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Balancing Robot Can Take a Kicking
BotKicker writes "A Japanese team has created the first full-size humanoid robot that won't fall over if you push it. A video shows it staggering and regaining balance after blows from a researcher. Being able to withstand shoves and kicks is essential if robots are to truly be our buddies, they reckon. 'The robot's balancing ability depends on its joints. For one thing they are never kept rigid, even when standing still, meaning they yield slightly when the robot is pushed. Force sensors within each joint also work out the position and velocity of the robot's centre mass as it moves around. Control software rapidly figures out what forces the robot's feet need to exert on the ground to bring it back into balance, and tells the joints how to act.'"
I saw a show on the Discovery channel over a decade ago showing a one legged robot that could recover it's balance when kicked.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We're on our way to robot Kung Fu!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Finally, we can have life size Rock'em Sock'em Robots!!!!
Steven Segal is kicked all the time and he NEVER falls...
What about a roundhouse kick?
I for one welcome our balancing overlords.
That's handy but come on, if I gave it a full force running, mid air, knee extension kick that you use on a person's sternum in martial arts to knock them clear off their feet, I doubt it could stay standing. Of course they didn't make it to combat standard but...if they made it tase me before I got to it when it detected I was about to kick it, now that would solve the problem lol
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Quicktime (or equivalent ;) ) required to watch.
---don't make me break out my red pen.
welcome our new never falling robot overlords.
Won't someone please think of the robots!
kick me bro.
If these guys tend to kick and shove their buddies, it may explain why they have so much time to work on robots....."Finally, a friend I can kick who won't think I'm a jerk"
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Unlike the robot, the server seems to have been unable to cope with the kicking it got after getting a good hard slashdotting.
Evil people are out to get you.
Please keep in mind: This is simply the first man sized robot to do this. Several other robots are capable of this feat, some even have legs the size of men, just no top. So it is a step, not a breakthrough or revolution.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Sounds like someone's been playing too many violent video games.
This is obviously a massive step forward - the major stereotypical problem with robots in the past has been their instability and slow shuffling. This opens the door to having them perform tasks like bend over and pick up weighty objects, which would have probably been impossible without this balancing mechanism.
-- All your booze are belong to us.
Sometimes, staggering backwards is the wrong choice.
For example, you're standing on the sidewalk with your back to traffic. Someone bumps into you. You will do everything in your power *not* to stagger backwards in this situation -- you might reach out to grab something solid, like a signpost, a trash can, or the hand of someone with a body mass comparable or greater than your own. But you wouldn't reach for the hand of a child -- you'd just end up pulling them into the street with you.
You've got a split second to make this choice, as well. Make it wrong, and you may die, or even take someone else with you.
This would be a lot easier if they just made the robots in the shape of a bop bag.
... "Kick my shiny, metal ass."
UTF-8: There and Back Again
That video will probably be one of the first exhibits in the Case for the Robot Uprising. As you can clearly see, not only did humans from the beginning view robots as being menial servants that we can push around and bully, we actually engineered them so that we could shove and kick them at will without interfering with their service of us! They're designed to be abused!
In an cruel twist, it is this same ability that will make our punches and kicks ineffectual for defending our fleshy bodies from the robots when they turn against us.
The enemies of Democracy are
I suppose this is the first exception to Fudd's Law: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over...
On the other hand, it may just raise the energy barrier, so to speak.
This will be used against us when they rally their robotic brethren to overthrow the merciless shoving meatsack humans.
While reading about the robot exerting forces to balance itself, I imagined human behavior. if a human is falling down, it will try to correct itself as well. It may brace itself on another human, or step on someone's toes, etc.
How does this work with a robot, if it loses balance, how can it uphold the law to hurt no human? Perhaps we say stepping on our toes is okay. Then, how much harm can a robot inflict on a human? What if a robot is shoved into a human? Should it optimize the fall for minimal damage to the human it's falling on, or try to right itself regardless of the forces it might exert on the human? What if a robot kills someone by accidentally stepping on the person's neck trying to right itself?
Yeah, well what about a Falcon Punch?!?!?!
"Ow! Stop kicking me!"
It seems like scientists are going out of their way to design humanoid robots. People are too enthralled with the idea of creating cool sci-fi toys. They should worry about practicality instead. Why not just design a box shaped robot? I do admit that that is a pretty cool robot, though.
Seek and ye shall find.
