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Atlas robot does parkour

delgaudm 2021-08-17 16:10:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these techs converge I just feel melancholy, not optimistic. I feel like "AI Robot cops show implicit bias resulting in 3 deaths" or "Robot Cop shoots innocent person after facial recognition goes bad" or "Crowd Control Bots kill 55 at peaceful protest" - type headlines are the future here.

nostrademons 2021-08-17 16:25:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for military uses, so you're not wrong.

The weird thing is that the more I study history, the more I think that the real dystopia started a century (and perhaps a couple millenia) before I was born, and we're just so adapted to it that we think it's normal. Take the "[Ro]bot" out of your headlines and those would be headlines from today, and if you ignore that the media never bothered to report on those a century ago, they'd be headlines from a hundred years ago. We were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and then large numbers of us were killed in the wars that followed.

In some ways, this gives me a weird sort of hope that our descendants will welcome their robot overlords. In others, there's a melancholy foreboding that our descendants will welcome their robot overlords.

djrogers 2021-08-17 17:42:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> We were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and then large numbers of us were killed in the wars that followed.

We were depersonalized loooong before that - read up on the 30 years war, or any other conflict before the Industrial Revolution.

“Soldiers” of the time were mercenaries, many of whom were pressed in to ‘service’ when their village/town/farm was destroyed by said mercenary company. These mercenaries fought at the whims of princes and kings who squabbled over whims and privilege, and the princes and generals are the only ones who are remembered.

jjk166 2021-08-17 18:59:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sometimes we forget that the last 3-5 generations were the only humans in history for whom seeing a sibling die in childhood was not the norm. Instead of the industrial revolution dehumanizing us, for the first time ever we are raised from birth confident that we will live long and prosperous lives, that we need not kill nor fear being killed to live in this prosperity. Human life has become much more precious and cherished in modern times, not less. The middle of the 20th century was simply the last time that people who came of age before the massive improvement in living standards was in power in the western world.

411111111111111 2021-08-17 19:32:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

whats also easily forgotten is just how many people are alive right now.

the current estimate is that there have roughly been 105 billion birth since 50 000BC, with our current world population at almost 8 billion... about 8% of all humans that have ever lived are currently still alive.

bamboozled 2021-08-18 10:06:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What you're also forgetting is those huge numbers are often from countries where people probably do still watch their siblings die.

411111111111111 2021-08-18 17:11:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Your phrasing makes it sound as if most people alive have terrible living conditions and high early mortality... Which is incorrect.

The misery is pretty localized in Africa and some places in the middle east, which is less then 20% of the population.

Life could be better in a lot of places, but it's incomparably better to life under the churches in the dark ages for example.

beeboop 2021-08-18 00:20:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>we are raised from birth confident that we will live long and prosperous lives, that we need not kill nor fear being killed to live in this prosperity

Given the number of countries with mandatory military service, and the looming threat of the draft in countries that don't, this maybe isn't capturing the whole story.

xornox 2021-08-17 17:18:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Dystopia started when we invented farming 10 000 years ago.

X6S1x6Okd1st 2021-08-17 17:28:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yuval is that you?

I have some sympathy for this view, but there's also the fact that at this point we've basically solved hunger from a societal point of view.

Deprivation of calories from a population now happens because of war or intentional. At the current time we no longer are at the whim of natural causes of hunger.

int_19h 2021-08-19 08:32:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, it's not quite the same as saying that the invention of agriculture made the current state of affairs inevitable. There's a middle ground between historical determinism, and "anything goes" - some paths become more or less likely depending on how things go, but it's never a railroad.

So, I would agree with OP in that it started with invention of agriculture, in a sense that that gave rise to rigidly hierarchical societies, and centralized states that could extract surplus from their citizens and spend it on warfare and other forms of oppression. But we didn't have to take that route, and it doesn't mean that agriculture per se is bad.

PaulDavisThe1st 2021-08-17 18:05:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

But the reasonably reliable provision of calories via agriculture is what allows the size of stable societies to grow, and also what more closely tethers them to particular places.

As I^HYuval would say, those are the things that help start the long journey to the mess we're today.

X6S1x6Okd1st 2021-08-17 19:16:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

While I totally agree that it is necessary for the problems we have today, I disagree that it's obviously bad or necessarily creates many of these problems.

thendrill 2021-08-17 21:08:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Depends what you use as "life metric"... Is working 30 years in a tooth paste factory more fulfilling than living on the savanna and hunting then dying at the age of 36 from a broken leg?

I guess we will never know. Yet we keep making things and automating.

Yes, we have solved hunger. Yes we have solved boredom. We only have to solve sexual needs. Then basically we have automated ourselves out of the "human condition".... But why. What is the point?

mastax 2021-08-17 18:33:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I, too, hate not dying of intestinal parasites at 24.

ArtDev 2021-08-17 16:43:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

My favorite scifi series is the Polity Universe by Neal Asher.

The Polity are these benevolent AI that rule humanity after "The Quiet War". It is called that because not a single shot is fired because they just take control of all hightech weapons and technology one day.

The books would be considered utopian scifi if the rest of the universe wasn't so gritty. Which is why it is my favorite series.

noir_lord 2021-08-17 17:23:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The Culture is the future I want, the polity is the one I could accept.

Asher world builds literally better than anyone I know - his aliens feel truly alien.

The Hooder is straight out of nightmare fuel.

pcthrowaway 2021-08-18 00:52:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture for anyone who hasn't heard of it. Sounds like an unlikely, but possible future.

noir_lord 2021-08-18 07:34:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Aye which is why of the two I think the Polity would be the more likely outcome given human nature.

The Polity universe is technologically comparable to the Culture but in almost every other way darker, grittier and dirtier.

There are quite a few parallels between them though - enough that if you love one you'll at least like the other.

thefreeman 2021-08-17 17:42:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

what is the first book in this series?

gknoy 2021-08-17 18:21:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

From Neal Asher's Wikipedia page [0], you may consider starting with "Gridlinked" (2001). I've read 3/5 of the Agent Cormac series set in the Polity setting, starting with that book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Now I need to go read all the rest, apparently...)

The AI-ruling-humanity idea took a bit to warm up to. They do seem to be presented as benevolent overlords.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Asher#Bibliography

Cipater 2021-08-17 18:12:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Prador Moon

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1060548.Prador_Moon

exhilaration 2021-08-17 18:24:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Thank you, Audible link for the interested: https://www.audible.com/pd/Prador-Moon-Audiobook/B00F3HVM84

DonnyV 2021-08-17 18:19:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As soon as these robots are as maneuverable as people and even somewhat affordable for groups of hundreds to be made.

We're DONE!

The ultra rich and the Jeff Bezos of the world will buy them and return us to a world of Kings and Queens. Good luck trying to fight that.

RGamma 2021-08-17 21:07:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You might be too optimistic with your neofeudal society because it insinuates the existence of peasants.

They might select the cream of the crop, wipe the rest off the planet to restore it to pristine condition and live in infinite wealth forever.

Valgrim 2021-08-18 14:30:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Imagine being able to remote control a semi-autonomous humanoid robot on the moon, or on mars, on in the asteroid belt, or in LEO, with the same dexterity and adaptability as humans, or even insects, but without needing air or water or sleep. Artificial General Intelligence would not even be required for those. They could build giant cities hundreds of kilometers deep, industrial centers, operate mines and farms. All while being remote controlled from the comfort of earth.

The rich never needed robots to buy the police. There is more than enough people willing to be cruel and inhuman in exchange for lunch money and the feeling of superiority.

DonnyV 2021-08-18 15:04:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes but police have organizations that manage them that are ran by people that can be influenced or jailed for doing the wrong thing. Owning a robot army is a totally different level of power over people. Robots do exactly what their owners tell them to do and don't have a Union or any group to answer too.

rapind 2021-08-17 21:18:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What’s the difference between a king and a Bezos now?

inglor_cz 2021-08-18 08:43:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

People quit employment at Bezos' companies all the time. Just today an important figure at Blue Origin decided to leave and switch to another space startup.

