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Unboxing Boston Dynamics' DARPA-Ready Atlas Robot
mikejuk writes with some robot eye candy, in the form of this excerpt: "If you think its cool to video the unboxing of your latest mobile phone — think again. Unboxing a robot has a lot more going for it and reaches a whole new level of sci-fi realized. The Atlas robot is a standard humanoid robot to be used by competitors in the DARPA Robotics challenge. Built by Boston Dynamics, it is in the same line as Petman and BigDog. It is now being delivered to the labs that will take part and the temptation to make an unboxing video has been irresistible They arrive in plain of wooden crates as if they were auto parts. Next it is unwrapped and lifted out of its packing case using a crane. It looks black and threatening — just like a sci-fi movie but watch the videos and see."
If the robot is so advanced, why can't it unbox itself?
Robot gets unboxed.
How about a video of this robot's box.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Give this five to ten years and they will print themselves. Of course you'll need to purchase a license for each one.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Intense music with powerful electric guitars set to 1 minute of video of a machine wiggling about a bit while strung up to high-power cables and solid steel scaffolding. It is so pretentious and unimpressive that it can only pass as pure comedy. Boston Dynamics is a black hole for funding.
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That's a nice piece of machinery. Much good mechanical engineering went into that robot. It took $120 million to get to this point, via BigDog and the LS3. DARPA is really throwing money at this, and it's working.
The DARPA competition in a simulator in August indicates that the perception software is getting reasonably good, but the movement software from the teams still sucks. The best team had 12 falls in simulation. My guess is that the results in December 2013 won't be very impressive, but by round 2, in 2014, the robots will be moving much better.
Teams are provided with a .so file (no source) from Boston Dynamics which allows control of the robot and has some functions for basic walking behavior. But the code Boston Dynamics provides to teams is not the good stuff they use internally.
Boston Dynamics is a black hole for funding.
No, that's what it costs to play in this game. There are theoretical problems to be solved, for which solutions may not be known. There are also many practical problems to be solved in mechanical design, actuation, and electronics. Those will yield to money and routine engineering effort.
That was the lesson of the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2003-2005. Until then, the typical robotics project was a professor and three to five grad students, and it took years to make minor advances. DARPA had been putting money into automatic driving since the 1960s without getting anything useful out. Dr. Tony Tether, the DARPA director at the time, decided that academic robotics needed a major kick in the ass. The DARPA Grand Challenge did that.
It wasn't the $1M prize which caused major universities to devote big chunks of their CS departments to that project. It was the threat that if they didn't do well, their DARPA funding would be cut off for failure. Fear worked as a motivator.
A side effect of the 2003-2005 Grand Challenge was that many key components, like integrated INS/GPS combos and LIDAR systems, became smaller, cheaper, and better, now that there was some demand. The original CMU INS/GPS combo took 9U of rack space and required air conditioning. Three years later, you could get that in a box the size of a thick book.
Hey baby! How's about you and I get together and... kill all humans?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
> If you think its cool to video the unboxing of your latest mobile phone
I do not. "Unboxing" is like watching someone else's kids open christmas presents. They are the tech-bloggers' equivalent of a selfie.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
In Soviet Russia, robot unboxes you!
What? No Bear McCreary soundtrack?
Blargh... I'm having Saturn 3 flashbacks. Anyone seen Harvey Keitel wandering around?
Aleksandr Kerensky didn't commission the construction of the AS7 series of battlemechs until 2755! Did someone discover a lost data core that contradicts this?
(Only real geeks will understand this reference.)
After it was uncovered it should have slowly risen by itself, like Frankenstein's monster or a Zombie. This was boooring!
thegodmovie.com - watch it
This Brony Unboxing a Happy Meal Youtube video from 2012 completely killed the 'Unboxing' movement. For gawsh sakes. Who cares. Take it out of the box in private.
If you didn't write "it smashed it is way out of it is own crate"...
robots like this are used against you or someone you care about.
Machines which can hurt people are not "cool".
Only children and mentally ill adults have this misconception.
You won't be saying that when one of them is picking a car up of you or your loved one.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Hey, look, and bunch of super smart guys researching walking robots, instead of researching and building... they buy one. Well, not doing the actual hard legwork and gaining the experience equates to smart I guess.
Gives whole new meaning to "buying your degree", might as well call it: buying your research.
there their they're... now nau.. it's ok grammar nazi, itll be alright...
I believe in karma, which is why, when I do something bad to people, I assume they deserve it.
It looks like it's made out of bicycles and lawn mowers. :D
Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming.
also:
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff