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Agile soccer skills for a bipedal robot with deep reinforcement learning
- mangamadaiyan 4y agoFinally, "agile" used as it should be!
- sideshowb 4y agoWait until they get it playing rugby, they can call it a scrum master
- moonchrome 4y agoWhen I read first three words I started to cringe preemptively, these words should include a trigger warning. HN should be a safe space for Agile victims.
- mangamadaiyan 4y agoNe'er was a truer word spoken.
- bluechair 4y ago> The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In any case, most actual fighting will be done by small robots, and as you go forth today remember your duty is clear: to build and maintain those robots. https://youtu.be/oazwTDeqF54 https://youtu.be/oazwTDeqF54
- yowzadave 4y agoWithout realizing this was a quote from the Simpsons, I read this totally seriously and accepted it as a scarily plausible scenario for the future: a competition for the first power to achieve dominance in the field of robotic war. And once the winning robot army has liquidated their competition, the war can be effectively over—no need for any human lives to be lost…just to surrender to the superior technological force.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ChatGTP 4y agoExcept we still have nuclear deterrence, there won’t be any surrender, there will just be MAD.
- keithasaurus 4y agoIsn't this what we have sports for? I think what your describing would basically be a robot team sport.
- laputan_machine 4y agoI think there's a fairly big caveat: when one team beats another team, they don't take over the opposing team's stadium.
- stevenwoo 4y agoPhilip K. Dick wrote an interesting (if one is only familiar with the books turned into movies) short story called The Defenders about this. It doesn't have the dire conspiracy theories or corporate run worlds we associate with his more famous work.
- Teever 4y agoDick also wrote the fantastic short story 'Second Variety'[0] which has a similar theme, but involves autonomous, self-replicating robots that serve as a sort of intelligent mine field that separates warring factions on a the moon or an alien planet in the 1995 movie with the same name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety
- actionfromafar 4y agoThat movie is very underappreciated and gets more salient over time.
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- georgeg23 4y ago6 months after that Simpsons episode: https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan-s-star-wars-trump-calls-missile-defenses-would-blast-warheads-sky https://www.science.org/content/article/decades-after-reagan...
- jpm_sd 4y agoThat episode is from Simpsons season 8, in 1997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_War_of_Lisa_Simpson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_War_of_Lisa_Simpson
- dmix 4y agoBrilliant Pebbles seemed to have always been a legit idea, probably the only real solution to the MIRV/glide threat. Something that can respond to the launch immediately close to the launch site. It's just always been crazy expensive and diplomatic kryptonite having weapon systems floating over countries 24/7.
- amelius 4y agoCan also be molecular biology-scale robots.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mensetmanusman 4y agoIn 30 years these will have weapons on the battlefield.
- 14 4y agoVery optimistic that you think they will hold off 30 years
- wiseowise 4y agoSo what?
- themodelplumber 4y agoWell, and your favorite side will be offering to kit yours out to look like anybody you want. Then someone will get permission to let you pay for first-person or pseudo-third-person streams from given customized combatants. This will be a definite "personalization of warfare" moment. Then special ops of the kind only previously imagined will cross the traditional extreme privacy barrier. A group of teens will crowdfund a tremendously capable soccer/spec-ops bot that strongly resembles Christ Jesus. They will dress it in robes, swim it into the Spratleys, and it will emerge from the water, tie a crown of thorns around its head like Rambo, and then...it will be mowed down. But this will only be the first exciting moment. I fully expect version 3 to make it past the beachhead.
- modeless 4y agoI'm glad this finally made it to the front page. This research deserves more attention than it's been getting. The movements and strategy are very impressive for something trained end-to-end and exclusively in simulation. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get better motions out of this kind of servomotor-driven robot.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- NalNezumi 4y agoI think the paper published in Science Robotics 2020 by the team at ETH is more impressive. They made a fully simulation trained quadrupedal robot walk on ice, rocky terrain, and even in a river. Without much of the nitty-gritty tweaking seen in this paper edit: found the project homepage https://leggedrobotics.github.io/rl-blindloco/ https://leggedrobotics.github.io/rl-blindloco/
- blt 4y agoquadruped walking is much, much more forgiving of flaws in the controller. It's not really comparable to biped walking.
