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Boston Dynamics shows off another major leap in humanoid mobility
- saaspirant 2y agoHere's the video linked in the article:https://youtu.be/I44_zbEwz_w https://youtu.be/I44_zbEwz_w
- flowerthoughts 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44_zbEwz_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44_zbEwz_w Aside from looking a bit sluggish when accelerating, and having too large oscillations in the leg control loop, it looks like motion capture. Very impressive.
- zadler 2y agoDo we need it
- notachatbot123 2y agoHuman-induced climate change is drastically worsening the living conditions for billions of people who will fight to survive in the coming decades and centuries.
- sarchertech 2y agoAnd energy intensive humanoid robots are gonna help them fight that fight?
- harperlee 2y agoHe might be arguing for "no".
- eMPee584 2y agoAnd we still have a chance to handle the situation in peaceful and equitable ways - by transitioning from a competitive to a cooperative (non-commercial, trade-free, open access, open source) commons economy! Once human labour is not competitive any more (2027-28?), we have to change our economic framework anyways. That's why I'm rooting for the aforementioned option with all the zest left in my aging body..
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoYes, and this will allow us to reduce the number of humans.
- falcor84 2y agoJudgement Day was supposed to happen on August 29, 1997. We're really behind schedule.
- suraci 2y agoit may be the last grasping straw of the drowning market
- lm28469 2y agoModern tech "progress" feels like you're drowning in a lake and someone throws you a bag of m&m's. Sure I like m&m's but it really isn't anywhere near the top of my list right now.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago(Wait, another Pilkington reference in this thread?) I look at it as art meets tech. I'm pretty sure Da Vinci would have loved this.
- orbital-decay 2y agoDo "we" need anything else than food and sleep? Humanoid automata trope was invented in ancient times, and it's everywhere in sci-fi since about a century ago. Is it really surprising that someone actually tries to make it happen just for the sake of it?
- fforflo 2y agoWhenever I read something about Boston Dynamics now, I can't help but remember that scene from Silicon Valley (HBO) where Eric kicks BigDog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnMBW95RZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFnMBW95RZI
- JKCalhoun 2y agoFor me I'm reminded of Karl Pilkington, "It walks like it shit itself": https://youtu.be/VsIz8xn3srI https://youtu.be/VsIz8xn3srI
- mentalgear 2y agoIt's strange how these Boston Dynamics videos were already going "viral" almost 20 years ago when I was in school. [quod pod/dog walking terrain outside] Back then, you also thought practical robotics would be almost there. Really makes you think about today's videos, and whether it's just hype all over again. If you have the data/background, feel free to expand how these demos are different from back then in relation to robotics becoming actually deployable in real arbitrary environments.
- micromacrofoot 2y agothey do actually have deployed big dogs in certain industrial settings, and have for a few years at least, though I'm not sure what the bar for success is
- geerlingguy 2y agoAlso on the battlefield: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/08/16/what-we-know-about-ukraines-army-of-robot-dogs/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2024/08/16/what-w...
- cubefox 2y agoThis one is far better than the robots they had back then. Which, moreover, weren't using machine learning for control but handcrafted algorithms, which don't have the potential to scale as far as machine learning. The robot in the current video was explicitly trained with reinforcement learning.
- amelius 2y agoWell, if they released them on the streets, there would be a revolt. I personally think I'd grab my baseball bat.
- jajko 2y agoButlerian jihad all over again
- fxtentacle 2y agoAnother strong win for South Korea's robot-powered future! Why the U.S. govt let this critical company get sold overseas is beyond me.
- pshushereba 2y agoMissed opportunity to have Atlas recreate Raygun's Olympics breakdance.
- skadamat 2y agoCost hasn't come down at all it seems with this approach. They still feel like fighter jets; advanced tech but really high price tag.
- VyseofArcadia 2y agoI was pretty amused when I saw the headline, thought to myself, "oh, there must have been some reveal for the new Atlas robot" and then noticed the url was newatlas.com.
- RaSoJo 2y agoIs it just me, or do these new "leaps" from Boston Dynamics feel tiresome? People would surely appreciate automation that helps with household tasks like cleaning, chopping vegetables, and ironing clothes. But such delicate activities don’t seem to be part of BD’s vision....not even on the periphery. What is the end goal that BD has in mind? Yet another Police/Military toy?
- rvense 2y agoI wonder what this will cost to build and how often they break. I doubt it's going to be able to compete with the price of human labour anytime soon. So it's either for going places people can't go (rescue bot?), or doing things people really don't want to do, like walk towards gunfire.
- Panzer04 2y agoI would be much more impressed to see a person with a controller (and just directional controls) telling the bipedal robot where to go in a normal human environment - for example, just crossing the street. These seem very curated, on perfectly flat, grippy surfaces. Perhaps it just shows how truly difficult the human method of bipedal locomotion really is that this doesn't seem to have been achieved yet.
