18 ms·
How Boston Dynamics Taught Its Robots to Dance
- jessep 6y agoMy sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit. Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference to the fact that this is a PR stunt to get us to love scary robots. Dancers and choreographers are poor, and struggle to build careers. A public acknowledgment of something of this magnitude would be so impactful, and would require so little from Boston Dynamics. I wish they would do it. They could even brand themselves as helping artists, could be good for their image.
- riantogo 6y agoFollowed, liked, retweeted. I had loved the choreography and I'm glad I now know who was behind it. Please tell Monica that we await here next piece of art.
- Waterluvian 6y ago>...Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference to the fact that this is a PR stunt to get us to love war machines. Neat Easter egg. Though I'm not sure I can reconcile being both critical of and centrally involved in the same PR stunt.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y agoI would so love to see some of the original concept videos with the humans who were dancing, I hope they release it. Honestly, I think a "how we made this" video would be just as popular as the robots dancing.
- jordache 6y agoyep! a how we made this video for the robot dance would be much much more compelling than one of those video for an apple headphone
- cbozeman 6y agoThere's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.
- Shared404 6y ago> or for the benefit of mankind. Unfortunately, I don't know that I can trust any of the organizations that would have the budget to control enough of these robots to make a difference in any direction. Which is sad to me, as I love this from a technological perspective and looking at a best case scenario.
- cbozeman 6y agoA Spot costs about $75,000, so as far as trusting the organizations... I mean, I find myself seriously considering buying one. Yes, I would likely have to add-on other modules over the course of time, but $75,000 for Spot's capabilities is actually pretty reasonable.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoWhat would you use use it for if you had one?
- cbozeman 6y agoGoofing off, most likely. I haven't really thought of a use case for the home, although there's literally dozens of them. I actually wonder if it could function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped with work to do so. The thought of attaching a leash to my dog and the leash to Spot while I'm indisposed is actually kind of attractive. I would have to make sure my dog has already done her business though, since I wouldn't want to be the kind of asshole that not only uses a robot to walk his dog, but also lets his dog shit on his neighbor's yard while a robot walks his dog.
- aresant 6y agoOften the people who are doing the actual PR work have no idea about the story details and piece stuff together third party I would encourage her to reach out to the marketing/PR department and have a conversation avail herself for interviews etc. I would imagine that a young woman doing something this dynamic in a relatively dry field would actually be a PR dream.
- llamataboot 6y agoAnd i imagine there were lots of folks involved in all phases of doing this at Bostons Dynamics that consciously or unconsciously thought of her as just another hired person to promote their technical brilliance.
- SftwreEngnr 6y agoShe contributed. That's what science is about--not notariety. Get over it.
- BotJunkie 6y agoI wrote the article; thanks for this info. Since your sister has posted this publicly on her Twitter account, I'll happily add her name to our article if I can get in touch with her/BD to confirm. [Edited to add that we'll contact her before doing so.]
- anonytrary 6y agoWow this is extremely wholesome and coincidental. Glad to see the artists are going to be getting the credit they deserve, pretty crazy to see this transpire over HN comments!
- Firerouge 6y agoThe Boston credits her by name in their article >> There’s a lot of impressive moves in the routine, which was choreographed by dancer Monica Thomas in collaboration with the Boston Dynamics team. https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2020/12/29/boston-dynamics-atlas-spot-dancing https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2020/12/29/boston-dyn... They also link her name to https://www.madkingthomas.com/ https://www.madkingthomas.com/
- jessep 6y agoAwesome!!! Thank you so much.
- casey77 6y agoPrior to reading your comment, I read the article and my main takeaway was how impressive the choreographer was and how I wouldn’t have expected the engineers to rely so much on the choreographer. So it is great to see your comment and I agree with you. But the article did give at least one person more appreciation for choreographers.
- kn8a 6y agoShe did an awesome job. The article implies that the choreography was reviewed by an engineer who would script the moves? Then article says then there is a pipeline that doesn't need scripting? The main question I was wondering is it possible to do this with mocap alone? Surely the closer artists can get to sculpting the tech the more opportunities for creation are possible.