That would be much harder in feudalism. Not outright impossible - if they were bored with you, they wouldn't object - but if the king wanted to keep you, it would be risky to defy him.

One of the reasons why Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy was such a hotbed of intellectual activity was that local nobles had only very limited reach. If you got into conflict with one prince, you could move 20 miles away and be under protection of somebody else. And that could be done almost overnight.

KineticLensman 2021-08-17 19:10:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for military uses

And the robo-donkey thing was trialled and rejected by USMC for use in the cargo carrying role - too noisy, needed to much direct control and other things

mrfusion 2021-08-17 16:31:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

When and how did the real dystopia start?

claudiulodro 2021-08-17 16:47:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Some would argue that it started with agriculture:

> According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation and social stratification.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

krona 2021-08-17 18:05:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

coercion, social alienation and social stratification.

As though sexual coercion, social ostracism and strict social hierarchy didn't exist beforehand. Take, for instance, the Chimpanzee.

imglorp 2021-08-17 17:06:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This sounds like it resonates with Ted Kaczynski's thesis.

PaulDavisThe1st 2021-08-17 18:06:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's not his. There are many thinkers of several different stripes who have reached similar conclusions about the implications of agriculture. Yuval Noah Harari is perhaps one of the most centrist and well known.

Zababa 2021-08-17 17:44:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You can actually see in the linked article that it's the opposite. He is mostly against "global" technology (technology at a larger scale than what you can make in a village for example).

scarecrowbob 2021-08-17 16:52:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, there are a lot of Ute folks around where I live, and as far as I can tell many of them think we are living at the end of the apocalypse.

beeboop 2021-08-18 00:17:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think it's rare, at least in the US, to find people who are aware of how fucked up capitalism is. Or have ever given any real thought to how ethical it is. But its atrocities are all around us in plain sight, every time someone dies from lack of healthcare, food, or shelter - or crimes and accidents that happen in the course of pursuing these essentials.

To live in a world perfectly capable (in a purely physical and logistical context) of providing necessities of living for everyone regardless of their output or decisions, but chooses not to, is pretty dystopian to me.

SamPatt 2021-08-18 02:08:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

We've seen multiple attempts at non-capitalist systems, and they have an abysmal track record.

Living standards are way higher today than a century ago.

You are comparing against a non-existent Utopia.

int_19h 2021-08-19 09:31:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Not quite. We've seen multiple attempts at the same non-capitalist system.

OTOH how many people are aware of Rojava or the Zapatistas, and their track record?

beeboop 2021-08-18 02:20:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Capitalism doesn't like non-capitalist systems. Any examples we possibly have of non-capitalist structures always have capitalist pressures exerted against them. To pretend that established powers have not consistently and aggressively tried to stamp out threats to capitalism is ridiculous.

>Living standards are way higher today than a century ago.

How much higher would they be without capitalism? Probably a lot.

>You are comparing against a non-existent Utopia.

I realize it doesn't exist, that doesn't mean it shouldn't, or that the reasons it doesn't aren't immoral and unethical.

We have a lot more examples of failed capitalist countries than failed communist ones. Failure cannot be directly linked to a country's economic system. It happens in both for a wide range of reasons.

CryptoPunk 2021-08-18 11:32:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>>To pretend that established powers have not consistently and aggressively tried to stamp out threats to capitalism is ridiculous.

I recommend you do more research on systems that have tried to eliminate money, private property and trade. While there has been some US intervention to disrupt them, as in the case of US backed coup attempts, funding of political and armed opposition, and sanctions, the totalitarianism and dysfunction they create is so extreme that there is doubt that anti-market systems are unnatural and unworkable.

>>We have a lot more examples of failed capitalist countries than failed communist ones.

Look at China before and after its 1978 market reforms, or East versus West Germany, or South versus North Korea.

We have socialists in the West, like Jacobin magazine founder Bhaskar Sunkara defending the Berlin wall, that was used to prevent people in East Germany from fleeing, and even the brutal murder of Czar Nicholas II's little children, to avoid admitting that socialism is harmful. Beware of who you believe.

narrator 2021-08-17 16:19:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The military will just use aerial drone slaughterbots. The Azerbaijanis did this in the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan war and it was a total blowout against 20th century tech.

Here's what I'm thinking the good future looks like: Let's say I have a big back yard and would like to have that be a productive farm. AI bot comes over, surveys the land, does soil tests, orders seeds, fertilizer and garden equipment off Amazon. Plants seeds, sets up permaculture, sets up irrigation, installs monitoring, goes next door, repeats for every house in the neighborhood. That's the kind of AI future I want to see. Software codifying knowledge of an experienced practitioner to manipulate the physical world in a way beneficial to humans.

handrous 2021-08-17 17:34:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> The military will just use arial drone slaughterbots. The Azerbaijanis did this in the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan war and it was a total blowout against 20th century tech.

It hadn't occurred to me that drones let despots wage high-tempo modern wars (at least, partially) without the associated risks (of devolved control) and costs (of very expensive training and equipment for your soldiers)—but they totally do. That's a pretty big deal. Wonder if we'll see 2nd-tier, regional powers gain influence through this effect, as they can afford quite good drone programs while weaker neighbors might not be able to.

djrogers 2021-08-17 17:47:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There’s already a drone/anti-drone arms race going on, with tech like microwaves, jammers, nets, and other more classified means of drone flight denial.

The drones will be effective for a while, then it’ll become impossible to fly them in airspace controlled by a 1st or 2nd tier power, and you’ll be back to needing foot soldiers (if only to take out the drone jammers).

btbuildem 2021-08-17 17:46:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As with anything else, we will have countermeasures for drone warfare as well.

leshow 2021-08-17 18:00:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Will we? It's not as if there is some countermeasure that will magically even the playing field, things seem to advance in the direction of escalation vs countermeasure.

gremloni 2021-08-18 00:48:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I totally think so. Laser tech that’s being used to zap mosquitos out of the sky could totally be repurposed to take out drones. Drones are relatively small and disabling them seems like a much easier task than taking down full fledged aircraft that fly much higher and are larger.

shadowgovt 2021-08-17 18:19:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm mildly surprised that in all the "AI goes rogue and turns a controlled smart munition into a murder-bot" fiction I've seen, I don't think anyone has drawn the relatively short line of causality along "Drone countermeasures disrupt remote control --> designers build in some basic decision-making to account for control interruption --> the decision-making gets sophisticated enough that it's trusted with kill / no-kill decisions --> jamming drone + scrambling IFF --> murder-bot turned on its 'owners.'"

robotresearcher 2021-08-17 19:28:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A system that has intolerable friendly-fire issues would not be used longer than it takes to learn about the issues.

euroderf 2021-08-18 10:09:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Will your Garden-AI explain, document, and footnote everything ? Or will it be a black box that leaves you none the wiser ?

wonderwonder 2021-08-17 16:40:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I could see this. Especially robot armies marching back into the middle east. I can also see robot caregivers for the elderly. Or in cities built for pedestrians a robot walking next to you carrying your shopping bags or escorting your kids to school with a live video feed back to the parents. Fire trucks pulling up and 50 robots jumping out and running into a burning building to carry people out. Could go either way, or both.

Edit: I think from a seek and destroy perspective we are much more likely to go the cloud of small drones route than these. These would serve as an armed / peace keeping / law enforcement. presence but would not be nearly as effective in a real combat situation as the drone swarm.

derefr 2021-08-17 17:10:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Or, rather than any of these special-purpose autonomous robots, the most likely outcome: fully-articulated telepresence robots, allowing people using VR to do anything a human could physically do, remotely. That covers pretty much all of the above use-cases and more, without assuming advances in high-level strategic AI; just good low-level motor-model learning as already exists here, plus good Internet and input methods for medium-level subsumptive motor control.

robotresearcher 2021-08-17 19:33:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Don't forget

1) carrying enough energy

2) getting the price point down to what people are prepared to pay

for telepresence.

