Boston Dynamics Reveals Handle, A Robot That Is 6 Feet Tall, Lifts 100 Pounds, and Jumps Up To 4 Feet (popularmechanics.com) 81
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: Back at the beginning of February, a leaked video showed the newest creation from Boston Dynamics -- a wheeled humanoid robot called "Handle." Now the secretive maker of amazing robots has released the full introduction video, revealing some of Handle's brand new tricks. The wheeled bot can travel up to 9 mph, and as you can see in the video, it has no trouble rolling over some light off-road terrain such as patches of grass and flights of stairs. The bot stands 6.5 feet tall when fully extended, though it often crouches to turn or balance. Batteries power the robot's electric and hydraulic actuators, allowing it to crouch down, make sharp turns, and lift objects that weigh at least 100 pounds. Handle has enough battery juice to travel about 15 miles on one charge. Oh and one more thing, this rolling bot can leap four feet into the air.
Re:oh no! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no! All the people whose job description is to be 6 feet tall, to lift 100 pounds, to jump 4feet into the air and to be able to travel at 9 miles per hour are no longer economically viable...
Time to upgrade that resume.
Skills: can lift up to 101 pound jump 4 feet 5 inches into the air. Can travel at 9.5 miles her hour. Will cost no more 10% of a robot doing the same thing a year. A bonus feature: can travel at least 30 miles on a single charge!
you mean, like pretty much every delivery person and warehouse worker in the country?
An Amazon warehouse worker earns around $12.50/year, or $25K/year. Fully loaded cost including benefits and otther administration would be close to $50K. If this robot can replace 2 shifts of workers, if it costs $100K to purchase (around the price of a Tesla), it would pay for itself in a year, assuming the operating cost is low.
A bonus feature: can travel at least 30 miles on a single charge
Few humans are willing to walk 30 miles on the job without breaks, and human breaks last longer than the 3 minutes it would take to do a battery swap on a robot.
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and human breaks last longer than the 3 minutes it would take to do a battery swap on a robot.
Have 2 redundant battery banks so the robot keeps going when one is changed then have the robot change its battery banks by itself. It will take a lot less than those 3 minutes those lazy humans would need... ;-)
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Their job description also includes knowing what to pick up with minimal instructions and an extremely low error rate, as well as where to take it and when and how to drop it off, the ability to work for up to 12 hours repeatedly and reliably, independence from wall power, and the ability to deviate from this routine where and when required in reasonable ways.
Re:oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)
Their job description also includes knowing what to pick up with minimal instructions and an extremely low error rate, as well as where to take it and when and how to drop it off, the ability to work for up to 12 hours repeatedly and reliably, independence from wall power, and the ability to deviate from this routine where and when required in reasonable ways.
Are you describing robots or people? Sounds like a job description suitable for a mobile robot. A human worker isn't going to magically know where to pick something up or where to take it unless some central system tells him to. And a robot is equally able to follow instructions like: "Go pick up item 718281718 from bin 7891 (use your scanner to find the right item), box it and walk it over to loading dock 287 for immediate shipping. There's a liquid spill in aisle 27, find your own way around it."
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I can see this working very well in warehouse conditions. When it comes to delivery people though I'm not so sure. Delivery drivers have to make minor decisions constantly which could pose problems for robots. I mean driving a car isn't technically all that challenging when you look at it simplistically, but the devil is in the details. Delivery drivers do things like identify walkways, door steps, fence gates, and varieties of inclement weather. They then make choices about how to deliver a package or not.
Re: oh no! (Score:3)
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That poor guy!
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Indeed.
Not that there's usually a lot of difference between wood and concrete (unless it's wet). And *theoretically* those wheels could have plenty of low-speed torque to act as stable "feet" for climbing stairs, but there's a world of difference between theory and practice.
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There are some obvious flaws to this design. But baby steps, baby steps. I saw the example of going down concrete stairs; but what of going up wooden stairs?
No problem - it'll just jump up them - 4 feet at a time.
