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DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

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Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#81

Post by eli_gottlieb »

speeder wrote: post #56
lmg643 wrote: post #13

Terminator has always been one of my favorite movies, and reality has an uncanny way of getting us closer and closer to the fantasy. We justify this new technology in the same way - "it's for our protection"! Dictators run into trouble when the armies decide they won't attack a local population because, hey, it's their families and friends we're talking about. Robots eliminate that pesky detail. Imagine how a secessi…

One day my dad spotted me playing Mech Warrior, and asked: "Why bipedal war machines? That is stupid, just push them over and they now are useless." After that, I never figured why someone would build a bipedal war machine, even though I still have my nerdgasms watching all the mecha anime, movies and games... Anyone has a idea of why the hell someone would build a bipedal war machine?

No, octopedal is plainly better -- especially given people's fears of spiders.

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#82

Post by eli_gottlieb »

MrBra wrote: post #51
Lambdanaut wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're joking, but what you just said would make a great parody of the nuts over in that other thread that are hypothesizing that the NSA is possibly keeping 5D glass hard drive technology a secret from us.

classified nanorobot technology is no joke.

I certainly hope not! They're going to need it when Cyber-Cthulhu gets loose.

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#84

Post by eli_gottlieb »

taylodl wrote: post #31

We really need to ratify and institute Isaac Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics ) otherwise I'm afraid our future selves will regret it.

Just because it's a robot doesn't mean it's a Strong AI that would be capable of understanding the Three Laws.

(Let alone that the Three Laws are necessarily the best core ethical code to stick in your bipedal sentient robots.)

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#85

Post by seanlinmt »

speeder wrote: post #56
lmg643 wrote: post #13

Terminator has always been one of my favorite movies, and reality has an uncanny way of getting us closer and closer to the fantasy. We justify this new technology in the same way - "it's for our protection"! Dictators run into trouble when the armies decide they won't attack a local population because, hey, it's their families and friends we're talking about. Robots eliminate that pesky detail. Imagine how a secessi…

One day my dad spotted me playing Mech Warrior, and asked: "Why bipedal war machines? That is stupid, just push them over and they now are useless." After that, I never figured why someone would build a bipedal war machine, even though I still have my nerdgasms watching all the mecha anime, movies and games... Anyone has a idea of why the hell someone would build a bipedal war machine?

Hands? Being able to use tools like us humans would clearly be an advantage.

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#86

Post by SiVal »

speeder wrote: post #56
lmg643 wrote: post #13

Terminator has always been one of my favorite movies, and reality has an uncanny way of getting us closer and closer to the fantasy. We justify this new technology in the same way - "it's for our protection"! Dictators run into trouble when the armies decide they won't attack a local population because, hey, it's their families and friends we're talking about. Robots eliminate that pesky detail. Imagine how a secessi…

One day my dad spotted me playing Mech Warrior, and asked: "Why bipedal war machines? That is stupid, just push them over and they now are useless." After that, I never figured why someone would build a bipedal war machine, even though I still have my nerdgasms watching all the mecha anime, movies and games... Anyone has a idea of why the hell someone would build a bipedal war machine?

If you find someone who has built a bipedal war machine, you should ask them. In the meantime, these machines were designed for disaster recovery. The author of the article is imagining what an army of them would look like on a battlefield but states pretty clearly that that's not what these are being designed for.

If I were designing robots for battle, I would probably make them something like armed jackrabbits with wings designed to attack in swarms.

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#88

Post by jlgreco »

incision wrote: post #64
speeder wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One day my dad spotted me playing Mech Warrior, and asked: "Why bipedal war machines? That is stupid, just push them over and they now are useless." After that, I never figured why someone would build a bipedal war machine, even though I still have my nerdgasms watching all the mecha anime, movies and games... Anyone has a idea of why the hell someone would build a bipedal war machine?

>Anyone has a idea of why the hell someone would build a bipedal war machine? Off the top of my head... 1.) I'd have think there's something to bipedal locomotion considering the evolutionary success it has had. 2.) We're bipedal. As long as pilots we'd recognize as human are involved, having an analog to the kind of movement they've necessarily trained a lifetime for seems sensible.

Evolution does not necessarily always find the best solution. It can get stuck in local optima: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_s...

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#89

Post by robotresearcher »

speeder wrote: post #56
lmg643 wrote: post #13

Terminator has always been one of my favorite movies, and reality has an uncanny way of getting us closer and closer to the fantasy. We justify this new technology in the same way - "it's for our protection"! Dictators run into trouble when the armies decide they won't attack a local population because, hey, it's their families and friends we're talking about. Robots eliminate that pesky detail. Imagine how a secessi…

One day my dad spotted me playing Mech Warrior, and asked: "Why bipedal war machines? That is stupid, just push them over and they now are useless." After that, I never figured why someone would build a bipedal war machine, even though I still have my nerdgasms watching all the mecha anime, movies and games... Anyone has a idea of why the hell someone would build a bipedal war machine?

Pretty much all combat soldiers in history have been bipedal. "Just push them over" is not a great plan against the US Marine Corps, and probably wasn't great against a Roman legion.

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#90

Post by robotresearcher »

taylodl wrote: post #31

We really need to ratify and institute Isaac Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics ) otherwise I'm afraid our future selves will regret it.

The three laws worked really well as a literary device exactly because they are completely inadequate as an design / engineering / ethical tool. The stories are about the problems caused by the three laws, and how interesting they are. No one who has thought about it a bit, and certainly not Asimov, would seriously recommend them as an engineering solution.
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