These are very tough indeed.

derefr 2021-08-17 21:00:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There are a lot of use-cases for which a tethered telepresence robot (with, say, a five-minute emergency battery for getting swapping from one wall-socket to another) would work just fine. You wouldn't see infantry drones, but it'd work for most anything that occurs solely inside a building.

robotresearcher 2021-08-17 21:52:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Tethers are a nightmare. A nightmare.

derefr 2021-08-17 22:18:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

For autonomous robots, sure. And for dumb robots. But are they a problem for people—e.g. rock climbers, divers, etc.? If not, then they also wouldn't be a problem for remote people, provided those remote people get enough sensory feedback to be aware of the relative position of the tether.

After all, the whole point of all this motor modelling is to enable the robot to do things humans do, like noticing when its foot lightly touches its own tether, and then using its hands to unhook the tether from its foot, temporarily pull it lightly aside, step around it, and then drop it. (Think: vacuuming a room with a tethered vacuum cleaner.) That's a very hard thing to teach a robot to do; but a human that realizes they're "plugged in" would do it almost intuitively.

robotresearcher 2021-08-17 22:31:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

All that messing with the tether is pure overhead not spent working. It's also beyond the current state of the art.

A few meters of high-current cable weighs a LOT. Exerts large forces in weird directions and adds to your motor requirements.

On humans and tethers:

Do you like wifi? Why not stick to Ethernet?

SCUBA is diving without a tether. It’s popular.

Climbers use ropes so they don't die, not because ropes are fun. Bouldering is popular.

Singers and guitarists tend to move to wireless for performance as soon as they can afford to (purists excepted).

Because tethers suck. Suuuuuuck.

derefr 2021-08-17 23:57:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> SCUBA is diving without a tether. It’s popular.

Look up saturation diving. The link from the diver to their dive bell — now that's a tether. One critical to human life, unable to be lost for even a moment, and yet which humans freely do freaking oxyacetylene welding around. And yet it still works out fine, in 99.999% of dives. Humans are good at managing tethers!

But to be clear, my point isn't that tethered robots would be preferable to or even as good as untethered robots. Just because humans are good at tethers doesn't mean they like them. So of course untethered telepresence robots would be better, if they were practical.

My point is that tethered human-equivalent telepresence robots — in combination with human operators who can map their intuitive management of their own body-plan into management of the robot and its tether — will be practical in an absolute sense, long before untethered human-equivalent telepresence robots become practical. We'll have tethered telepresence 'bots doing real, useful stuff out there in the world (decomissioning toxic/irradiated structures in non-polluting ways, say—or replacing those sat divers!), long before we manage to make batteries dense enough to power untethered telepresence 'bots for the same purposes.

2021-08-18 00:15:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

mlboss 2021-08-17 20:55:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This would move all the manual jobs from developed countries to developing countries. Haircut in US costs $20 dollar you can get the same haircut in $1 in developing country.

derefr 2021-08-17 21:03:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don't think the CapEx of a robot barber would work out, no matter how low the OpEx. (Which is why we don't see very many non-humanoid, pre-programmed robot barbers, either.) Just because the tech would be there, doesn't mean it'd be practical/affordable for mass deployment. It'd likely be the domain of rich people and/or tech companies—just as less-complex telepresence robots are today.

And by the time the CapEx would get low enough to use telepresence for such things, we'd probably have the general strategic AI to not need it.

vindarel 2021-08-17 18:10:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Elderly people don't want robots, and yeah, good things© are unlikely to happen anyways. When new startups want to help people©, they are actually forced to go where the market is. "Well, only two years working for the autonomous drones for the army and we'll focus back on helping farmers". And years go by. Employees can believe in that vision, but can be tricked for years. They should change jobs. (there was a very true and touching testimony in this book (fr)[1]).

Also I believe 50 firemen robots is unlikely the best way to fight a fire :p Like autonomous cars: impose autonomous cars to lower car accidents in cities and save lives©? Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast…

[1] https://www.amazon.fr/Merci-changer-m%C3%A9tier-Lettres-robo...

shadowgovt 2021-08-17 18:21:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Just design the streets differently and prevent the cars to drive so fast…

... and then be ashamed of the lives lost because emergency responders couldn't get to the scene in time. :(

Everything is tradeoffs.

jvanderbot 2021-08-17 16:26:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm not surprised people look at this human-like and try to attribute human-like responsibilities. It'll be a marketing trap that many fall into.

But for now, the sensing, state estimation, and energy density problems preclude the use of these robots in the real world. There's far too much uncertainty in the structure of the world or the modelling of unknown areas to do parkour outside -- unless I've missed something huge that boston dynamics has done without talking about.

As someone said below, however, if you can develop a hybrid control scheme with a human controlling a smart-ish legged vehicle, you're on a roll. That's the future for legged vehicles that I could see: something like mechwarrior or titanfall, but without the AI (remote operated). Or Dreadnaughts. But small (as someone else pointed out).

sandworm101 2021-08-17 16:36:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>> hybrid control scheme with a human controlling a smart-ish legged vehicle

Much depends on scale. BD is working towards a robot-donkey, something that can follow soldiers over rough terrain. At scales much larger than a horse, such robots already exist and are already much more mobile than soldiers in most terrains. These robots are called tanks. Or trucks.

Once a vehicle is carrying a large enough load that it will not fit between the trees and so cannot follow soldiers into forests, legs are not very useful. Wheels and tracks are better than legs, particularly in soft/wet terrain. So large walking robots are likely never going to happen. The MechWarrior fantasy will have to live on in things not much larger than a horse, things that can fit between trees and along footpaths.

Animats 2021-08-17 17:44:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

BD is working towards a robot-donkey, something that can follow soldiers over rough terrain.

That was done years ago, as the Legged Squad Support System.[1] It sort of worked, but was too expensive and too noisy, being powered by a small IC engine. The USMC abandoned the project in 2015.

Boston Dynamics' big accomplishment was to get enough funding to actually do anything useful in mobile robotics. Most university robotics projects were a professor and a few grad students, and took forever to get anything. BD spent upwards of $100 million of DARPA money over a decade and got some working demos. Then they were funded by Google, and now Softbank.

Big walkers have been built. The Timberjack, from John Deere, is probably the best example.[2] This is a large six-legged off-road machine equipped with a long arm with a chainsaw. It worked but was not cost effective vs. wheeled systems.

The message is that with enough money you can do legged locomotion, but so far, there are few profitable applications.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legged_Squad_Support_System

[2] https://youtu.be/CD2V8GFqk_Y

jvanderbot 2021-08-17 16:39:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In hindsight of all of 5 minutes, I agree with you.

But, I read somewhere that only 20% (ish) of the earth's surface is accessible by wheeled / tracked vehicles. I guess the important part is that's where the people are.

sandworm101 2021-08-17 16:46:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, 70% is oceans. So of the land 20% would be the majority of terrain. Also, hovercraft probably push that number even higher.

jvanderbot 2021-08-17 16:55:47 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, 10 minutes of googling didn't return the information I needed, so we'll go with "Most of the non-water surface of earth is accessible to tracked vehicles"

adrian_b 2021-08-17 18:26:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

In the high mountains there are many places that are not accessible to tracked vehicles.

Moreover, of the places that are accessible to tracked vehicles, many are accessible only to small tracked vehicles, smaller than a typical car, and not at all to tank-sized vehicles.

kingsloi 2021-08-17 16:17:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I get some Black Mirror-esque vibes from this sort of tech, too. The 90s kid in me also gets MechWarrior vibes, too.

