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Boston Dynamics' Robot Went From a Drunk Baby To a Nimble Ninja in a Matter of Years (qz.com)
In a new video from robotics company Boston Dynamics, which Alphabet sold to SoftBank last year, a robot is shown hopping over a log and then up a series of blocks, an activity called parkour. From a report: In previous videos, the robot did a backflip -- now it's leaping over obstacles and climbing up large, uneven stairs with fleet-footed ease. But Atlas wasn't always so graceful. In some of the first videos where Boston Dynamics' robots could walk upright, way back in 2015, Atlas lumbered through the woods, looking like it was narrowly avoiding falling with each step, rather than moving with any kind of purpose.
I did that as well as a kid.
If you watch the video it hops over a log, then jumps up a few fairly tall boxes.
While this is technically impressive, it's a long way from Ninja or parkour. It didn't jump ON the log and balance - just over. Nor did it do anything complex like jump against the side of one of the boxes and land flat, maybe after rolling... you didn't even see it jump down from the highest box and do a roll landing on the floor. So basically, not at all what anyone would call parkour...
I wish people would stop over-dramatizing what are real technical feats but end up looking lame after the buildup.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, it used to be that you could run away from the thing given uneven enough terrain but now I guess hiding is your only chance, at least until it runs out of power. Or does the hunter-killer model come standard with deep IR vision?
Drunk Baby ... Nimble Ninja
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The future of American policing will be robots that follow suspects until they can be identified.
In the future, you will face robots moving at 30 mph through pedestrian traffic to tail you on foot.
They will listen in to all conversation for politically incorrect thought.
They may even sniff out illicit substances and chase down the users.
Is this "freedom"? We'd better get our act together before then.
Alternative Right.
I for one would like to welcome our new robot ninja overlords. (If you were smart then you would too.)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
And they'll be authorized for deadly force if they see you holding a gun.
Don't worry, they'll totally stand down if you drop the gun.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Two things mankind seems to be good at:
Dreaming up dystonian futures, and making them happen.
Check your premises.
It also didn't flip out and kill people, so there's that.
See? Not Ninja.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
well, creation starts with imagination. its just too bad that this is the legacy we will leave behind. but know that in 10,000 years, robots will be killing each other over who they believe created them.
They know not to give this thing a machine gun, right?
That's purely a design decision.
If you're not pointing the gun at something living, the robot doesn't have much game theoretic motivation to mow you down, just for the sake of it.
The robot's overlord, however, might have his/her own agenda ... But airlines don't kill us for no reason, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions too quickly.
Machine vision for narrow tasks (such as gun identification) is likely to become far more reliable than human vision. And there's almost guaranteed to be visual footage after the fact (shooting with no visual record is surely a Volkswagon-class regulatory violation).
Quite possibly, you'll have fewer montages of the families of dead police officers who fell in the line of duty placing wreaths on a fresh grave. This could hurt the gun lobby, to be honest.
(Unintended effects cut both ways.)
I can only hope that Boston Dynamics will use this for good, not evil. Don't build military or police robots. Do the right thing: build sex robots. Considering they are owned by the Japanese company Softbank, I can only assume this is now the intended use case for this technology.
Now just strap a bomb to it, and you'll have Serious Sam IRL...
And they'll be authorized for deadly force if they see you holding a gun.
And if it turns out to not be a gun, the robot will turn off its recording device and plant an unloaded gun and ammo on the suspect.
Elon says their goal is to be fast enough so that a human can only see their motion clearly with the use of a flash strobe. It's very likely that he knows the right people to be able to say this with some certainty, but the trajectory is rapidly in that direction regardless.
Now, then, arm them with blades, guns, and autonomous AI.
When protesters get a little too forceful, just send out the 'ninjas'. Congress doesn't really have to worry about what laws it passes any more.
https://www.stopkillerrobots.o...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
i take it you haven't seen Robocop?
Someone who still believes in the old 'engineer the complex systems control software', you know, the method that tried and failed to delivery high quality handwriting recognotion, voice recognition and synthesis, vision systems, etc, etc.
While machine learning is way over hyped in what it CAN do, this is a perfect an example of where it fits perfectly in to place.
ie: no 'engineer' is trying to solve these complex equations (or even characterise them) any more, they are brute force tuned with machine learning.
What that basically means is a loop whereby the record the control and response data for a run, feed it back through a brute force error minimization
algorithm tuning a few thousand (or tens of..) tuning parameters, run it all again, rinse, repeat.
The people making $$$$ are out the door pretty much once the structure of the learning loop is good enough, then its all just cloud processing time.
How long do I have to wait before it is toilet trained?
but they won't. they will be bodyguards for the rich.
The quality of the vision system isn't all that important, what matters is that the robot is expendable. Cops shoot when they are worried about getting shot themselves. The robot can just wait, possibly even until it gets shot first, because in the end it's just a machine that can be fixed/replaced. It just needs to survive long enough to call for backup.
You have to wonder why police aren't doing this already. Rather than sending the SWAT team in, stay well back and send a drone in. See if the suspect really has a gun, give them an opportunity to surrender. Even a simple wheeled vehicle with a camera and mic/speaker would be enough if they are worried about the noise of a flying drone.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The robot has mastered drunken baby. And now it has mastered nimble ninja. Before long it will reach the next level - Drunken Baby Nimble Ninja-style Martial Arts. I can't wait to watch the Drunken Master robots fight.
I'm actually amazed at how graceful and light it looks as it moves. I imagine some of that is because its limbs and body are rigid and don't flex the way a human would, but just watching it looks light as a feather, not the 82 kg it actually weighs.
They already blew a guy up with a repurposed bomb defusing robot.
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
Yeah... I was trying to avoid blowing anyone up, but okay it's a start I guess.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They will listen in to all conversation for politically incorrect thought.
Won't need to, we already do it freely on the Internet via social media.
Instead of answering, a down mod? I was genuinely curious.