- unixhero 6y agoShe did an amazing job and is talented for sure. I still absolutely hate those robots. This won't end well.
- amelius 6y agoPeople won't accept them on the streets, that's for sure. Perhaps they'd have a chance if they used a different form factor, though.
- jjbinx007 6y agoWithout wishing to spoil anything, the robot video reminded me very much of the final scenes of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from a decade ago.
- jcpham2 6y agoUncanny valley is so real.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago> This won't end well. Care to expand on that? I'm very cynical about Boston Dynamics, given that - as far as I can tell / know - they've only done tech demos and again as far as I know don't have significant commercial success, or their robots doing things outside of (carefully orchestrated) tech demos. disclaimer: I never actually looked on their website for user cases or whatnot.
- typhon04 6y agoI think the dog-like robot - Spot is commercial. SpaceX are using one to asses things on their launch pad. But I guess it's truly a difficult problem and they aren't rushing it to market before is good and save enough. Which if they have the funding I think is a good approach.
- qayxc 6y agoSpot is a solution in search of a problem. SpaceX are using one because I think simply because someone thought it'd be cool. You can remotely inspect a launch pad without shelling out $75k+ using RC cars and drones, for example. It's much cooler and better for the company's overall image, though, if you use a Spot robot. PR is a thing after all and using Spot fits perfectly. I seriously doubt there's any difficulty with safety or "being good enough", as I've yet to see an application for Spot that couldn't be done just as well by conventional already existing means. BD is a group of enthusiasts that build cool robots, not a company that primarily develops robotic solutions.
- totetsu 6y agoCan't be every day she gets to choreograph for a quadruped.
- wiz21c 6y agoVery good sense of humor indeed. I caught the "do you love me" question instantaneously and wondered who got that very good idea. As always, the good idea didn't came from the PR department :-)
- rtx 6y agoThe choreography was my favourite part, it's hard for me to even think how do you plan that.
- anoncow 6y agoArt > Science
- notretarded 6y agoWhy would they? What business sense would this make? The image they want to portray would be that they are capable of everything in-house - Their staff are not only experts in robotics but also art too. In reality it's not quite true. Just like you also don't see them saying "Thanks to PwC for developing our software."
- thih9 6y ago> would require so little from Boston Dynamics We don’t know that. Perhaps it was important for them to not have credits in the video; e.g. to keep attention on the robots. Your sister is credited elsewhere in BD’s article, see other comment [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682864
- jackhack 6y agoOne of the reasons for the formation of worker's unions (such as screen actor's guild) is to protect the rights of actors and film workers, at all levels. Receiving proper credit is a big part of compensation. There may be a fine line between a "film" and an "advertisement", and what's more this is surely not a SAG film, but it seems to me that credit for choreography on something like this - where the dance is the core of the content - is appropriate.
- thih9 6y ago> There may be a fine line between a "film" and an "advertisement" To me a manufacturer doing a video that focuses on their products for their youtube channel is definitely an "advertisement". > this is surely not a SAG film SAG states that "Choreographers and assistant choreographers are covered for purposes of health and retirement contributions only." [1]. [1]: https://www.sagaftra.org/who’s-covered https://www.sagaftra.org/who’s-covered
- bigbizisverywyz 6y agoI personally would have loved to see a human dancer dancing alongside the robots, that would have given an interesting comparison.
- mromanuk 6y agoMe too. Wouldn’t be cool if the robots dance along humans, replacing iconic videoclips or scenes? Like the scene of Jerry (from Tom & Jerry) dancing with Gene Kelly https://youtu.be/2msq6H2HI-Y https://youtu.be/2msq6H2HI-Y Or Paula Abdul “Opposites attract” https://youtu.be/xweiQukBM_k https://youtu.be/xweiQukBM_k
- mudita 6y agoThis duet between a human dancer and an industrial robot might interest you as well: https://youtu.be/Q-sK-s_TzN0 https://youtu.be/Q-sK-s_TzN0
- dkarp 6y agoHere's a 90s version of that from Alexander McQueen: https://youtu.be/ErE7O5NceGQ https://youtu.be/ErE7O5NceGQ
- miraculous_cake 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8lblosRKsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8lblosRKsQ ;)
- rasz 6y ago
- johnx123-up 6y agoFWIW, https://www.madkingthomas.com/content/who-monica https://www.madkingthomas.com/content/who-monica is 404
- joopxiv 6y agoAlso, the song is about be able to dance...