- jonas21 4y agoAlso from the same paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvLcr5HtNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvLcr5HtNc
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoi'm delighted by this demo. I can' wait to show my kids. This will be a "collision of worlds" to see what is possible, by bringing together their favorite sport (that they play constantly) and their lego interest... and what I hope is the long path of deep work, culminating in FRC . Out of curiosity, is the field signaling to robots relative positions and goal locations via radio etc, or are the robots are working 100% with visual recognition ?
- ldhough 4y agoFRC?
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoFirst robotics competition!
- esfandia 4y agoThe yearly RoboCup robot soccer championship has been going on for more than 20 years now, and it looks like the objective that they set from the beginning, which was: "By the middle of the 21st century, a team of fully autonomous humanoid robot soccer players shall win a soccer game, complying with the official rules of FIFA, against the winner of the most recent World Cup" is well within reach. https://robocup.org/objective https://robocup.org/objective
- Thorrez 4y agoI'd be worried about injuries to the human players. The robots will probably be a lot harder than the humans.
- thomasahle 4y agoI imagine you can train the robots to play by some strict "no contact" rules. Though they'll have to expect the humans to try and push them over...
- toast0 4y agoI'm sure they can be programmed to flop.
- ragebol 4y agoHumans can be hard to humans too and then they get a yellow/red card. Same for robots in RoboCup already. A teams wanting to really go up against humans will have to be safe. But for now the humans are still better at actual soccer than a RoboCup MSL team :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE4UopWe2lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE4UopWe2lo Robot-robot matches for some types of robot are getting more interesting though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bLIztscyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9bLIztscyI
- AlecSchueler 4y agoI think the concern is more about the strength imbalance between a robot and a human, more than the rough play itself. Human-on-human play is already injury prone.
- bluehorseray 4y agoI honestly think there's a huge market for a consumer grade "pet" robot. Would love to have one of these running around, then I can just turn it off when I leave
- steve_adams_86 4y agoThis is already happening, though I’m not aware of any bipedal pet robots.
- nextworddev 4y agoAny recommendations?
- squarefoot 4y agoThe Unitree Go1 seems the most promising among the affordable ones. https://www.unitree.com/en/go1 https://www.unitree.com/en/go1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfmhWQyp_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfmhWQyp_8
- nextworddev 4y agoWould you know whether it’s feasible for hobbyists to make one of these at home by assembling components
- Teever 4y agoProbably, but not at the price point of $2700. It would probably be $25k-$50k and 1-3 years of development time depending on your skill set.
- NalNezumi 4y agoIf you're interested in making one by yourself, you should check out Josh Piper[1] [1] https://jpieper.com/2020/11/09/mjbots-november-2020-update/ https://jpieper.com/2020/11/09/mjbots-november-2020-update/
- mountaineer 4y agoLooks like the same team that was shown on 60 Minutes the other week? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-artificial-intelligence-future-60-minutes-transcript-2023-04-16/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-artificial-intelligence-...
- simula67 4y agoCan anyone with good robotics experience explain why these types of robots are not in wider commercial use? We have seen interesting robots like this one, from Boston Dynamics and others but they still seem to be far from displacing humans in the workforce. It seems that these robots have similar fine motor skills to humans, enough to displace humans in more economic activities. If visual detection and response is the problem, teleoperation is always an option: hire people from low-labor cost countries to operate them remotely. So I am assuming that some kind of manufacturing costs are the reason that these robots are not taking over more human labor in advanced economies. Is that correct?
- modeless 4y agoIMO the problem is hands. I think hands are harder than legs.
- two_in_one 4y agoIt's everything. Starting with compute unit, sensors. They _are_ getting smaller and cheaper. Then there are actuators. Small robots use servos which are not fast enough. Bigger robots, like those from Boston Dynamics, use brushless motors. Which are fast, but have limited torque. Then there is the cost. Without volume it's absurdly high. Then competitors, they can easily reproduce. For example Boston Dynamics sell it's dog sized robot for $75k, while mechanically similar Chinese are $4-10k. Then the biggest question is what are you going to do with it for this price? Special note: we already have vacuums. You cannot send it shopping alone. Any other realistic ideas?