Also, I looked a while ago but is there anything up and coming in the anti-facial recognition space? I know that some guy created an almost life-like replica of his own face for sale, and then there were some sort of reflectors, but anything that cannot be outlawed, like a full face covering, would be cool.

squarefoot 2021-08-18 00:54:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A couple years ago researchers found that certain patterns if superimposed to a person's video would confuse some face detection algorithm, but there were still caveats, and it was two years ago, which is a lot in this field.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/23/18512472/fool-ai-surveill...

tshaddox 2021-08-17 16:22:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don’t know. That just sounds like pessimism about the direction of society, which means that any technology that can be used for a wide range of tasks can obviously be used for bad things. Slowing the progress of technology is not going to solve or even improve the outcomes if society is moving in a bad direction, unless you are somehow able to very precisely predict the outcomes of each specific technology and slow progress very selectively. And if you were able to do that, I don’t think technologies like this one would be a likely candidate for something that would disproportionately help the bad actors in society.

lifty 2021-08-17 16:23:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If we retain the same semi-centralised power structures for governing society, then I think it's unavoidable that we will face the scenario you mention. We need to decentralise governance and power in a massive way if we are to avoid negative effects from these incredibly powerful technologies.

ghaff 2021-08-17 16:29:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If you look around the world (and across history), the natural outcome of weak central institutions is more along the lines of feudal warlords than something utopian.

lifty 2021-08-17 16:46:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You're right. So what we need is strong institutions which are controlled by decentralised power levers. What I have in mind is cryptographic based control combined with concepts from liquid democracy.

mrfusion 2021-08-17 16:34:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> We need to decentralise governance and power in a massive way

Agreed but I’d also like to see human rights protected from the new decentralized governments. Not sure how that could work.

int_19h 2021-08-19 09:34:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It really depends on how exactly you decentralize. Decentralization doesn't necessarily mean complete independence of the fragments; they can still federate into larger entities, and those entities can enforce such things. The trick is to make the power flow from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Here's a real world contemporary attempt to implement some approximation to that. I'm not claiming that it's anywhere near perfect... but it seems to be working, so far:

https://pdfhost.io/v/Hrr2IgtuS_SocialContractoftheDemocratic...

lifty 2021-08-17 16:54:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

We could mandate that all AI robots should load an abide by a digital constitution that has been cryptographically signed by a majority of the population.

djrogers 2021-08-17 17:52:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

And how do you enforce your mandate? Without the threat of physical violence, any mandate devolves into a suggestion - or worse, handcuffs on the just.

lifty 2021-08-17 18:21:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I’m not advocating for getting rid of the institutions that apply physical violence on behalf of the population. I’m advocating for more fairly distributing the strings of power. You still have to force the manufacturers to implement the check. But the fewer places that you need to enforce physical violence on, the better.

sangnoir 2021-08-17 17:54:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Who will enforce this mandate? Or will this be an honor system?

lifty 2021-08-17 18:23:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It will be a review system, like on Amazon. Just kidding. I replied to the same question in a sibling comment.

jvanderbot 2021-08-17 16:22:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Boston Dynamics exec: "That's a sensing problem, we are a controls and dynamics company".

thefounder 2021-08-18 12:54:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's just policy and tools. Regardless of the tools used certain policies are enforced.

The robots/technologies are just tools. You have opreasive govenments spanning generations without robots and you have democracies as well.

I certainly want more robots around to do the boring and risky jobs.

Even if wars are conducted using robots(which is pretty innevitable) I see it as a good thing. The best tech wins instead of the most barbarian or the better propaganda machine.

aggie 2021-08-17 16:26:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

"AI Robot cops show implicit bias resulting in 3 deaths" is a headline today if you remove the AI robot part. As evidenced by the comments in this thread and any other on these robots, the public is extremely skeptical of them. If they do indeed exhibit these kinds of harms, the public will likely enact severe restrictions on them. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up in a situation where a lot of benefits are left on the table due to over-caution, just as you might see with self-driving cars that kill fewer people but are highlighted in the news when the rare accident does happen.

btbuildem 2021-08-17 17:54:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The robots will just become drones (remotely controlled by humans). BD demos are great to show that these will be autonomously ambulatory (you just tell them which direction to move, they manage the low-level concerns of the movement).

We won't trust AI with decision-making, but we will trust the status-quo police forces to dish out violence from the safety of an office.

D13Fd 2021-08-17 16:21:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think the key is recognizing that these have nothing to do with true AI or replacing humans in any profession.

This is just a semi-autonomous vehicle that is bipedal or quadrupedal instead of having wheels. That's it.

tyingq 2021-08-17 16:18:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I would guess even the more mundane "bad robot" scenarios, like the various interactions with police bots in Elysium, might also play out.

systemvoltage 2021-08-17 16:35:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Bundling BD's work with loss of privacy, face recog, etc. is so far fetched. This is just such an illinformed fearful stance that is cliche with any robotic innovation - it gets a disproportionate amount of pessimism (because robots!). Motorized controls of arms and limbs is physical intelligence, a very small slice of "AI" if you want to call that. "Overlords" meme has infested most of YT comments and but surprised to see it on HN. Disproportionate attention to physical visceral things - especially if it looks like humans - is particularly prone to fear response.

Have you ever seen your cat/dog stare at a look-alike version of stuffed toy and become completely bamboozled? Humans are particularly magnetized by anything that has 2 legs and moves like itself. No one bats an eye on a sentry with a gatling gun, but how dare you put 2 legs under it - sudden dystopia.

handrous 2021-08-17 17:17:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think the developed world's headed nigh-inevitably toward something more closely resembling the Chinese model of government—maybe not with autocratic leadership, but with similar levels of centralized surveillance and such, extensive Internet filtering and blocking, and yeah, probably a lot more robots in law enforcement (military? Definitely yes in China if it makes cost/benefit sense, and maybe in the West whether it does or not—yes in either case for flying drones, that's already well underway)

I think we'll find states that fail to do that, suffer. The other way out is rejection of technology to a large extent, but I doubt many will try that model as it'd cause a large & swift hit to quality of life.

(why, yes, I do have a fairly large technological-determinism and social-groups-experience-evolution-like-anything-else-does streak, why do you ask?)

CryptoPunk 2021-08-18 11:45:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

States that don't implement those forms of totalitarian surveillance/control will not suffer. They will be far more stable, with a less concentrated distribution of power and thus less economic resources wasted through rent-seeking.

Centralization of power invites corruption and leads to social fragility.

thatguy0900 2021-08-17 16:21:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think the future headlines will be that widespread rebellions will be always put down because the army can't be convinced to switch sides. I think we're very close to a situation where current governments in power can only be deposed by external armies.

sirsinsalot 2021-08-17 17:43:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Part of the issue in tech is we shrug off the control we have over the future. "If it can be done then it is inevitable" seems to be a common attitude.

A bit like the GitHub AI coding controversy. Yes, we maybe could AI ourselves out of a job, maybe? We can decide not to tho.

We have complete control over what we DO and DO NOT.

If humanity could organise well enough, we could collectively decide a weaponless utopia.

But alas, we are stupid.

mc32 2021-08-17 16:19:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If they were ever deployed as auxiliaries to law enforcement, my hope would be any weapon would have to have a human approve a request.

Robots should be able to swarm and restrain uncooperative suspects so there should be less need for lethality unless the perpetrator is an active threat against other people -a hostage situation, mass shooting, etc.

toomuchtodo 2021-08-17 16:21:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Robots will be the new zip ties to restrain you while your rights are violated. It’s not a tech failure though, it’s a governance and accountability failure.

mc32 2021-08-17 16:26:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Do do we want more uniform enforcement via robot, or do we want more leeway for human LEOs?

It used to be cops could make their own decisions on the spot about a subject (good or bad), now with cameras there is much much less ad-hoc decision making. Everyone gets booked.

It’s a double edged sword. Depends on what we want.

sangnoir 2021-08-17 18:02:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Do do we want more uniform enforcement via robot, or do we want more leeway for human LEOs?

