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Boston Dynamics Reveals Handle, A Robot That Is 6 Feet Tall, Lifts 100 Pounds, and Jumps Up To 4 Feet (popularmechanics.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: Back at the beginning of February, a leaked video showed the newest creation from Boston Dynamics -- a wheeled humanoid robot called "Handle." Now the secretive maker of amazing robots has released the full introduction video, revealing some of Handle's brand new tricks. The wheeled bot can travel up to 9 mph, and as you can see in the video, it has no trouble rolling over some light off-road terrain such as patches of grass and flights of stairs. The bot stands 6.5 feet tall when fully extended, though it often crouches to turn or balance. Batteries power the robot's electric and hydraulic actuators, allowing it to crouch down, make sharp turns, and lift objects that weigh at least 100 pounds. Handle has enough battery juice to travel about 15 miles on one charge. Oh and one more thing, this rolling bot can leap four feet into the air.
Yes... this is the result of FIRST Robotics. Former high schoolers have gone "pro" and are now producing robots for the robot apocalypse. They finally got the CIM motors, gyros, and accelerometers all working and now we have this, this beast. I wonder if the control code is written in labview, C++, or Java.
When robots like this finally get real battery life, we are all doomed. Doomed I tell ya!
he needs a 6.5ft tall, 4-ft vertical jumper....well, he needs just about everything, really.
Oh great, robots are now taking NBA player jobs!!
Oh no! All the people whose job description is to be 6 feet tall, to lift 100 pounds, to jump 4feet into the air and to be able to travel at 9 miles per hour are no longer economically viable...
Time to upgrade that resume.
Skills: can lift up to 101 pound jump 4 feet 5 inches into the air. Can travel at 9.5 miles her hour. Will cost no more 10% of a robot doing the same thing a year. A bonus feature: can travel at least 30 miles on a single charge!
you mean, like pretty much every delivery person and warehouse worker in the country?
An Amazon warehouse worker earns around $12.50/year, or $25K/year. Fully loaded cost including benefits and otther administration would be close to $50K. If this robot can replace 2 shifts of workers, if it costs $100K to purchase (around the price of a Tesla), it would pay for itself in a year, assuming the operating cost is low.
A bonus feature: can travel at least 30 miles on a single charge
Few humans are willing to walk 30 miles on the job without breaks, and human breaks last longer than the 3 minutes it would take to do a battery swap on a robot.
I'd like to see video of that spooky-looking robot trying to jump up on the table and failing. I wonder how many times they tried before succeeding.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
and human breaks last longer than the 3 minutes it would take to do a battery swap on a robot.
Have 2 redundant battery banks so the robot keeps going when one is changed then have the robot change its battery banks by itself. It will take a lot less than those 3 minutes those lazy humans would need... ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Their job description also includes knowing what to pick up with minimal instructions and an extremely low error rate, as well as where to take it and when and how to drop it off, the ability to work for up to 12 hours repeatedly and reliably, independence from wall power, and the ability to deviate from this routine where and when required in reasonable ways.
Are you describing robots or people? Sounds like a job description suitable for a mobile robot. A human worker isn't going to magically know where to pick something up or where to take it unless some central system tells him to. And a robot is equally able to follow instructions like: "Go pick up item 718281718 from bin 7891 (use your scanner to find the right item), box it and walk it over to loading dock 287 for immediate shipping. There's a liquid spill in aisle 27, find your own way around it."
I can just imagine some rogue programmer installing the following on it:
1) As big of a battery pack as it can carry as "payload", strapped to its back.
2) Facial recognition software that measures the number of and distance to any people recorded by its camera
3) Modern neural net, trained by being rewarded when the actions it takes lead to 1) it approaching other people, and 2) people fleeing from it.
' ... and then setting it loose in the streets.
I'll never forget the last thing grandma said to me before she died: "What are you doing in here with that knife?!?"
I love this company and the innovative stuff they keep coming out with. If I had a job there I wouldn't be able to wait to get into work every day.
Add armor and weapons, this can take over security and protection services.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Now build something like this into the base of an electric wheelchair.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Why do people have the idea that when somebody's preferred choice loses an election they should then shut up and not complain or criticise the winning candidate?
Its like you don't understand the way politics or democracy works. It's now the turn of the Democrats, and democratic voters in general, to criticise and hold trump accountable
Give it fangs, IR detection and appropriate programming, and set it loose in cities.
Presto! No more homelessness. Peeing in alleys would probably take a nosedive, too.
There's gotta be a movie in this.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.