- sargun 6y agoI would love to ask a question. In the article they say the following: > We definitely learned not to underestimate how flexible and strong dancers are—when you take elite athletes and you try to do what they do but with a robot, it’s a hard problem. It’s humbling. Fundamentally, I don’t think that Atlas has the range of motion or power that these athletes do, although we continue developing our robots towards that, because we believe that in order to broadly deploy these kinds of robots commercially, and eventually in a home, we think they need to have this level of performance. I would love to ask your sister, that is Atlas was a human, what age would it be, in terms of skill of dancer? I think this is an interesting parallel along what people say "This computer is as smart as a 2 year old."
- jacobolus 6y agoAs a parent of small kids who just watched the video, I would say 2–3 year old seems about right, assuming kids who do a lot of running around. 3-year-olds can move with significantly more grace (the motions are more intentional, fluid, subtle, and steady, and seem less scripted) than these robots, but definitely can't do a jump precisely the same 10 times in a row, so it's not really apples to apples. Maybe age isn't the right measure. I would say that these robots move like a 3-year-old kid who has been practicing a particular motion sporadically for a month or two, but not like an active 3-year old who has been practicing the same motion for a year. If you compare to the kids who do martial arts or gymnastics or some serious sport or whatever, by age 6 or 7 the kids are leaving these robots in the dust. (The robots are still amazing though.)
- OJFord 6y agoProbably need to be more specific about 'skill as a dancer' too though - I think you're responding mainly about motor control (?) but try choregraphing a bunch of three year olds to actually perform that routine!
- bostonpete 6y agoEvaluating robots on whether they do what they're told and whether their timing is good doesn't seem too useful. That's the easy part. Pretty much any robot is going to be more precise/predictable/consistent in their actions than any human, let along a three year-old.
- exikyut 6y agoI'm extremely interested to learn how the dance moves were programmed - I'm guessing the standard tablet controller probably doesn't cut it for the level of control necessary. More generally speaking, I'm especially curious if "anyone" buying a Spot would have adequate access to be able to do similar things. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to not been possible for warranty reasons...
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoI believe so; see https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/choreography_service https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/ch... for the choreography API. You don't even have to buy a Spot to write the code, which is impressive in this industry! Now we just need someone to buy one and set it up in front of a webcam with a public SSH login. There's more documentation at https://github.com/boston-dynamics/spot-sdk https://github.com/boston-dynamics/spot-sdk and https://dev.bostondynamics.com/ https://dev.bostondynamics.com/. However, it looks like a lot of the choreography is built-in; you can call twerk() or butt_circle() (documented at https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/move_reference#twerk https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/mo...) but you don't have access to the raw kinematics, gyros, and accelerometers to generate your own unique moves. It would be amazing if they'd release the full routine to cause your Atlas or Spot to perform the dances, but I'm not aware of that being public anywhere. For a more general example, check out this video where Adam Savage used a Spot to pull a rickshaw; his programmer was able to work with the API to change the payload tuning of the robot: https://youtu.be/zyaocKS3sfg?t=1482 https://youtu.be/zyaocKS3sfg?t=1482 It appears that the API is more about what you'd need to make Spot useful in an industrial or demonstration context than to build your own Spot. They want something that a generalist can make do useful stuff out-of-the-box, which makes sense.
- exikyut 6y agoApologies for the delayed reply, and thanks very much for this comprehensive answer. I've been curious for a little while, and this pretty much answers that curiosity completely.