Or, do you want more enforcement, period. Automation can scale a lot more than human LEO - and since everyone breaks some law pretty much daily, that limitation is a feature in my book. Didn't turn on your blinkers for long enough before switching lanes on a deserted street (by 0.2 seconds)? Jailerbot 2000 deactivates your car, detains you and sends you to the fully automated jail below the city until the judge sees you on Monday.

tehwebguy 2021-08-17 16:33:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Neither! Human LEOs in the US need to have fewer weapons and more accountability, they are currently virtually un-prosecutable. Even when cops commit a crime on camera it is extremely rare for them to be indicted.

2021-08-17 16:31:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

wonderwonder 2021-08-17 16:28:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

honestly I would prefer a robot goes in and restrains the people the police want vs a crowd of hopped up armed officers.

tehwebguy 2021-08-17 16:30:15 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Probably all of our current policing problems come down to officer emotions & decision making so I'm neither pro-autonomous robot cop nor pro-robot cop as a police controlled tool

ClumsyPilot 2021-08-17 16:24:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Arming law enforcement robots must be illegal- the whole point is that you can risk the robot to restrain a suspect, it doesn't need to defent itself like a police officer does.

mc32 2021-08-17 16:29:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It would be useful in circumstances they might work best. Hostage situation, mass shootings. We don’t want to have to wait till a human LEO shows up to incapacitate the perp.

ryandvm 2021-08-17 16:48:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

You're not wrong, but those circumstances are so exceedingly rare that activating an armed robot should require a warrant or some other way of rate-limiting their invocation.

okwubodu 2021-08-17 16:47:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It would take a lot. Humans can be incredibly brutal when their opponents aren’t alive. Autonomous drones are more of a threat and even then a ballon full of string would put most out of commission.

edit: that’s not to say they’ll never be an issue. They almost certainly will, but fighter jets can’t hold ground and neither can any robot.

BugsJustFindMe 2021-08-17 16:26:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> I feel like "AI Robot cops show implicit bias resulting in 3 deaths" or "Robot Cop shoots innocent person after facial recognition goes bad"

Maybe. But that's not different than human cops who already show implicit bias and poor facial recognition and kill people they have no right to kill.

IndySun 2021-08-17 16:39:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

How do you prosecute a robot that kills the wrong person? It's not possible. Would you then logically move on to prosecute the software programmer? And for what crime? Is it murder?

(side note : ios slide to type will not allow the spelling of murder, try it.)

okokwhatever 2021-08-17 16:18:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Initial economic impact will be harder for those whose job is simply moving things/people around. And those people, obviously aren't aware of the problem they'll face in a few years (5-10?). Thats the real problem in the near horizon.

vijucat 2021-08-17 16:27:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm reminded of the robot that goes wrong in Robocop. Except, with Reinforcement Learning, we'll have a robot that executes hundreds flawlessly until stopped. This is the kind of advancement that should be regulated, IMHO.

Taniwha 2021-08-17 21:19:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm sure there's similar video, in the Pentagon, showing them handling weapons - it's just not as good PR to release those videos

alecst 2021-08-17 16:15:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Same. It's undeniably cool. But with developments like this, I just picture humanity slowly writing its own epitaph.

Consultant32452 2021-08-17 16:33:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Whenever they do these demos they never show them firing weapons. I guess they just haven't figured that out yet.

meowster 2021-08-18 03:07:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Or they have, but just don't want to release the video and scare people.

mrfusion 2021-08-17 16:31:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Most bad stuff can more easily be done with drones. I wouldn’t worry about these guys. Just tie their legs together.

mattlondon 2021-08-17 19:25:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Oh I can imagine non violent uses. One of these to do my laundry, dishes, perhaps cooking, wash the car, clean the bathroom, generally tidy up and so on would be pretty good.

Keep it humanoid so it can work in the same space as me, then it can fold itself into a box or something when not working.

robotresearcher 2021-08-17 19:39:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

A special-purpose scope-limited robot probably washes your dishes already. What remains is putting them in and out of your current robot. Dextrous manipulation is tough, and likely to be very expensive for a while.

Amazon currently pays people to fill boxes for a good economic reason.

soperj 2021-08-17 16:36:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

So basically the same headlines as right now, but with Robot in the title?

eplanit 2021-08-17 16:42:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The only missing parts are the weapons themselves.

frozenport 2021-08-17 16:12:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

firefighters, nurses, construction workers

mastax 2021-08-17 16:18:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

When we automate the last jobs that can't be offshored we'll have to ask some questions as a society.

inglor_cz 2021-08-17 19:55:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

From a nurse's point of view, having an intelligent helper like Atlas doing lifting of heavy patients etc. means saving her back from injury.

prepend 2021-08-17 16:20:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

All these positions involve life and death decisions that freak me out.

I want the source code to firefighting bots to be public so I know whether my town buys the ones that prioritize babies over elderly. Or stuff like it’s easier to save 5 dogs than 1 human.

Nurses too have great power for good and harm. Currently when nurses decide on mercy killings [0] it requires lots of deliberation to figure out and it’s just one person. If a robonurse is programmed to put lethal morphine into a patient under certain conditions, that’s a big deal.

[0] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122054...

retSava 2021-08-17 15:58:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This is the video with the blog post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

To me, I like to see when they stutter or slightly-fail, since that to indicates the dynamics and real-time part of the thing, that it is not a 100% scripted thing (although the blog post mentions the engineers fine-tuning the celebratory arm-pump, to what extent is that scripted then?)

levng 2021-08-17 16:22:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk&feature=youtu.be

This behind-the-scenes video says it is choreographed and scripted. It also contains instances where things go wrong as well.

shadowgovt 2021-08-17 16:07:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's interesting to see how this has progressed from their video two years ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk] and one year ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sBBaNYex3E]

electricwallaby 2021-08-17 16:19:11 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I noticed around the 50 second mark there is some fluid leaking out of the robots bum. Wonder what that could be?

juancampa 2021-08-17 17:19:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fluid

jcun4128 2021-08-17 16:01:04 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Ha would be something to see it in Ninja Warrior show or something one day, needs hands.

scythmic_waves 2021-08-17 16:07:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That video is partly CGI, right? I can't find a smoking gun but it doesn't look entirely real.

KMnO4 2021-08-17 16:15:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Most likely it’s real. That said, we don’t know how many 10s-100s of takes this was done in. This single video could be the results of hundreds of hours of fine tuning parameters.

dane-pgp 2021-08-17 16:10:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

As one of the comments on the video says, that feeling is an example of the "uncanny mountain" effect.

scythmic_waves 2021-08-17 16:16:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm not so sure.

1. [EDIT: IGNORE THIS POINT] They've done this before. [1]

2. To get more specific, look at the robot's legs around 0:09-0:16. They don't seem to be moving normally.

I don't have professional video analysis chops, but I'd put some money on this being fake.

Happy be to be proven wrong, though.

EDIT: It appears I remembered this story incorrectly, and posted a link without reading it. I retract my first statement. I'll leave the link for posterity, though.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/6/17/18681682/boston-dyna...

mastax 2021-08-17 16:20:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That CGI gag was done by Corridor Digital, not Boston Dynamics.

ansible 2021-08-17 17:47:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That's a great channel, I really like their "reacts" series that comes out every Saturday. They also had a good one from Sunday about the Pentagon UFO videos.

mastax 2021-08-17 16:33:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Have you seen the behind the scenes video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk

dane-pgp 2021-08-17 20:23:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That provides some great context, but I couldn't help finding it a little unsettling at 03:09 when one of the robots is suspended off the ground and "bleeding" a pink fluid onto the mat beneath it.

ttmb 2021-08-17 16:18:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> 1. They've done this before. [1]

Your link says nothing of the sort.

2021-08-17 19:16:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

kingsloi 2021-08-17 16:13:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

yeah definitely odd looking. I thought maybe just like 5k@60fps or something and my peasant eyes were just bad, but deffo odd looking

jvanderbot 2021-08-17 16:21:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This is awesome, but until someone solves the real-time sensing and modelling problem, it'll never fly in the real world. The use case is still warehouses.

