Boston Dynamics' Robot Went From a Drunk Baby To a Nimble Ninja in a Matter of Years (qz.com) 115
In a new video from robotics company Boston Dynamics, which Alphabet sold to SoftBank last year, a robot is shown hopping over a log and then up a series of blocks, an activity called parkour. From a report: In previous videos, the robot did a backflip -- now it's leaping over obstacles and climbing up large, uneven stairs with fleet-footed ease. But Atlas wasn't always so graceful. In some of the first videos where Boston Dynamics' robots could walk upright, way back in 2015, Atlas lumbered through the woods, looking like it was narrowly avoiding falling with each step, rather than moving with any kind of purpose.
Nice! (Score:2)
I did that as well as a kid.
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Come on - that is not Ninja (or parkour) (Score:5, Informative)
If you watch the video it hops over a log, then jumps up a few fairly tall boxes.
While this is technically impressive, it's a long way from Ninja or parkour. It didn't jump ON the log and balance - just over. Nor did it do anything complex like jump against the side of one of the boxes and land flat, maybe after rolling... you didn't even see it jump down from the highest box and do a roll landing on the floor. So basically, not at all what anyone would call parkour...
I wish people would stop over-dramatizing what are real technical feats but end up looking lame after the buildup.
Re:Come on - that is not Ninja (or parkour) (Score:5, Funny)
I wish people would stop building things that are going to wind up being used to control or kill us all.
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Re:Come on - that is not Ninja (or parkour) (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would stop building things that are going to wind up being used to control or kill us all.
Depressingly unlikely. At first, they will be heralded as important for dirty jobs no human wants to do: rescue operations in hazardous conditions like natural disasters or nuclear malfunctions.
Once the battery/power problem is solved, these machines will be misused... it's a facet of human nature.
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Well they might just be feeding us and tending us as we age/decline too... Like most tech, it depends on how it's implemented.
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Sadly, caring for our elderly might fall right in category as one of those
jobs no human wants to do.
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This is a greater danger than killer robots. Care robots are a great idea in theory but in the hands of corporations will be abused. Every kind of addictive behaviour, any way to extra extra cash will be exploited if left unchecked.
Before elderly care bots it will probably happen with sexbots.
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Woah nelly, no!
We've all seen [youtu.be] how that one ends already!
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I wouldn't mind sticking a saddle on one of those. With the rate AI is improving, it could be an excellent way to reach mountainous areas where normal wheeled vehicles could not even attempt to go. For example, a Mount Everest base camp. It can take people up, then go back down and fetch more supplies (oxygen tanks, etc.)
Re: Come on - that is not Ninja (or parkour) (Score:2, Funny)
And take your corpse off the mountain when your out-of-shape ass dies.
Re: Come on - that is not Ninja (or parkour) (Score:5, Interesting)
You say that in jest but a fleet or robots that could collect corpses are Everest would actually be pretty useful since there are quite a lot up there that no-one can get down. Or heck even just trash collector robots for Everest would be useful.
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In Soviet Russia, trash collects you!
Re:Come on - that is not Ninja (or parkour) (Score:5, Funny)
It's definitely coming for that lab assistant who kept knocking it over with the ball first.
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I wish people would stop building things that are going to wind up being used to control or kill us all.
I wonder who is funding these guys?
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Softbank i.e. China's military. I'm sure they'll abide by killbot regulations/ethical codes though, right?
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Don't thank me just yet. Another comment tipped me off that Softbank is Japanese, not Chinese. Mea culpa.
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The reason they are doing this is because one off designs for robots are expensive. The first company to make a mutli-functional robot for 90% of tasks is going to make a shit ton of money. It's really the next Google or Microsoft or whatever.
These robots will do more than replace people at mcDonalds. They will be replacing every robot welder/painter/whatever you can imagine seeing o0n an assembly line these days because of the reduced cost per unit when mass production is taken into account.
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However, I have been following Atlas' development over the last couple of years and the improvement is pretty amazing. In that sense, I am not disappointed by the new video.
The question is: with this rate of improvement, how many years until the headline would be accurate? I would guess no more than 3-5...
