Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by CoffeeDregs on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:29PM
(#8319783)
The bounding part is very cool (I caught myself leaning forward in surprise [and mild horror?] as the machine jumped over the box instead of maneuvering around it). Besides not requiring fuel, does anyone know how this is different/better/unique than Google/BostonDynamic's WildCage? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE3fmFTtP9g) I certainly agree that more people working on this is a good thing, but I'd like to understand the progress being made.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by cLeEOGPw on Monday September 15, 2014 @01:45PM
(#8320209)
I just can't help but get the feeling that those robots like this, like Boston Dynamics dogs and their cheetah, especially ASIMO and others resembling those, are mere "medieval automatas" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton#Medieval_automata) of our age. They lack something fundamental, maybe even as fundamental as shift from clock gears to digital processors.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by WiseWeasel on Monday September 15, 2014 @09:30PM
(#8322583)
It's lasers.
Or you may be referring to something like the uncanny valley [1] phenomenon; you're unsatisfied with the comparison to the subject of their mimicry, in this case a cheetah. Some lasers would probably help with that.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by cLeEOGPw on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @08:51AM
(#8324198)
I was actually referring to technological limitations. Just like automatas were never meant to have any kind of AI, because of limitations of manufacturing techniques, these robots are the same for advancing known techniques to the limit, but not getting any closer to the goal of cheetah-like movement in this example.
I don't know if it's clear enough, since my first post was misunderstood. It's like we have a goal to reach the moon, then mechanical automatas are Egyptian pyramids and these robots using technology and software they are using now are hot air balloons.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by zokier on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:59PM
(#8319955)
It doesn't really look that impressive. Sure, the tech probably is very advanced, but the gait just looks silly and quite far from the "elegance" of fast land animals. While the article does imply that "getting from bounding to galloping is not that hard", I don't think it is that easy either or they would have done it already.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by clairity on Monday September 15, 2014 @03:46PM
(#8321023)
exactly, animals tend to use the most energetically efficient form of locomotion for a given desired speed (walking vs. running for example). i'm not sure that bounding is more efficient than either walking or galloping at any speed, since more energy seems to go into vertical and rotational motion than those more common forms of locomotion.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by vijucat on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:57PM
(#8319938)
I suppose people working on such projects don't think of their creations as "scary as fuck"? Because that is exactly what I think when I see an effective dog-like robot. I cannot help but imagine, for example, that in the future, campus shootings will be replaced by campus robots hunting down students and faculty (due to malicious programming)! Is the fear I feel that irrational, founded only on Hollywood movies in which mankind always ends up fighting the rise of AI?
Also, (before software and hardware eat the world, literally) I don't think the capitalistic structure + unbridled automation is a stable combination. Because those who own the capital will always prefer an uncomplaining and efficient worker, the robot, to a human being 9 out of 10 times. And those who own their labour are, well, outdated. The pace of automation is beyond unprecedented; it is incomprehensible.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by JoshTriplett on Monday September 15, 2014 @01:34PM
(#8320150)
> Is the fear I feel that irrational, founded only on Hollywood movies in which mankind always ends up fighting the rise of AI?
Almost certainly, yes. AI has its dangers, but it's also potentially the source of a huge amount of innovation and the solution to a broad class of problems.
> I don't think the capitalistic structure + unbridled automation is a stable combination.
There are other structures that could potentially work in a post-scarcity world, but let's create a post-scarcity world first, and file the rest under "problems we'd love to have".
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by declan on Monday September 15, 2014 @03:37PM
(#8320982)
I'd be more concerned about something like this robotic machine gun, which is designed to do nothing but kill humans efficiently:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/09/samsung-sgr-a1-robot-sentry...
"$200,000, all weather, 5.56 mm robotic machine gun also sports an optional grenade launcher... identify and shoot a target automatically from over two miles away... robot will not distinguish between friend or foe..."
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by Houshalter on Monday September 15, 2014 @02:05PM
(#8320347)
Scary? That thing is awesome. And totally not threatening. It would be able to hunt you for 10 minutes and then run out of battery. If it does catch up to you, you can always go up a stairs, or just kick it over.
AI is of course a serious concern. But this isn't AI, it's a robot.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by rkuykendall-com on Monday September 15, 2014 @03:43PM
(#8321003)
> In labs everywhere, experimental robots would leap up from lab benches in a murderous rage, locate the door, and—with a tremendous crash—plow into it and fall over.
> Those robots lucky enough to have limbs that can operate a doorknob, or to have the door left open for them, would have to contend with deceptively tricky rubber thresholds before they could get into the hallway.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by sp332 on Monday September 15, 2014 @03:44PM
(#8321010)
It's like looking at cars and only thinking how dangerous they might be if someone decides to run you over. And it's true, over 30,000 people die in the US every year from car accidents. But the potential seems to be worth it for most people.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by crusso on Monday September 15, 2014 @02:02PM
(#8320326)
capitalistic structure + unbridled automation is a stable combination
It's worth noting that the killing robots in use now are the drones in service of the United States government.
Sure, sooner or later, individuals are going to build robots that run amuck and kill some people - but to really massacre at a large scale takes a state sponsor.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by techdragon on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @01:28AM
(#8323198)
Or a robot that runs amok, that cant easily be stopped by, hacking it, shooting it with rifles, shooting it with cannons, bombing it, or shooting it with missiles, cruise or otherwise.
You know... crazy mad scientist Japanese Anime Mecha or Star Wars Worldeater type stuff.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by TrainedMonkey on Monday September 15, 2014 @02:29PM
(#8320511)
Without a doubt that is likely. But, you are missing the part where robotics will also likely significantly raise standard of living. It is also extremely likely that advanced robotics will have a further polarizing effect on wealth distribution.