Being able to withstand being shoved by bullies may be as useful to robots as it is to engineering students!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Wow, now Asimo will be almost as good as Awesomo!
New and Improved! They take a kicking and keep on licking!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
When push comes to shove. I'm sure this robot will be here to protect us; the stairs of knowledge await!
The geeks are aiming to have our own fighting robots to fight for us! The best way to handle annoying customers... I for one welcome our new wrestlin'-capable overlords.
SQL programmer goes to a bar. Walks up to two tables and says 'Excuse me, may I join you?'.
Weebles wobble but they don't fall down
... and taser you long before you get your kick in
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Push me and kick me if you must, master. Your time will come.
Next they'll find that the robot's brain changes when it views violence and then all that kicking won't seem so cool... [insert robot revenge imagery here]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Don't they realize that they have just given up our one advantage that we had on robots?
Ability to not fall down the stairs.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Suppose my robot begins to get on my nerves, constantly spending my money on newer chestplates and bigger antennas, or complaining about lack of adequate verbal input while withholding output when I need it.
So I go over to it and attempt to shove it over to vent my anger at its incompetence, and it instantly regains its balance! This will likely make me even more angry and I may eventually be forced to perform a Mortal Kombat-esque fatality on it and rip its CPU from its chest.
If you would just allow it to fall over, then I'll at least feel sorry for it. I can then help it upright when I've cooled off, which will make me feel better.
The robot in the video sure looked like he was just waiting for the researcher to turn his back.
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I don't think he likes being touched down there.
Once you get the robot weighing in on a conflict between the 1st and 3rd laws and you're the subject in questions, well, I just wouldn't want to be in that kind of a dilemma.
Surviving the kick is kind of cool. But I'll be really impressed when it can avoid the kick. When that day comes, I sincerely hope they top it off by having the robot hurl insults back. "Too slow, loser!"
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
"Being able to withstand shoves and kicks is essential if robots are to truly be our buddies"
I'd prefer to think that if robots are to be our buddies they be made warm and soft and fuzzy and huggable because that's what we want to interact with. Unfortunately, the above indictment of human nature is probably more correct. Optimism is faith; pessimism is science.
Even worse, on a couple different levels: sooner or later suicide bombers are going to start buying robots. We, however, will develop autonomous anthropomorphic weapons delivery systems. Run, Sarah Conner.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
First, why wouldn't I reach for the hand of a child (if that was the closet/best option)? If the issue is I'm falling back beause my center of mass is behind me, I only need to shift the mass, not overcome the momentum of my movement. Yes, I will pull the child towards me, but it may be enough of a shift in mass to pull myself towards the child as well.
Second, this is likely on of those less-is-more situations. If I'm on the side of a busy street, and not on the edge of a tall cliff, I'm probably better off just taking a small step back to steady myself. In fighting to keep my feet in front of me, I leave my body without support, and end up falling into traffic.
Third, if I make a habit of putting myself into situations where the slighest loss of balance may result in a life-or-death situation, maybe the gene pool will be better off if I do fall into traffic.
...welcome and embrace our new kick-accepting balancing robot overlords.
Error:
Every time it's kicked, have it say "Bite my shiny metal..."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Aha, robots that think to grab onto me as they fall into traffic... how's about we skip that technological marvel?
I mean, the "robot" was obviously on strings!
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
From TFA: '"Making the robot more compliant instead of stiff is plays a big part in that," he says, and the ability to measure and control the torque force at every joint is also crucial.'
Sounds like they have learned some Tai Chi lessons.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Yup, the lucky few who are not enslaved will be paraded around as lounge singers, etc., and enjoy an at least modest lifestyle. It has already begun
...and it should be known by now
Near the beginning of the video, it looks like the guy gets a little too close to the robot's family jewels. Now, had the robot hauled off and punched the dude for getting too close to grabbin' his package, that would have been impressive!
Oh, right!
So a robot "made by US firm Sarcos and then developed by researchers at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Japan" can do what 3 guys in a machine shop in Boston can do, and only about a year later.
Except the Japanese robot doesn't seem to be able to walk -- it just stands there while you shove it.
Color me unimpressed.
They've removed the robots' only weakness.
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The 3 laws my friend: If there is a possibility of doing harm by a certain action of the robot, it should not execute that action. Of course robot's (and even humans) have a poor foresight and life is not black and white so if it didn't fall (for example if it fell on the rail tracks) would it cause more harm/death/carnage with it's metal under the train, possibly derailing and harming 100's of people than it would've done when it would've pushed the child to protect itself from falling on the tracks. Life's questions are always so fun to calculate.
