Countries like Russia or China won't attack because of nuclear weapons but groups like ISIS don't care.

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#78

Post by ShamelessC »

Animats wrote: post #42

" A single neural net policy operating directly from a camera image, trained in simulation with large scale RL, can overcome imprecise sensing and actuation to output highly precise control behavior end-to-end. " So that's what it takes. That's so much simpler than the way Boston Dynamics does it, working out all the dynamics in simulation first. It's amazing to see this done from vision to actuators in one net. It's…

Doesn’t the use of RL here imply some level of simulation?

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#79

Post by lukevp »

It’s pretty incredible how animalistic its behaviors are becoming (hesitating for a moment at the edge of a lip, coiling it’s back legs for increased actuation, and when it almost misses the high jump and moves its back leg really fast multiple times to give itself a tiny boost each time until it recovers). Is that because it’s trained on animal behaviors? Or is this emergent behavior and animals just also do it more or less optimally already?

Re: Extreme parkour with legged robots

#80

Post by lukevp »

nmca wrote: post #65

Whilst a lovely achievement, this title definitely overstates current robot abilities. Here is some human parkour for contrast: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QHqAVaQqQWQ&t=106s

The difference being each human has to spend thousands of hours learning that level of control over their bodies, and work hard to maintain that level of physical fitness. And if they fall off the roof, millions of dollars of potential earnings and GDP die with them. Whereas these robots are only $70k, and once one of them can do this, they all can do it. Just like with Chess and Go. It’s not impressive at first, then a couple years later, it’s better than humans could ever be, and it can be cheaply replicated ad infinitum.
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