3 ms·

What was eye-opening, or rather, sobering for me was when I read an interview with an engineer who explained how incredible difficult it is for a robot to orien

What was eye-opening, or rather, sobering for me was when I read an interview with an engineer who explained how incredible difficult it is for a robot to orient itself when it is lying on the floor and wants to stand up. Yes, it can do the required motions just fine, that’s not the point. But think about yourself when you are lying on the floor: it’s really easy to determine if this is safe, if you are lying underneath something and so on. You just feel that. A robot cannot do that; all they can do is look around as good as possible and visually determine their situation.

jgord 5mo ago
I naively assumed they have a gravity sensor, so will generally have an approximate up vector ?
- rcxdude 5mo ago
  Theu have an IMU, what they don't generally have is the various aspects of touch.
  - card_zero 5mo ago
    The point about being aware of lying underneath some object was interesting. Sound might matter, like the frequency of background noise changes when you're in an enclosed space, and listening to your own shuffling noises helps you know when you've planted your feet right - or something. I have some really effective ear plugs and I notice they make it harder to move around. Having said that, I've probably hit my head on the underside of an open cupboard door five or six times in my life, and I expect to do it again.
- ManuelKiessling 5mo ago
  Yeah but imagine yourself lying on the floor with your vision being your only sense, plus an info floating in your mind: „fyi, you are no longer upright“. That’s all, you feel nothing else. Now your job is to move all parts of your body in just the right way.
  - AndrewDucker 5mo ago
    But I have more than that. I can definitely sense which way is up unless I'm underwater.
    - card_zero 5mo ago
      Or have an amusing inner ear infection. So OK, sure, it's vector, not a flag.
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    Do I know which way my joints are bent (which a robot knows)? Then I can manage it. And why don't I have any sense of pressure at all? We can put that into robots.
- LeCompteSftware 5mo ago
  It is also things like "I can feel that my left knee is bearing a little too much weight, I should shift weight to my right hand and use that to push myself up" - things that come automatically to animals after learning the hard way in infancy (some of it is innate; baby animals are clumsy, but usually more mobile than human infants). Regardless of learned-vs-instinct, these abilities rely on sophisticated "sensors" and cognition. I suspect engineering the sensors is actually a bit harder, but I'm also not optimistic about a deep learning approach to the cognition. A significant underappreciated advantage of animals over AI: lifeforms can "learn the hard way" more easily than 2020s robots because of cheap self-repair. AI labs are reluctant to damage their robots, but an essential part of humans learning to move safely is severely bonking your head and reckoning with the consequences - "hey, dummy, why did you trip and fall and bonk your head? Because you were running like an idiot." I am learning the hard way to this day :) I have been practicing with work knives. A few months ago I got stupid and impatient, and sliced my thumb nastily. If I didn't block the cut with my thumbnail (still ruined) I might have chopped bone. It is hard to say precisely what I learned from this experience - "don't be stupid and impatient" is facile - but I know I learned a lot. I am actually optimistic about targeted surgical robotics. But for a general-use humanoid robot, I would not want to give it a knife if it's not capable of feeling pain. I never use big knives anywhere near my cats because I understand intuitively that they are nimble and unpredictable and easily stabbed by knives. I didn't need to be trained on this. A robot kind of does. Yikes.

jgord 5mo ago

I naively assumed they have a gravity sensor, so will generally have an approximate up vector ?

rcxdude 5mo ago
Theu have an IMU, what they don't generally have is the various aspects of touch.
- card_zero 5mo ago
  The point about being aware of lying underneath some object was interesting. Sound might matter, like the frequency of background noise changes when you're in an enclosed space, and listening to your own shuffling noises helps you know when you've planted your feet right - or something. I have some really effective ear plugs and I notice they make it harder to move around. Having said that, I've probably hit my head on the underside of an open cupboard door five or six times in my life, and I expect to do it again.
ManuelKiessling 5mo ago
Yeah but imagine yourself lying on the floor with your vision being your only sense, plus an info floating in your mind: „fyi, you are no longer upright“. That’s all, you feel nothing else. Now your job is to move all parts of your body in just the right way.
- AndrewDucker 5mo ago
  But I have more than that. I can definitely sense which way is up unless I'm underwater.
  - card_zero 5mo ago
    Or have an amusing inner ear infection. So OK, sure, it's vector, not a flag.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  Do I know which way my joints are bent (which a robot knows)? Then I can manage it. And why don't I have any sense of pressure at all? We can put that into robots.
LeCompteSftware 5mo ago
It is also things like "I can feel that my left knee is bearing a little too much weight, I should shift weight to my right hand and use that to push myself up" - things that come automatically to animals after learning the hard way in infancy (some of it is innate; baby animals are clumsy, but usually more mobile than human infants). Regardless of learned-vs-instinct, these abilities rely on sophisticated "sensors" and cognition. I suspect engineering the sensors is actually a bit harder, but I'm also not optimistic about a deep learning approach to the cognition. A significant underappreciated advantage of animals over AI: lifeforms can "learn the hard way" more easily than 2020s robots because of cheap self-repair. AI labs are reluctant to damage their robots, but an essential part of humans learning to move safely is severely bonking your head and reckoning with the consequences - "hey, dummy, why did you trip and fall and bonk your head? Because you were running like an idiot." I am learning the hard way to this day :) I have been practicing with work knives. A few months ago I got stupid and impatient, and sliced my thumb nastily. If I didn't block the cut with my thumbnail (still ruined) I might have chopped bone. It is hard to say precisely what I learned from this experience - "don't be stupid and impatient" is facile - but I know I learned a lot. I am actually optimistic about targeted surgical robotics. But for a general-use humanoid robot, I would not want to give it a knife if it's not capable of feeling pain. I never use big knives anywhere near my cats because I understand intuitively that they are nimble and unpredictable and easily stabbed by knives. I didn't need to be trained on this. A robot kind of does. Yikes.