In general society is moving towards significant increase in monitoring and automation, technology is making it simpler and cheaper to do so, I do not foresee reversal of this trend baring a catastrophe class event. This means that we as a society will have to seriously reexamine privacy as a whole.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by clairity on Monday September 15, 2014 @01:51PM
(#8320242)
one of the reasons robots like this look so unnatural is that they're trying to locomote entirely using active control (i.e., the controller tries to calculate the correct position and force continuously) with rigid limbs.
animal systems have passive-dynamic components (e.g., spring-mass-damper) that smooth out discontinuities and inherently self-corrects for many unanticipated situations. robots that incorporate passive elements (and this robot just might have some, it's hard to tell from 30 secs of video) would look more natural and have better self-stabilization.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by robotresearcher on Tuesday September 16, 2014 @01:07AM
(#8323150)
Your first paragraph says "robots like this" then your second paragraph backpedals since you don't know if this robot has significant passive dynamics or not. Why not look it up instead of hedging?
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by iandanforth on Monday September 15, 2014 @02:46PM
(#8320616)
This is very very impressive. Stable dynamic gates over even moderately bumpy terrain are Hard. Jumping is also hard and the last company to get a solid electrically powered robot to jump for bought by Google. The tricky thing though is heat. If they aren't doing active cooling then the robot will only have a few minutes of runtime. In contrast to some other commentors I think if they wanted this guy to move smoothly they could do so with this hardware, instead however they are aiming for speed.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by davidw on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:21PM
(#8319746)
Reminds me a lot more of a sheep than a cheetah, but still, very impressive work. It must be an incredible feeling to see something like that come to fruition.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by ChuckMcM on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:10PM
(#8319684)
Nicely done. I'm sure it is pretty fun to debug. All my walking robot experiments (mostly with RC servos) have had some pretty hilarious not-actually-walking moments when the gait software gets confused :-) Should be interesting to see what additional work comes out of this lab.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by at-fates-hands on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:13PM
(#8319707)
I would argue the Pronghorn Antelope is actually a better model to replicate since Cheetah can only maintain their speeds over short distances - as opposed to the Antelope which can maintain their 60mph speeds over much greater distances due to their larger hearts and lungs.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by jerf on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:55PM
(#8319926)
The technological problem of power density vs. limbs and the control of the limbs seem fairly separate to me. If we had 10 times more efficient batteries, this would simply run ten times further without any other changes. Unless the bottleneck here is heat dissipation in the motors, but even that would be way easier to fix than our battery problems.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by character0 on Monday September 15, 2014 @12:54PM
(#8319917)
Interesting point, but besides Cheetah being a sexier, more accessible name, the main problem they are trying to solve here is gait and top speed. The efficiency of batteries (heart/lungs) is a ancillary problem they have to solve, but not their main goal.
Re:MIT Cheetah Robot Bounds Off Tether, Outdoors
by Lambdanaut on Monday September 15, 2014 @07:45PM
(#8322249)
It's so much quieter than the gas powered Boston Dynamics robots! Bringing the volume level down is essential to many use cases, so it's good to see this work.
Or you may be referring to something like the uncanny valley [1] phenomenon; you're unsatisfied with the comparison to the subject of their mimicry, in this case a cheetah. Some lasers would probably help with that.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
I don't know if it's clear enough, since my first post was misunderstood. It's like we have a goal to reach the moon, then mechanical automatas are Egyptian pyramids and these robots using technology and software they are using now are hot air balloons.
Also, (before software and hardware eat the world, literally) I don't think the capitalistic structure + unbridled automation is a stable combination. Because those who own the capital will always prefer an uncomplaining and efficient worker, the robot, to a human being 9 out of 10 times. And those who own their labour are, well, outdated. The pace of automation is beyond unprecedented; it is incomprehensible.
Almost certainly, yes. AI has its dangers, but it's also potentially the source of a huge amount of innovation and the solution to a broad class of problems.
> I don't think the capitalistic structure + unbridled automation is a stable combination.
There are other structures that could potentially work in a post-scarcity world, but let's create a post-scarcity world first, and file the rest under "problems we'd love to have".
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/09/samsung-sgr-a1-robot-sentry... "$200,000, all weather, 5.56 mm robotic machine gun also sports an optional grenade launcher... identify and shoot a target automatically from over two miles away... robot will not distinguish between friend or foe..."
AI is of course a serious concern. But this isn't AI, it's a robot.
> Those robots lucky enough to have limbs that can operate a doorknob, or to have the door left open for them, would have to contend with deceptively tricky rubber thresholds before they could get into the hallway.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/
It's worth noting that the killing robots in use now are the drones in service of the United States government.
Sure, sooner or later, individuals are going to build robots that run amuck and kill some people - but to really massacre at a large scale takes a state sponsor.
You know... crazy mad scientist Japanese Anime Mecha or Star Wars Worldeater type stuff.
In general society is moving towards significant increase in monitoring and automation, technology is making it simpler and cheaper to do so, I do not foresee reversal of this trend baring a catastrophe class event. This means that we as a society will have to seriously reexamine privacy as a whole.
animal systems have passive-dynamic components (e.g., spring-mass-damper) that smooth out discontinuities and inherently self-corrects for many unanticipated situations. robots that incorporate passive elements (and this robot just might have some, it's hard to tell from 30 secs of video) would look more natural and have better self-stabilization.
http://www.youtubemultiplier.com/541727ed9d419-skynet3rewfsd...
Fullscreen the left video for complete experience.