Here's my logic / assumptions: How does the robot "know" (have sufficient model information to predict the response) that the board will hold it when it does a vault? It doesn't -- it is told to vault by placing one limb on top. As we've seen with self-driving cars, where the sensing is 99% of the problem, that's the barrier between a closed set and the real world.

Don't get me wrong. The fact that Atlas / Boston Dynamics is in a state where the sensing is _mostly_ what remains a problem is astounding.

qiqing 2021-08-17 16:25:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Wouldn't it be great, though, if humans were no longer working warehouse jobs that strain their backs and their bladders?

jvanderbot 2021-08-17 16:36:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes! Your warehouse would have to be a cleanroom (someone left a can of soda? Your robot just smashed through a shelf when it tried to step on it)

In general, I'm an AI researcher and an AI skeptic. After 10 years in robotics, I'm learning that the Human Is Cheaper and where Human Is Expensive, we prefer toasters, not terminators. (just enough hard-coded / hard-wired adaptivity to get by with tons of supervision)

ryankrage77 2021-08-17 18:12:50 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Your warehouse would have to be a cleanroom

At which point you're back to an automated assembly line which needs very little dynamics or intelligence. The whole point of developing such advanced robots is so that you don't need to worry as much about that can on the floor.

konart 2021-08-17 17:31:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I don't think we need anything humanoid for this though.

rebuilder 2021-08-17 17:04:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Depends on who profits.

BashiBazouk 2021-08-17 17:49:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Whenever I see the four legged dog robot, I wonder how far we are from the chevaline in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

shadowgovt 2021-08-17 18:24:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's easy to forget sometimes, in the era of cars, how much we gave up when most people in industrialized society stopped riding horses.

It's pretty hard to get a horse to careen off a cliff or straight into a tree. The largest risk for riding a horse drunk is that it'll inadvertently scrape you off on a low-hanging branch.

inglor_cz 2021-08-17 20:00:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, Scottish king Alexander III. died in 1286 when his horse fell off a cliff with him, but that was after sunset, and this kind of death was weird enough that we still remember it.

The # of important people who died in a car after a driver error is much higher.

jozvolskyef 2021-08-18 02:39:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Horses are easy to startle and they will crash into a tree at 35mph just to get you off their back when startled. They also don't like people standing or walking behind their backs; being kicked by a horse is a common injury, sometimes fatal.

> Ten army corps were observed over 20 years, giving a total of 200 observations of one corps for a one year period. The period or module of observation is thus one year. The total deaths from horse kicks were 122, and the average number of deaths per year per corps was thus 122/200 = 0.61.[1]

[1]: https://www.mathsnetalevel.com/2406

freediver 2021-08-17 16:19:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What makes this really interesting is that all this is achieved with very little or no "AI" (in the context of current machine learning approaches). Purely heuristics based approach to something as complex.

ClumsyPilot 2021-08-17 16:27:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There is weired tendency to use AI for well-understood problems that have formulas and solutions.

habitue 2021-08-17 17:51:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Right, but is parkour a well-understood problem with formulas and solutions?

I think there's also a tendency to go "You just need linear regression" a lot when actually, well, there is a reason people are excited about new AI techniques: they make things that were very difficult much easier, and they make some things possible that never were before.

Is deep learning / reinforcement learning actually useful here? Maybe. I would be surprised if Boston Dynamics wasn't at least looking into it.

gsibble 2021-08-17 17:56:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I just tried raising money. Mentioning ML makes investors immediately want to throw in. So hot right now.

candiodari 2021-08-17 19:44:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well. yes. Using AI means you learn one theory, and now you can do voice recognition, chess and parkour with state of the art performance (except perhaps when it comes to minimising compute) ...

And then there's where it takes off. There isn't a single human that can come anywhere close to the language knowledge base AI algorithms can build up. Even a team of 100 humans would not have the breadth of languages algorithms have these days. Yes, context understanding humans still have the edge, but it's shrinking every day. But so many language aspects, from translation to grammar, machines outperform all but the very best humans, and 99.9% of all humans even within one language.

auxym 2021-08-17 18:09:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Well, heuristics, and probably a lot of classical controls theory and inverse kinematics/path planning.

jcuenod 2021-08-17 20:04:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The video I wanted to see (the two robots actually doing their thing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4DML7FIWk

mrfusion 2021-08-17 16:30:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Any ideas why the physics looks slightly off like gravity is slightly too slow? Maybe it’s slow motion or sped up?

Or I’m wondering if it looks like both feet are off the ground when really only one is and supported by the other?

ryankrage77 2021-08-17 18:14:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think it's just that the robots are very heavy?

thisisbrians 2021-08-17 16:42:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I thought the video was fake. It doesn't look right to me, but maybe that's just uncanny valley?

trenning 2021-08-17 16:20:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Can we brainstorm how you would compromise one of these robots?

I don't think I've seen discussion about how you would stop one in an adverse situation.

Hogtie cowboy style? Taser? Paint splashed over sensors?

jjkaczor 2021-08-17 16:25:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

People are begining to post some things:

https://twitter.com/LenKusov/status/1364640007101775872

bserge 2021-08-17 16:44:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Bullets, lasers, paint, bricks, rope, pipes, anything that works on a human and more.

Doesn't seem particularly hard if they're in range.

Now if they're sniping you from a mile away, that's a bit worse.

ansible 2021-08-17 18:07:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> Now if they're sniping you from a mile away, that's a bit worse.

Humans snipers regularly make kills at that distance or farther, so that's not really a new threat.

I'd be more worried about the development of supersonic AGMs that are smaller and cheaper. Right now, it doesn't make much economic sense to fire a $10K USD missile to kill random people (though the USA does it anyway), but if it only costs $1K... now you're starting to get to WMD levels of murder.

bserge 2021-08-17 18:30:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yeah but I reckon these kind of robots won't be deployed strictly against human snipers. The average enemy won't have the skill nor equipment to retaliate against long range, rapid fire sniping.

A robot, maybe with drone support, could be really accurate at launching grenades or unguided mortar rounds. Or hell, attach it to an artillery gun. Much cheaper than missiles.

kipchak 2021-08-17 16:34:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I would figure conventional firearms would do the job pretty well depending on the round. That being said I could well see "anti robot" rounds becoming a thing similar to "zombie" stuff a few years ago.

prepend 2021-08-17 16:25:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

I was thinking some high strength fishing line fashioned into a bolo sling would be cheap.

Or maybe just some “invisibility cloak” made out of astronaut blankets.

CobrastanJorji 2021-08-17 17:54:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Doorknob.

cs702 2021-08-17 16:26:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

An impressive accomplishment -- and beautiful in its own way.

Alas, I can't help but keep imagining a Terminator climbing and jumping over barriers, instead of those smaller, less-threatening robots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSXl_XKXZAI

I'm rather surprised no one else has mentioned James Cameron's robot-from-the-future nightmare so far.

johnnyb9 2021-08-17 17:44:03 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I can't help but listen to the terminator theme song in my head while watching these ala https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCeb5DfENaY

lawrenceyan 2021-08-17 20:18:01 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Would it be incorrect to say that the primary problems Boston Dynamics works on, which is planning and controls, is already mostly a solved problem?

My understanding is that the majority of research was completed within the past few decades, in comparison to the relative nascency of modern deep learning techniques.

rm445 2021-08-18 10:42:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The foundations are understood, in a 'chemistry is just the Schrödinger equation' kind of way. Any amount of research and engineering is still needed to make machines which can move themselves effectively, be energy-efficient, and interact with the messy and unstructured wider world.

lawrenceyan 2021-08-18 17:06:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

How far off would you estimate a company like Boston Dynamics is from production then? (Say with existing levels of industrialization in the form of non-humanoid robots already commonly used as a benchmark/baseline)

rm445 2021-08-18 19:08:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]

My guess (as an engineer but not in that field) is that some sort of breakthrough is needed or it will be a long slog. The general problem of robots navigating arbitrary spaces will probably be solved by wider advances in machine learning. Because a robot mapping its environment, planning its motion, and carrying out that motion while adapting to the dynamic environment, isn't being treated as a classic control systems problem any more, but fed into trained nets. It's too broad a problem for even sophisticated control systems, in the general case.