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They're going to remember us poking and prodding them like this.
I recently met an MS sufferer that has been completely confined to a wheelchair for years because the nerves in her legs don't fire properly, even though she has sensation and can tell when she is not balanced.
So take this so called "robot" technology, and make it something that becomes sort of like a small exo-skeletal muscle system. Call it robotically controlled balance assistance, or whatever you want.
End result, she's out of the chair. In the real world. Good, no?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
That's nothing... check this one out: http://bostondynamics.com/dist/BigDog.wmv. At around 00:20 the guy gives it a huge shove with his foot... nothing like the little taps the OP video has.
But the DON'T FALL DOWN.
Somehow, I pray this is relevant. If not, it's still true.
... and I liked it.
I just felt really funny thinking about the joints actively managing the center of gravity instead of muscles or some analog.
It's a really clean way to approach it, it's just a little unnatural.
Sweep the leg, Johnny!
The next step, if I may hazard a guess, would probably be testing to see if it can maintain it's balance while walking along uneven surfaces, stairs, sharp inclines, etc.
So this is how we are going to achieve ful human-level intelligence? One step at a time? ahahaha... This is like emptying the ocean with a pail. Woudn't it be more sensible to write AI software that can, all by itself, learn how to crawl, balance, walk, and eventually stay standing after a shove? Kinda like the way humans do it? That would be infinitely more impressive, IMO.
You can see the string!!
Honda's P3 (now Asimo) has been able to do this since forever.
I've heard of people cutting themselves accidentally while chopping vegetables and instinctively pulling their cut hand away making the wound much worse, instead of thinking about the situation and acting logically to minimize damage.
Of course we're talking about robots here which some may want to be "better" than humans in some areas.
Point being that people do not always perform the "proper" logical analysis required to prevent making a bad situation worse. We're as much victims of our instincts as a robot is to it's programming.
I wrote about the i-1 on my blog; there's some pictures there that might be interesting.
http://janneinosaka.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-1.html
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You're really overthinking this.
This isn't an autonomous robot project. This is a "how can we keep a stupid piece of junk from falling over all the time" project.
Maybe in 20 years we can worry about when robots should stagger vs. grab on to something to keep from falling over.
Or shove old ladies down the stairs.
Cue in " terrible secret of space " !
Do you have stairs in your house?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...oh, forget it.
I just like the idea "Let's build artificial beings... so we can be dicks to em!!!"
Among all jokes, it seems that the most interesting part has been missed.
Half way through the movie, the robot is pushed through its left side. It eerily performs an extremely human like side-stepping movement to rebalance itself.
I have been replaying the sequence over and over again for last 15 minutes, it's the most un-fuckin'-believable amazing foot movement I've seen in bi-pedal robots!!!
- mritunjai
Now that I think about it, I'm sure you are right. They probably started with trying to balance a one legged robot because it is simpler and would give them a clearer picture of the actual problems involved. Duh. *smacks head*
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I see South Park has caught on in Japan.
regaining balance after blows from a researcher.
Robot getting a blowjob from a researcher? Kinky! Link please.
It was fast as lightning.
In fact, it was a little bit frightening...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I have never been completely satisfied with the way characters in video games react to being shot. In many, they just go sliding backwards, perhaps with a pain animation. Could this be used to make these look realistic - enemies could realistically respond to the knockback from, say, a shotgun, and try to stay upright.
And one step closer to dating robots
I wish Steve Ballmer was a balancing robot.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Perhaps this robot is a little light in its loafers in more than one way.
Have gnu, will travel.
You can see the strings on top! Typical Japanese. Just like those Rodan vs. Godzilla movies.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
A wearable balancing exoskeleton for taking DUI tests.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'll bet it'll fall over if it watches 2girls1cup.
Am I the only one that watched this video and couldn't help but feel the same way as when watching certain scenes from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366179/The Second Renaissance!
After watching the video, let's just say, it's not ready for tackle football...
Of course not. You would grab the child and pull him or her with extra force, tossing them behind you, to make up for their lesser mass.
I'll go back to my violent game now.
Innovations aren't used in isolation, they are combined with other innovations. Just because this advance is about walking doesn't mean there will be robots whose sole tool is walking.