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Dynamic movement like one foot jumping requires careful use of lots of force so that you land on the other foot without any extra inertia to tip you over. Jumping above your waistline requires quite a bit of nearly instantaneous power, there's a lot going on here, and a lot of risk of damage if you don't stick the landing exactly right the first time. Versus walking, which if you don't stick the landing, you can stumble in one direction for a couple of steps to recover.
That said, natural terrain ha
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I wish people would stop over-dramatizing what are real technical feats but end up looking lame after the buildup.
Point taken but I am still impressed.
What I expect is going to be this product line's first killer app is in the movie industry. People like over-dramatization and that is what they do. The real specs won't matter as much as what they can show with rehearsed scenes.
But given the rate of improvement all we will really need is about 5 more years and the advent of a 160-year power supply (with backup of course) to have a real T800.
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While this is technically impressive, it's a long way from Ninja or parkour. It didn't jump ON the log and balance - just over. Nor did it do anything complex like jump against the side of one of the boxes and land flat, maybe after rolling... you didn't even see it jump down from the highest box and do a roll landing on the floor. So basically, not at all what anyone would call parkour...
It also didn't flip out and kill people, so there's that.
Exactly (Score:4, Funny)
It also didn't flip out and kill people, so there's that.
See? Not Ninja.
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Ninjas likely spent most of their time working as gardeners , staying out of the way and definitely NOT killing people
Ok, show me the clip where the robots are gardening, Can't garden? Not Ninja.
This allowed them to blend
I have to say I am really looking forward to the inevitable Boston Dynamics crossover episode of "Will it Blend"?
Besides, they existed in a 'death culture' where honorable people frequently offed themselves
The only reason people back then offed themselves so readily is because they knew a
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It also didn't flip out and kill people, so there's that.
Talking about flipping out look at the back flips this thing can do [qz.com]. Can anyone here do that?
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With enough practice I couple *probably* duplicate the final jump where the robot face plants into the jumping platform.
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Oh dear. (Score:2)
Someone who still believes in the old 'engineer the complex systems control software', you know, the method that tried and failed to delivery high quality handwriting recognotion, voice recognition and synthesis, vision systems, etc, etc.
While machine learning is way over hyped in what it CAN do, this is a perfect an example of where it fits perfectly in to place.
ie: no 'engineer' is trying to solve these complex equations (or even characterise them) any more, they are brute force tuned with machine learnin
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Did they program it to jump over the log and then up the boxes using distance and height? E.g. Run 10 steps, jump 50cm up, 40cm forward, run another 10 steps, jump 40 cm etc OR could they have put any random object in it's path and it would have automatically identified it and taken the right action to jump it??
How to get away... (Score:3)
So, it used to be that you could run away from the thing given uneven enough terrain but now I guess hiding is your only chance, at least until it runs out of power. Or does the hunter-killer model come standard with deep IR vision?
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It's a lot easier to be quiet than to stop being warm.
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Actually, if you do nothing at all for long enough you're guaranteed to stop being warm. Being quiet takes the same amount of time, if you count the sound of breathing and heartbeat.
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Passive IR is blocked by glass: https://youtu.be/Fx49t4sv7f0 [youtu.be]
So running away and hiding behind glass might be feasible.
Anyone/thing stupid enough to use active IR (an illuminator) in a contested environment deserves to...
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but now I guess hiding is your only chance
Not as long as the ammo holds out. These things are incredibly fragile. A fully-armored version that could withstand the sort of ammo that people use to, say, hunt elk - would be very heavy.
These sound like good ... (Score:3)
Drunk Baby ... Nimble Ninja
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Needs to start with the same letter. So either Blitzed Baby or Drunken... ehh.. Daughter? Dumpling? Darling? *shrugs*
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Needs to start with the same letter. So either Blitzed Baby or Drunken... ehh.. Daughter? Dumpling? Darling? *shrugs*
Dickhead. Drunken Dickhead!
Something we've all had the misfortune of seeing.
huh (Score:1)
So, not having followed this ... have lots of independent people actually seen this, or are there just videos?
Re: huh (Score:2)
Just wait until it is chasing you down dark alleys (Score:5, Interesting)
The future of American policing will be robots that follow suspects until they can be identified.