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Can they be as tough on packages as a UPS guy?
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Teach it to shoot baskets and you've got yourself a real money saver.
It goes down a flight of stairs, sure (Score:2)
Video didn't show it going up though. Maybe it's because it can't.
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Come on; it just jumps over them obviously...
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Works great, until you hit stairs going up 4.1 feet. Or whose slope is too gentle for jumping (even at speed it didn't seem to have much of a long jump)
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FIRST Robotics is to blame for this (Score:5, Funny)
Yes... this is the result of FIRST Robotics. Former high schoolers have gone "pro" and are now producing robots for the robot apocalypse. They finally got the CIM motors, gyros, and accelerometers all working and now we have this, this beast. I wonder if the control code is written in labview, C++, or Java.
When robots like this finally get real battery life, we are all doomed. Doomed I tell ya!
Re:FIRST Robotics is to blame for this (Score:4, Insightful)
I love living in the future. ;)
Re: FIRST Robotics is to blame for this (Score:2)
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call Phil Jackson of the Knicks (Score:5, Funny)
Noo (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great, robots are now taking NBA player jobs!!
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Mod up as "funny".
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This is totally going to be the plotline for Space Jam 3...
I'd say we're f***ed (Score:2)
Brings to mind George Carlin's bit about flamethrowers...
http://www.quotes.net/mquote/3... [quotes.net]
Give us five hundred thousand and paint them dark brown. We don't want anyone to see them.
Blooper Reel (Score:4, Interesting)
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I just hacked into this bot and saw this, be careful, apparently the bot read /.:
Request to turn attack mode on, justification: Cyber-bullying
-> permission granted
Acquiring target: ChrisMaple; target acquired
Good luck man!
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And anonymous bots "caint" spell.
...and lunges at you (Score:2)
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I can just imagine some rogue programmer installing the following on it:
1) As big of a battery pack as it can carry as "payload", strapped to its back.
2) Facial recognition software that measures the number of and distance to any people recorded by its camera
3) Modern neural net, trained by being rewarded when the actions it takes lead to 1) it approaching other people, and 2) people fleeing from it.
' ... and then setting it loose in the streets.
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1) a vagina.
Re: Can we replace the President with one? (Score:2, Informative)
Why do people have the idea that when somebody's preferred choice loses an election they should then shut up and not complain or criticise the winning candidate?
Its like you don't understand the way politics or democracy works. It's now the turn of the Democrats, and democratic voters in general, to criticise and hold trump accountable
They rock (Score:3)
I love this company and the innovative stuff they keep coming out with. If I had a job there I wouldn't be able to wait to get into work every day.
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I felt that way about my first job as a computer programmer back in the 1970s.
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I felt that way about my first job as a computer programmer back in the 1970s.
I have never felt that way about any job whatsoever. It's called "work" instead of "fun hobby" for a reason.
Would make a great mobility aid (Score:4, Insightful)
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DEKA made the iBot wheelchair for years. Not this advanced, but a whole lot better than a standard one. At $25,000, it was too expensive and didn't sell much. This would be even more expensive and would sell less. You would think that $25k would be not too much to give someone their freedom, but people that need them just can't afford them.
The problem, unfortunately, is not technology, it's money.
Yea but can it snowboard? (Score:2)
This robot could solve a major social problem... (Score:3)
Give it fangs, IR detection and appropriate programming, and set it loose in cities.
Presto! No more homelessness. Peeing in alleys would probably take a nosedive, too.
There's gotta be a movie in this.
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I almost forgot...it should be photophobic. Dawn should send it scuttling off into some tenement basement for the day to recharge.
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How foolish of me to forget. Of course, the eyes. It just wouldn't be the same without them.
This is great! (Score:2)
Unless you're a working class voter whose job just got automated.
Attention. Information available. (Score:2)
Welp, I don't know where it is now, (Score:2)
but i know where it'll be when i go to sleep.
_ Terrifying (Score:1)