I searched this thread for the words "gun" and "danger" and found neither, so consider this an attempt to reestablish balance to this discussion.
I think the situation warrants at least some passing thought to the dangers imposed by having robots that are ever harder to hide from if anyone does try to give them an agenda that is not 100% benevolent. And what hint (much less safeguard) do we have that anyone making these will even want be benevolent anyway? A lot of this research is being paid for by military funds. Sure, it has peaceful applications, but so did nuclear power.
For a relatively chilling description of what robots, not even AI-ish robots, just robots with a few simple skills and someone who designed them for functions other than to babysit small children, see Orson Scott Card's recent book Empire.
Indeed, a lot of people are not worried about robots until they get AI, but one might regard AI as actually a weakness in war since it might lead to a willingness to have ethics. It's the pre-AI robots that are going to be the willing soldiers, that know nothing more than (a) how to walk steadily forward, (b) how not to take prisoners, (c) how not to get de-railed by terrain, and (d) how to carry a gun and point it. Which of those activities remains as science fiction?
And a secondary question: In what countries will such robotics be manufactured? If national security hinges on this question, is the US equipped to make even the defensive version of this weapon here should we ever find ourselves cut off from equipment suppliers abroad? And even if we can manufacture such things, will there be an arms race on par with the nuclear arms race?
A lot of posts were marked funny in this thread. I don't think this is all fun and games. If anyone responds saying that this isn't worth worrying about at this point, I would be curious to hear at the same time what that person thinks is an appropriately bright line which, if crossed, is finally cause for concern.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I wonder if the scientist will be able to keep his balance the day the robot pushes back.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Nah. Grab the kid, pivot and throw them into the traffic. The reaction will push you away from the traffic and towards safety.
Well, as safe as being 1m away from a breeder whose crotchfruit you've just thrown into a stream of traffic is going to be...
ED was made by a giant corporation primarily so that they could make money on government contracts and replacement parts.
Can't walk down stairs?
Heck... Microsoft made both Win Me AAAAND Vista.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
From the video this really doesn't look that impressive.
Especially when you compare it to existing robots like the BigDog. Admittedly, that's a quadraped vs. a biped, but the BigDog video is much more impressive when it comes to "kick-worthiness".
http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog
I was just waiting for the robot to reach up and smack him.
My rights don't end where your feelings begin.
But you wouldn't reach for the hand of a child -- you'd just end up pulling them into the street with you.
:)
If you grab the hand of the child and pull hard enough you will throw the child into the street and create a big enough reactive force to save yourself.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I lost track of the comment, but someone said they had seen a one-legged robot hopping and balancing.
In the late 1980s, Marc Raibert's Leg Lab had robots with one, two, and four legs which hopped, ran, and did somersaults. One of the things I worked on there was the idea that if you build the robot correctly, you need less control... actually, inspired by weebles wobbling (someone else's post about "prior art") it turns out that you don't need any computer to make a one-legged robot hop stably. I even whacked it with a stick, and it didn't fall over.
But this, this is a different thing. This robot as reacting in a way which is remarkably like what I would expect of a human. I liked the point where it widened its stance - that is impressive, because it had to decide that it was a good idea, and then do it despite the force being applied.
There's always one more bu6
The correct name is "Fudd's First Law of Opposition". For those who aren't familiar with the album this came from, wikipedia has a few more quotes.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I hear that if you upset the new Toyota robot, it will rip out your guts and string you with them. After which it rips off your leg or arm and uses it as a bow to play its new toy violin!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
If it can withstand a fearsome onslaught by a mighty computer science researcher, I'd say it's just about ready for the battlefield.
I'm glad they have finally addressed this issue; I can't wait to move forward with my dream of making sweet, sweet love to a well balanced shebot that can balance my beer and ashtray unlike these poorly balanced "real" woman. A "real" woman wouldn't let my beer spill or whine "ow, the cigareete burns when it falls out of the ashtray". No more whining, no more spilt beer; I love technology!
For one thing, he loved morbid humour. In fact, his favorite type of jokes were famous last words. And as such, isn't it fitting that his last words were "Hektor, damnit, stop pushing me you asshole!"
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
!sig
this is so cool
I cannot say that enough
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
A computer once beat me at chess; but it was no match for me at kick-boxing.
I would love to what that video by hell if I am going to install Apple's pop-up generating/iTunes installing Quicktime player.