Even once robots can do amazing things, there needs to be an economic use case that's compatible with what they can do, how they're powered, and how long they can work for.

Similar to quadcopters in a way - they have changed the world in some limited ways, but so far they haven't scaled up to carry people or out to deliver parcels, so they remain niche. If someone figures out one day that robots can deliver burritos/assassinate dissidents/stack shelves efficiently, it could be a quick takeoff.

jacksonkmarley 2021-08-17 16:20:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The thing that looks weird imo is when the robots are running on flat ground, something looks off about their feet. Can't tell what it is but they look like they're floating. Anyway it's pretty amazing, and interesting to see the improvements over the years in how the robots move.

And clearly the two robots should fight.

mrfusion 2021-08-17 16:38:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Agreed! Floating is the right description. See my other comment. I’m thinking the other foot is still in contact with the ground and supporting the floating foot?

only_as_i_fall 2021-08-17 16:44:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Are these incredibly expensive or have a regulatory hurdle or something?

I feel like we've been seeing increasingly sophisticated demos like this for over a decade now and yet nothing has really made it to market that I can tell.

Maybe there just literally aren't many good use cases for the types of robots made by Boston dynamics?

the-pigeon 2021-08-17 17:08:25 +0000 UTC [ - ]

No. But it's just a demo.

In perfect conditions if you run it 100 times this is the result.

In the real world they have no application as they fail pretty much always in real conditions. But this is research, pushing things in controlled conditions help you learn what you can do in less controlled conditions. Though sometimes it's just a deadend.

The exact same thing is true of YouTuber stunt videos. Any very impressive stunt was failed hundreds of times but they show you the footage where they pulled it off. The thing to remember is that media is largely fake or deceiving, presenting the very best and not the reality.

machiaweliczny 2021-08-17 20:39:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Also battery tech needs to improve for practical usage

noelsusman 2021-08-17 20:13:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

They're currently selling the dog robot for $75k. You can see what their current customers are doing here: https://www.bostondynamics.com/resources/case-studies

jpindar 2021-08-17 18:47:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I believe the four legged Spot robots are for sale, but I haven't heard of anyone actually buying them.

They do have support pages and user manuals online.

https://support.bostondynamics.com/s/

rkagerer 2021-08-17 17:05:21 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What's that dripping from the right robot's right thigh near the end?

https://youtu.be/tF4DML7FIWk?t=49

Also are the layers of foam over the landing surfaces they backflip onto needed for dampening?

tantalor 2021-08-17 19:55:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sir, are you aware that you are leaking coolant at an alarming rate?

https://youtu.be/z7U3x3uRmi8?t=57

nofunsir 2021-08-17 17:33:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sweat, clearly. Hardcore parkour’s not easy.

nemothekid 2021-08-17 18:01:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The robots are powered by hydraulics. Might be a leak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EezdinoG4mk

implements 2021-08-17 16:40:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That’s cool and all, but how long before they can manage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx-vUsShk9U (Robot fight in “Outside the Wire”).

rasz 2021-08-17 20:56:33 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Robotic platforms would not miss as much as in the movie, but a 5 second gunfight scene wouldnt be fun to watch.

smikhanov 2021-08-17 19:04:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Honest question: if Boston Dynamics robots are so good, why we never see any news of them cleaning up toxic debris, working in an area of armed conflict, or rescuing people from fires?

tempestn 2021-08-17 19:21:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The current robots are a research platform, not a commercial product. The idea is that eventually it would be able to do things like that and many more, but currently huge amounts of choreography and testing are required to produce videos like this one. They've come a long way, but they've still got a long way to go before they could go into an uncontrolled situation and perform usefully, let alone with the level of aptitude apparent here.

rtkwe 2021-08-17 19:09:23 +0000 UTC [ - ]

They're good at certain things like movement but task planning and execution are still under development. You could maybe use the current version to explore burning buildings but they wouldn't be able to do much more than that, you don't see these lifting shifting loads or dragging things ever which is the kind of things they'd need to do for the toxic cleanup or fire rescue tasks.

For the war fighting it's pretty much always more effective to use things like tanks or drones rather than dealing with walking motions, that's still pretty inefficient.

tempestn 2021-08-18 01:15:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Note that parent said working in conflict areas, not necessarily fighting. I can imagine various jobs where this form factor might be useful. Clearing rubble for instance, or dealing with mines or other explosives. Each individual task might be better handled by something purpose-built, but a humanoid robot could be more versatile.

rtkwe 2021-08-18 02:17:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Mostly only when dealing with tools designed for humans, you can generally design the same tools to be more efficient on a general platform base. And even if you do use them you run into similar problems with task planning and execution. Finally there's power issues with the humanoid shaped bots both in the strength of the actuators (it's hard to have both really strong, fast and precise all in a package that fits) and in providing power to the robot itself. The latter has been the death of many a walking bot intended for the military, batteries don't last long enough and gas power plants are loud and generally bulky.

she11c0de 2021-08-17 19:51:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I wonder if it would be possible to setup a multi-agent reinforcement learning scenario where a few of those play tag over a complex terrain.

rasz 2021-08-17 21:00:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

They would probably need 10x the technical woman power to keep them operational for longer than 10 minute stretches. The second article about the challenges articulates pretty well they are in the crawling stage of locomotion, constantly discovering and improving on hardware bottlenecks and weak points.

moralestapia 2021-08-17 16:09:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Anyone else thinks the video looks a lot like CGI?

Nice job, nonetheless.

scythmic_waves 2021-08-17 16:23:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I also think that. But it appears we're both being downvoted for saying so.

I'm not sure I understand why? HN is usually pretty tolerant of healthy skepticism. And it's not as if we're saying "this feat is impossible, Boston Dynamics must be lying". We are (or at least I am) saying "the thing I'm looking at doesn't look real".

thisisbrians 2021-08-17 16:45:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It looked fake to me immediately. Maybe just uncanny valley since the movements are not very human-like — I'm not sure. But the lighting on the machines looks all wrong to me (although the shadows do look accurate, and the audio also seems convincing).

moralestapia 2021-08-17 18:01:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yeah, the lightning seems weird for me as well, and some movements look kind of blurry. Who knows.

2021-08-17 15:58:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

gcheong 2021-08-17 16:14:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Certainly impressive. I almost get the sense that these robots would be bored out of their minds working in an Amazon fulfillment center.

lanerobertlane 2021-08-17 16:16:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That's why they sell them to the police and military and put guns in their hands instead.

rasz 2021-08-17 21:01:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Whole point of a machine is it doesnt get bored.

blackoil 2021-08-17 18:33:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Is humanoid form factor really best compared to mountain goat / spider? or some other factor is helping decide the choice?

UnFleshedOne 2021-08-17 20:04:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I think the main reason for making a humanoid and human-sized robots is that all infrastructure is made for humans. So keeping a similar form factor is an advantage if you expect it to work in human spaces.

WalterSobchak 2021-08-17 16:25:26 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Side note, I am surprised bostondynamics.com does not enforce a redirect from HTTP to HTTPS.

https://blog.bostondynamics.com/atlas-leaps-bounds-and-backf...

rglover 2021-08-17 17:01:24 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Progress on our dystopian hell seems to be moving right along.

sparrish 2021-08-17 16:15:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Strangely portions look like stop-motion with the stuttering.

seriousquestion 2021-08-17 19:39:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Is Boston Dynamics primarily a viral video company? If not, why do they keep getting bought and sold?