- demaga 2y agoThere is another video in the article where it runs quite swiftly up and down the hill. Definitely doesn't feel curated.
- mhb 2y agoThe Unitree robot is much more impressive.
- luma 2y agoEven moreso in that you can buy them, today, commercially, for just over $20k. China is several years ahead of us in this space, like they are in most others involving manufacturing, and the gap is widening by the day.
- jdiez17 2y agoThe first line in their YouTube channel description: > Please everyone be sure to use the robot in a Friendly and Safe manner. I guess they also have a sense of humor.
- marcusverus 2y agoI hadn't heard of it, but... wow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C-LU0cnqB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C-LU0cnqB8
- QuiCasseRien 2y agoabsolutely not Boston Dynamics. Fake 3D Video.
- the_70x 2y agoWhy don't they show videos of the real use cases? Like doing home chores or shooting rifles in a battleground
- niteshpant 2y agoHow long until we see a war of humanoids? The new era of proxy wars? Maybe the new liberty ships will be humaniod robots and drones.
- Damogran6 2y agoIt's all fantastic until that one rotation of the waist...then it flys straight through the uncanny valley. It goes from 'observation of movement of an organic thing' to 'I'm calculating the most direct route between steps A and B'...to horrific effect.
- vessenes 2y agoIf I think about robotic autonomy, I imagine a sort of layer cake: 1. Intent and Planning -> What am I doing, What will happen when I do it 2. Macro Implementation -> What are instructions down to all my parts 3. Local Implementation -> Given Instructions, let’s move my leg 4. realtime / reactivity -> OK, I’m 3 degrees off expected on this foot, need to rebalance everything. Figure et al are demoing 1-4, but slow and without motion - just heads and hands. Tesla’s robot day was demoing 4 only, as far as I can tell — engineers with controllers did all the macro planning and movement requesting - but there’s no way you can rebalance a robot live with a handheld controller - that seems certain to have been live from code. BD has always existed in this kind of liminal space to me, where it’s not clear that they’re doing anything more than 4 with their demos. Extremely impressive mobility demos, to be clear. But, I’ve never seen a humanoid demo from BD that’s not in what looks a pre-scanned and planned room. And we never hear claims about 1, 2 or 3 for humanoid robots from BD as far as I’m aware. I think for years the low level mobility part has been so hard, BD has felt way ahead, the planning and environment responsiveness was just science fiction. Today we see that the top part of that layer can be gotten with vision models, and we’re seeing dual architectures where those vision models instruct small fast models for layers below. My guess is that this architecture is going to be relatively resilient, changing the cost structure and opportunities for robot companies. So, I guess if I add all this up, we have a race between mobility experts and agile ML teams with robotic experience. And that adds up to some early launch products; I’d imagine they will be clumsy, and that BD will be a late launcher if it ever goes after consumer at all; it may just decide to license. Anyway I’d like to buy one, so the next few years should be interesting.
- breakyerself 2y agoCan it fold my laundry or do my dishes? I don't need a machine that does acrobatics. I need my life to be easier.
- nyc_data_geek1 2y agoMilitary needs terminators that do acrobatics. That is who this is for.
- krapp 2y agoIf America's imperialist death machines can't do superhero landings and strike cool poses in front of burning villages what are we even doing as a culture?
- echoangle 2y agoI still don't see why you would need a humanoid robot for those tasks. Folding laundry could be done by a single robotic arm, and dishes are done by a dishwasher.
- jajko 2y agoBecause managing all those dishes still takes a lot of time. Taking heap of dirty dishes, cutlery and whatnot, pre-clean if something nasty is already dried to them, arrange them efficiently, and then afterwards taking them all back to their places. That's maybe 7 minutes on average combined. It takes probably longer to write some meaningful post here (with some corrections), but we are spoiled these days, pretty irrational, and consider our free time our most important aspect. Some people would prefer eating broccoli or spinach paste to managing dishwasher. Also, if somebody expects me to fork out 20k for some assistant, there are no limits what I can and should expect out of it. Heck, you can have modern-day slaves for less in most modern societies, not even going into less developed ones.
- breakyerself 2y agoYou must have a wife or mom at home doing the dishes if you think it's a 7 minute task.
- krembo 2y agoWhat surprises me with all of the robots is that the engineers had the freedom to create the best machine for all purposes, yet they keep creating a "humanoid" with 1 body, head, 2 arms and 2 legs. Is our human body form really the best for all tasks?
- ben7799 2y agoWhere are they at with power supply? All these videos are now showing the robots untethered (and they have been for a while), but how long can they operate untethered? Are they just running on Lithium Ion batteries? And the new electric joint motors are more efficient than powering hydraulics?
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