In the future, you will face robots moving at 30 mph through pedestrian traffic to tail you on foot.
They will listen in to all conversation for politically incorrect thought.
They may even sniff out illicit substances and chase down the users.
Is this "freedom"? We'd better get our act together before then.
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And they'll be authorized for deadly force if they see you holding a gun.
Don't worry, they'll totally stand down if you drop the gun.
Re:Just wait until it is chasing you down dark all (Score:4)
That's purely a design decision.
If you're not pointing the gun at something living, the robot doesn't have much game theoretic motivation to mow you down, just for the sake of it.
The robot's overlord, however, might have his/her own agenda ... But airlines don't kill us for no reason, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions too quickly.
Machine vision for narrow tasks (such as gun identification) is likely to become far more reliable than human vision. And there's almost guaranteed to be visual footage after the fact (shooting with no visual record is surely a Volkswagon-class regulatory violation).
Quite possibly, you'll have fewer montages of the families of dead police officers who fell in the line of duty placing wreaths on a fresh grave. This could hurt the gun lobby, to be honest.
(Unintended effects cut both ways.)
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The quality of the vision system isn't all that important, what matters is that the robot is expendable. Cops shoot when they are worried about getting shot themselves. The robot can just wait, possibly even until it gets shot first, because in the end it's just a machine that can be fixed/replaced. It just needs to survive long enough to call for backup.
You have to wonder why police aren't doing this already. Rather than sending the SWAT team in, stay well back and send a drone in. See if the suspect reall
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They already blew a guy up with a repurposed bomb defusing robot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/te... [theatlantic.com]
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Yeah... I was trying to avoid blowing anyone up, but okay it's a start I guess.
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And they'll be authorized for deadly force if they see you holding a gun.
And if it turns out to not be a gun, the robot will turn off its recording device and plant an unloaded gun and ammo on the suspect.
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Two things mankind seems to be good at:
Dreaming up dystonian futures, and making them happen.
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They will listen in to all conversation for politically incorrect thought.
Won't need to, we already do it freely on the Internet via social media.
Fantastic! (Score:3)
I for one would like to welcome our new robot ninja overlords. (If you were smart then you would too.)
Wait, wait, wait... (Score:2)
They know not to give this thing a machine gun, right?
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Wouldn't work unless they were first given an imaging system that resembles a red eye sweeping back and forth.
For good, not evil (Score:2)
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you'll know the 20 year game-plan if you see the next iteration armed with tentacles.
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Why would sexbots need to do backflips or jump over logs and up boxes?
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Clearly you are not having the right kind of sex.
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No we're good. Look at Boston Dynamics company policy statement. It says it right there: "Don't be evil".
AAARRRRRRRR!!!! BOOOM!!! (Score:2)
Strobe (Score:5, Informative)
Elon says their goal is to be fast enough so that a human can only see their motion clearly with the use of a flash strobe. It's very likely that he knows the right people to be able to say this with some certainty, but the trajectory is rapidly in that direction regardless.
Now, then, arm them with blades, guns, and autonomous AI.
When protesters get a little too forceful, just send out the 'ninjas'. Congress doesn't really have to worry about what laws it passes any more.
https://www.stopkillerrobots.o... [stopkillerrobots.org]
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https://www.stopkillerrobots.o... [stopkillerrobots.org]
Australia, Israel, Russia, South Korea, and the United States all oppose a treaty to stop killer robots and keep them under human control. Insanity.
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Japan won't even rule out building nuclear weapons if they feel the need; trying to convince a military not to develop a certain weapon is bound to fail if that weapon is considered to give themselves an advantage. When one weighs rules, ethics, and survival, the latter ALWAYS wins (on the average). We'd need to end war on the political/economic side before the world powers would seriously consider giving up on killbots. How far away do you think 'solving politics and economics' is? Further away than killbo
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I don't think people know what is going on. I don't think that they understand the rate of improvement and that when they think of "robots" they think of Daleks that can't climb stairs or something clunky. I think they think reality is not as close to science fiction as it really is.
Toilet Training (Score:2)
The next stage... (Score:1)
Graceful (Score:3)