Kye 2021-08-17 18:37:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There was a time when I would have been excited to hear about a real life parkour robot.

taytus 2021-08-17 17:37:58 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Is bostondynamics making more money from youtube ad revenue than from their robots?

dexterhaslem 2021-08-17 19:53:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]

yak shaving a fist pump, awesome

swayvil 2021-08-17 19:38:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The "cha-ching" is a placeholder for "strafe the rioters".

Too cynical?

UnFleshedOne 2021-08-17 20:09:20 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Much easier (and already being done) with drones.

swayvil 2021-08-17 20:18:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What would these legged, ground-traversing robots be better at than the flying variety?

Sweeping tunnels?

Construction?

UnFleshedOne 2021-08-18 17:55:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I guess anything involving lifting, manipulation and narrow places.

swayvil 2021-08-18 17:58:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Sex. Definitely sex

stakkur 2021-08-17 18:30:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

”If robots can eventually respond to their environments with the same level of dexterity as the average adult human, the range of potential applications will be practically limitless. ‘Humanoids are interesting from a couple perspectives,’ Kuindersma says. “First, they capture our vision of a go-anywhere, do-anything robot of the future. They may not be the best design for any particular task, but if you wanted to build one platform that could perform a wide variety of physical tasks, we already know that a human form factor is capable of doing that.”

No, they’re not “humanoids”, and it’s chilling to hear them call it that.

But more simply than that: this will be used for war and human surveillance and response. It is already underway.

TL;DR: Why?

tempestn 2021-08-17 19:26:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Webster uses humanoid robots as an example usage of 'humanoid'. The word just means it has a human-like shape, ie. two arms and two legs connected to a torso.

Definition of humanoid

(Entry 1 of 2) : having human form or characteristics

// humanoid dentition

// humanoid robots

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humanoid

rglover 2021-08-17 18:54:07 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Because.

Why allow "useless eaters" to roam the planet, dealing with them coughing on your parfait when you can have one of these sanitary machines do it? And of course, when we tell the parfait makers that they're out of a job, they'll freak...now we have the perfect, emotionless authority to keep them in line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU&t=14s

Amin699 2021-08-17 16:20:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The robot did pump its arm, but it also stumbled a bit on this simple move. It was just the slightest stutter step, something most people watching the video would never notice. But the Atlas team notices every detail and they want to get it right.

“We hadn’t run that behavior after the backflip before today, so that was really an experiment,” says Scott Kuindersma, the Atlas team lead at Boston Dynamics. “If you watch the video closely, it looks a little awkward. We’re going to swap in a behavior we’ve tested before so we have some confidence it will work.”

newaccount2021 2021-08-17 16:29:44 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The middlebrow dismissal in this thread is galling.

This is AMAZING. Just like everything else Boston Dynamics does...and all HN has to offer is weird musings on Terminators.

You know, its okay to spend your days knocking out three-line Python PRs and still be wowed by people working at a much higher level...

prepend 2021-08-17 16:17:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What can I do to defend myself against killer robots?

Seriously, is there something simple that I can put in my glovebox of my car to use in case these robots start getting scary? Is there a simple household good that will work well against these, until they start explicitly shielding against stuff?

yabones 2021-08-17 17:53:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'm going to assume that most 'killer robots' will be reasonably heavily armoured, so unless you have very powerful AP rounds the best approach will be to disable rather than destroy. They'll also likely be hardened against 'jammers' or any radio interference.

Presumably most systems will use multiple sensors and vision systems, LiDAR, RADAR, etc. The key would be to disable enough of each to put the machine in 'safe mode'.

Vision systems are the easiest to attack. A cheap paintball gun, spray can, or fire extinguisher would be more than capable of disabling a camera system.

LiDAR would likely also be fairly easy to disable. Most LiDAR systems also depend on visual light, and have a revolving sensor of some sort (though there are some fixed units as well) which have their own weaknesses. A reasonably powerful pellet gun, or most rifles or pistols would be enough to disable a revolving lidar sensor, and a few shots with paint would disable a fixed unit, much like a camera.

It's almost certain the designer of such robots will think of these attacks and build around them. Think windshield wipers or compressed air to clear debris. So, the ideal material would be very thick, very sticky, and completely opaque. It would also need a high pressure container and a nozzle that produces a laminar stream to hit the sensors from at least 10m away.

tyingq 2021-08-17 16:19:40 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Spray can of sticky expanding foam for the various sensors?

Edit: Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2rVHLKS3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVy5Vm43X_A

There's also bulk rodent glue, if you could figure out how to shoot it :) https://www.domyown.com/catchmaster-bulk-glue-can-p-15693.ht...

prepend 2021-08-17 16:27:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

So my mini fire extinguisher might be the easiest for now.

tyingq 2021-08-17 17:29:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Has the bonus of plausible deniability. "The robot was smoking and crackling in that area, so I put the fire out".

tempestn 2021-08-18 19:11:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Why is it that so many people's thoughts go to "killer robots" when they see a humanoid robot, but not when they see, for instance, a quad copter? Or an assembly line robotic arm? Is it literally just Terminator? I guess more likely Terminator was made because it plays on a deeper psychological phemonenon—a fear of entities that look similar to us, but different. (Which presumably evolves from a rational fear of hostile outsiders to one's tribe. The same instinct that causes other maladaptive impulses in modern society, like jingoism and racism.)

vorpalhex 2021-08-17 16:40:31 +0000 UTC [ - ]

For a very aggressive answer, I would go for one of those shotguns with two magazine tubes you can switch between. Anti-drone projectiles in one and rifled slugs in the other.

Less destructively, a good net launcher seems like it'd stand a decent chance at fouling things but they are usually single shot and inaccurate at any kind of range.

grkvlt 2021-08-18 21:13:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

shaped charge type 40mm HE grenades would be fine if you have to defend against a heavily armoured killer robot, but ones like this with exposed hydraulic lines will fall over and curl up after a well placed knife attack, or maybe 12ga flechette rounds from a shotgun if you need a ranged attack.

AngryData 2021-08-17 20:57:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If these become a serious concern to where simply throwing crap on the sensors isn't enough, small scale EMPs aren't that complicated. Using a fast explosive to blast a magnet through a few coils of wire will make a fairly powerful locallized pulse, although it is likely super illegal.

hmottestad 2021-08-17 16:20:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Paint ought to do it. Chuck a bucket of paint at one of these and the sensors will be knocked out instantly.

prepend 2021-08-17 16:28:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s kind of hard to fling paint, but I guess just making a potato gun that spits out paint should be good.

I’ll be looking for some Holi festival type gear.

kwhitefoot 2021-08-17 16:38:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Or a paintball gun.

prepend 2021-08-17 19:38:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Good idea but when I used them the balls were fairly small and not very accurate. So hitting cameras might be tough to do completely enough to block visit.

Is there a paintball shotgun?

Yes, there are [0]. But it seems like they shoot “slugs” and not a spray of paint in a cone.

[0] https://paintballglobe.com/paintball-shotgun/

numpad0 2021-08-17 18:16:46 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Some sort of high tensile wires that their limbs can’t overcome. Flexible materials are computationally hard even for actual humans, let alone for bunch of Python scripts running on a random Docker container somewhere.

Or Reason. Whichever available. Aim for torso.

rglover 2021-08-17 18:17:02 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Pocket EMP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siVGavpBiyA

Obviously would need to modify to generate more energy.

2021-08-17 16:31:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

IshKebab 2021-08-17 19:37:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Why are these nonsense fantasy world comments so common here?

prepend 2021-08-17 19:41:56 +0000 UTC [ - ]

For me, my interest is in sort of lateral thinking for any problem. For novel situations, I like to think of what the positive and negative impacts are and particularly what “hacks” might be able to get unexpected outcomes.

I’m typically like this for everything, but for robots that can jump around and stuff (and will likely soon do police and military actions) this is novel enough for me to explore this for the first time.

I think similarly about facial recognition software for how to evade and confuse. And also for biometrics, locks, etc. Any of these things are interesting to me and I want to know how to do stuff with them.