- rukuu001 4y agoman that looks so much like a couple of toddlers playing soccer. extremely cool
- UberFly 4y agoExactly. I thought it was cute for lack of a better word. Like the Deep Blue chess challenge, I wonder how long until these kind of bots are challenging our best athletes.
- bouvin 4y agoI came here to post the same. These are the most adorable robots, I have ever seen. The progress made in motor skills compared to earlier is impressive.
- ggm 4y agoRobot wars and AI wars fought inside artificial environments would be totally fine with me, if the robots honoured the outcome and their masters likewise. I have no problem with robot football warfare settling disputes. It's the fan violence which worries me: Maybe we need robots for that too? Basically its F1. The drivers are cosmetic at this point, and the fans are all behind TV screens. If somebody tells me F1 has been faked for the last 10 years I would believe it. I like how they trained the robots to fake "AAAAAH MY ANKLE HE KILLED MY ANKLE REF REF FOUL" falls.
- marcell 4y agoWhy would anyone honor the results of a war in a controlled setting? The whole point of war is to compel a result the other country doesn’t want to honor.
- ggm 4y agoIts a bit of a reductive ad absurdiam. No, obviously not unless the mediator (referee) had some overarching control to make it forceful. And, you clearly need the organ and scoreboard and hotdogs too. Ben Bova wrote a juvenalia SF about it in 1969 called "the Duelling Machine" -its classic coming-of-age stuff. In times past, in history, yes you could settle things like kingly succession by a single pair of champions, but I find it passing strange. Its like the armies basically say: "stuff this, if you want this outcome so badly, you duke it out guys" -but this comes from a time when wars were won or lost by who could pay off the mercenaries the best. "Lets take this to the international court of arbitration" only works so far. China (spratleys) and Australia and East Timor (oil wells) can tell tales about how much people behave nicely in international arbitration. They behave about as well as a robot trained to fake out ankle kicks HE HIT ME REF REF ITS A FOUL ITS A FOUL I WANT A FREE KICK
- sbierwagen 4y agoRobot Jox (1989) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102800/?ref_=nm_knf_t_1 >In the distant future, mankind has forsaken global wars for battles of single combat. The world has been divided into two opposing super powers, with each side represented by trained champions. Mechwarrior boxing, more or less. The 5/10 imdb rating is well deserved. Mostly notable for a writing credit by Joe Haldeman, who managed to get an accurate depiction of a megawatt-class laser weapon on screen.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- marcell 4y agoThe most obvious application of this is military. How far out is a robot soldier? We already have unmanned drones. Creating expendable soldiers will be a huge win for whichever country achieves it first.
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoUnfortunately there has and always will be the obvious cheaper way to produce "expendable soldiers", as a certain current conflict brutally illustrates.
- sebzim4500 4y agoIs there? These things are commercially available for 15k, I would imagine that if you wanted to buy 100k of them you could drive the price down substantially. What is your plan for getting expendable soldiers for less than this? Even Russia spends more per soldier.
- marcell 4y agoThe Ukrainians probably don’t view it that way.
- noisy_boy 4y agoThe real Real Steel: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/
- plisking 4y agoWhen they can play football,then they can play sword
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoAmazing stuff - immediately reminiscent of two blokes pissed out of their heads who've broken into a five-a-side court for a kickabout on their way home from the pub.
- kitd 4y agoI was going to go with the under-8s in the local park on Saturday, but I don't think the bots are that skillful yet.
- tempera 4y ago"..with basic regularization of the behavior during training led the robots to learn safe and effective movements" Safe and effective - that phrase gave me the gag reflex.
- sebzim4500 4y agoWhy? In this context it makes sense. You don't want the robots damaging themselves or hurting spectators. It's not like they're just making an autocomplete here.
- tempera 3y agoBecause of vax propaganda on all media channels, repeating ad nauseam: "Safe and effective"
- rwmj 4y agoThe robots used are commercially available: https://emanual.robotis.com/docs/en/platform/op3/introduction/ https://emanual.robotis.com/docs/en/platform/op3/introductio... $14,199 on AliExpress.
- donatj 4y agoInteresting! That’s actually significantly more than I would have expected.
- amelius 4y agoIt's $750 per DOF. Which is indeed quite expensive. Especially considering that this is AliExpress.