- williwas 6y agoLol good. Those robots are meant for military usage. To kill people, facading them behind a nice dance is an interesting marketing disguise.
- aj7 6y agoAwful interview. Almost nothing of interest revealed.
- wrnr 6y agoYea I still don't know what the input level is for the robots, did they use some sort of dance notation[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation
- fctorial 6y agoProbably limb positions at discreet instances in time, and bots know how to move from one position to another.
- rendall 6y agoThere are some hints with this excerpt: "Atlas’ current dance performance uses a mixture of what we like to call reflexive control, which is a combination of reacting to forces, online and offline trajectory optimization, and model predictive control. We leverage these techniques because they’re a reliable way of unlocking really high performance stuff, and we understand how to wield these tools really well. We haven’t found the end of the road in terms of what we can do with them"
- wiz21c 6y ago"offline trajectory optimization" this doesn't sound good... I read this as : "we've made those robots do things they won't be able to do autonomously thanks to massive amounts of offline optimization". Sure it's impressive, but I wonder how it helps the casual viewer to get an idea of what these robots can actually do. One could say that's the whole point of PR but... It sure helped BD engineer to push their robots forward (as said in the article).
- yarcob 6y agoOffline trajectory optimisation sounds a lot like a dancer training dance moves?
- Animats 6y agoThat's impressive. It took 40 years and somewhere well above $100 million to get to a minimum viable product. First DARPA, then Google, then Softbank. It helps having long-term funding.
- ultimoo 6y agoFascinating! On a separate note, I was reading up on Boston Dynamics just the other day and was surprised to see that they are now owned by Hyundai (Google X sold BD to SoftBank who sold them to Hyundai). I guess was surprised to see non US-based ownership because I had always assumed the US government had some interest in the core technology.
- rtx 6y agoStill with a protectorate.
- rattray 6y agoWhat does that mean?
- ghc 6y agoBeing a protectorate means by treaty the US has some responsibility for the military defense of Korea. https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Protectorates-and-Spheres-of-Influence-U-s-protectorates-since-world-war-ii.html https://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/Protectorates-a...
- MikusR 6y agoFunniest thing is that is Hyundai the carmaker and not Hyundai the robot maker.
- laydn 6y agoAnyone know, how long would these robots keep dancing, with the on-board batteries?
- qayxc 6y agoSpot could easily last an hour or more - BD quotes about 90 minutes of walking on a single charge. Atlas on the other hand is still a prototype, so it's not optimised in that regard and also much bigger, heavier and bulkier. I'd guess it doesn't last longer than maybe 20 minutes or so.
- Technically 6y agoTl;dr they only dance in terms of immediate aesthetics. There's no heuristic for understanding the rhythm and tone in any way corresponding with human understanding.
- wiz21c 6y agoNot to rain on anyone's parade BUT what about the battery life ?
- ernopp 6y ago> You mentioned that Spot is now robust enough to dance all day. How about Atlas? If you kept on replacing its batteries, could it dance all day, too?
- qayxc 6y agoThat doesn't answer the question. Even Spot requires constant battery swapping to be able to function all day. Its battery life is measured in minutes, not hours. The comment referred to robustness, not endurance.
- qayxc 6y agoThe battery life is abysmal. These machines use the same batteries as every other piece of contemporary tech. Spot can walk about for 90 minutes top and the more it needs to do (e.g. running additional sensors, performing autonomous functions, etc.), the shorter its battery life will be (I'd guess around an hour is more realistic). Bipedal prototypes like Atlas wouldn't last that long. Think 20 minutes or so for a heavy robot like that.
- rohan_shah 6y agoRobots who could replace some manual labour work within a specified area (say: factories), don't need to rely on batteries. We could attach them with a huge wire and plug it into power supply.
- qayxc 6y agoIn those specified areas it's also much simpler and more efficient to change the process itself. Automated warehouses for example don't use legged robots that climb ladders, operate forklifts, and carry boxes around. Interestingly, the bits of manual labour still required in these areas (e.g. factories) are cheap in terms of manual labour and not doable with the same level of efficiency with even the most sophisticated robots, let alone bipedal ones (you'd change the factory to accommodate to the simplest possible robot design, not vice versa).
- antsam 6y agoI, for one, welcome our new dancing robot overlords.
- eplanit 6y agoI'm glad that I'll get to witness a live ED-209 in my lifetime.
- amelius 6y agoEvery BD video should at least contain a fragment of somebody poking at the robots with a stick.
- jansan 6y ago1. Teach humanoid robots to dance 2. ??? 3. Profit
- dshep 6y agoAm I the only one that finds these BD robots kind of repulsive? They are so weird and alien and... unnatural.
- samizdis 6y agoI doubt that you are alone in your reaction, but the robots' appearance is driven more by function than by form. This dance exercise goes some way to redress the balance, with movements that are more fluid and graceful than the jerkiness typically displayed by robots. Yes, weird, and perhaps alien. But of course unnatural: nature has provided no precedent or template for robot designers to follow.
- jsdalton 6y agoYou're not the only one. What you describe is actually hypothesized in the concept of the "uncanny valley effect": "...as the appearance of a robot is made more human, some observers' emotional response to the robot becomes increasingly positive and empathetic, until it reaches a point beyond which the response quickly becomes strong revulsion. However, as the robot's appearance continues to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once again and approaches human-to-human empathy levels. "This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely human" and "fully human" entity is the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that an almost human-looking robot seems overly "strange" to some human beings, produces a feeling of uncanniness, and thus fails to evoke the empathic response required for productive human–robot interaction." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
- mleonhard 6y agoI felt repulsed by only the arm on the quadruped robot.
- Vosporos 6y agoAh yes, doing fortnite dances while committing war crimes
- k__ 6y ago"it’s about having a pipeline that lets you take a diverse set of motions, that you can describe through a variety of different inputs, and push them through and onto the robot." Remember that, when you think automation can come later.
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoThat's useful for HN readers in general, but when specifically talking about robots, it needs to be communicated to legacy robotics manufacturers like Fanuc, Yaskawa, etc. This dance happened because Monica Thomas could drag-and-drop motions as if she was programming a MIDI sequencer, generating text files on her laptop, pushing data from the PC to the robot with some Python and protobufs. Other manufacturers doing anything like this is rare, and they're nowhere near as fluid or graceful, because it involves a robot technician tediously jogging the robot around with a teach pendant in the way all industrial robots have been programmed since the 70s.
- pragmatic8 6y agoTo all that are wetting their diapers at the _ridiculous_ thought of robots hunting you down (a rather pompous thought in my opinion — why would anyone expend any resources to kill _you_?): please remain in your bunkers for the sake of society.
- abhijitr 6y agoIt must be nice for you that you've never felt persecuted or treated unjustly by human systems and therefore can't extrapolate to how that might play out when autonomous killer robots are thrown into the mix.
- DoktorDelta 6y agoAsk Breonna Taylor who would expend any resource to kill you
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mam2 6y agoThe worst part of it is people who imagine robots hunting you would be for some reason 'worse' than horrific humans militia such as SS have done in the past. Any atrocity has been done by humankind already.. we didn't wait for robots.
- mellosouls 6y agoBoston Dynamics Robots vs Human Originals (The Contours): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VGsfgo8_Jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VGsfgo8_Jo Although the dance moves are different, the spirit is synchronised :)
- necovek 6y agoNot wanting to downplay "how strong dancers are", because they obviously are, especially in their core, but I would imagine that most of the problems with these robots, and Atlas in particular, come from an entirely different weight distribution, rather than strength. IOW, to achieve the similarly appearing moves, these robots have got to have a lot more strength to achieve the balance that comes naturally to most dancers: also why you rarely get 7ft/2.1m tall dancers doing the ballet/gymnastics style stuff — their weight distribution and "levers" (limb length) are so much different, making many of those moves doubly or three times as hard. And focusing on their strength in the quotes in the article also downplays dancers' exquisite motor reaction time to reestablish balance (kudo to our brains is what I am saying).