- sigmoid10 4y agoI have a fully articulated quadruped here and it cost like $15 per DOF (excluding the control board), which is pretty much the price of a small servo. I bet if someone wanted to, they could make a humanoid like this for under $1000. The problem is that there's no market because control algorithms are already pretty wonky for 4+ legs. Two legs is just too unstable, even if you just want to ply around with it.
- amelius 4y agoIt looks like this is the servo they used: http://en.robotis.com/shop_en/item.php?it_id=902-0124-000 http://en.robotis.com/shop_en/item.php?it_id=902-0124-000
- sigmoid10 4y agoIf that's true than it is insane. These things pull almost three amps at max torque. Now assume you need at least 14 of those. You probably never see them running for more than 20s in the video because they just run out of battery.
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- memalign 4y agoIf the world has to end at the hands of AI in my lifetime, I hope it’s these drunk lil soccer guys
- hooby 4y agoThis might be the first time I ever thoroughly enjoyed watching a soccer match. Maybe I'd enjoy real soccer more as well, if the players just sometimes randomly face-planted onto the field!
- taneq 4y agoDo they not? :P
- throw310822 4y agoWhen I was younger I was thoroughly unimpressed by "adults chasing a ball". Getting older, while still not a fan, I've become amazed at the stuff these bodies can do. An 80kg person taking a split-second decision to jump one/ one and a half meter into the air, rotating more than 90 degrees so that their legs are actually above their heads, reaching a ball travelling at a 100km/h and hitting it to send it on a target, then falling flat without hurting themselves, just to get up and start running again? Just wow.
- deutschepost 4y agoDuring university I was part of a robocup team and this is the first time I was genuinely impressed with movement of these robots. These kind of robot is often seen in the Humanoid League and during games they don't move nearly as fast and controlled. If even at all. That said, during competitions it is not allowed to use external motion tracking as it is used in the paper. The necessary image processing takes a good chunk out of the processing power budget and the quality of image sensors this size doesn't help. Also most teams wouldn't train their expensive robots this way because the risk of damaging it is way too high. I think this is a glimpse of what's to come in robot soccer. But we are a long way away for self contained autonomous robots to behave this way.
- LeanderK 4y agotraining it will be way harder and the net probably needs to grow to eliminate external motion tracking, but I don't think the image processing and quality of image sensors is the bottleneck. These robots need the right hardware for quick inference, maybe some specialised inference chips or something, but I think if you manage to train a net that can do this, you can deploy it in principle on the robots. It looks like it has a "Intel Core i3 processor dual core" which is definitely not the right hardware for efficient (throughput + power consumption) inference. The problem is imho that the problem is way harder and we will probably struggle to train a net that can do this in simulation. It might just be impossible with our current capabilities, we might have to wait a few years until research catches up with the problem. But I am not a RL guy and can comment only from my computer vision-perspective.
- cornholio 4y ago> Also most teams wouldn't train their expensive robots this way because the risk of damaging it is way too high. They train it in a simulation, and these robots are quite expensive too. The only problem is getting miniaturized hardware, which we are bound to see very soon as there are vast practical applications, I'm thinking dishwashers and refrigerators.
- veaxvoid 4y agono replication for this one as well, huh. oh well
- amelius 4y agoAre transformer models being used in robotic applications like this? Or is this based on convolutional nets + RL or something else?
- isaacfrond 4y agoAnother video is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35786378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35786378
- AndrewKemendo 4y agoThose of us in RL are the cockroaches of AI We just keep plugging along knowing that embodied control MDPs are the true path to AGI :)
- bondarchuk 4y agoMore videos including full 1v1 matches here: https://sites.google.com/view/op3-soccer https://sites.google.com/view/op3-soccer Oh and another thing: the way they walk (and fall over) reminds me of the classic indie wrestling game Sumotori Dreams: http://www.gravitysensation.com/sumotori/ http://www.gravitysensation.com/sumotori/
- vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago[dead]
- greenhearth 4y agoIf it's a pathway to something like machines that can go through a landfill and separate plastic from aluminum then I'm all for it. But this is just so dumb, I'm sorry.
- bannedbybros 4y ago[dead]
- davio 4y agoLooks like they play more aggressive defense now Also - a lot more flopping