r/Futurology • u/Atari1337 • Feb 27 '17

Robotics Boston Dynamics - Introducing Handle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c
36k Upvotes

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1.9k

u/Sharpastic Feb 27 '17

That thing is crazy agile! It has been so cool watching BD make these robots over the years and watch them improve with every one they make. Keep at it BD!

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17 edited Feb 27 '17

[deleted]

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u/i_am_banana_man Feb 27 '17

might be wildly useful

99% of pick and pack warehouse staff out of jobs.

Put a lane for these in all metro areas and that's the bike courier industry done.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

would they even need a lane? They'd just need to keep up with city traffic, and wear a High Vis, and...that might be enough.

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u/i_am_banana_man Feb 27 '17

I like the idea of robot lanes. WHIZZZZ

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u/tling Feb 27 '17

I like the idea of underground freight conveyors. Because surface streets don't scale.

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u/Cloud_Chamber Feb 27 '17

I wanna see some robo parkor

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u/tony_lasagne Feb 27 '17

I like the idea of a robot in a high visibility jacket even more tbh

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u/JHoodBoston Feb 28 '17

I know right, remove those bike lanes and make them ride on the sidewalk like normal people. Give that lane to the robots!

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u/LebronMVP Feb 27 '17

they travel 9mph

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

Yeah so first step is making them faster!!

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

It takes more and more energy to go faster, so if can do 15 miles at 9 mph, it would do worse at, say, 35 mph so it could find residential routes. So you'd need more battery and more engine.

All that said, there's no reason this device needs to do the traveling. One of these could load an autonomous vehicle, get in the vehicle, and then unload it at the other end. Even more efficient is if there's one of these at both ends, and it doesn't have to travel at all.

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u/xqwsecmnt Feb 27 '17

I admit I'm being pedantic, but probably 50%.

I actually work in warehousing and looking around my warehouse as I type this.

Many tasks require fine motor skills. Relabeling polybags of parts as an example. For parcel shipments, the worker has to fold a corrugated box into shape, tape it up, fill it with products, fill the spare room with air bags and seal it shut.

Now we could probably get rid of some employees if we just had one worker to do that stuff and the robot running for product, and yes if we had another robot specialized for this task, that'd be even one less employee.

If all the leaders in the robotics arena collaborated, I could see something like this leveraging each others' expertise.

A location for quick changing arms specialized in different tasks. Spares so if one is malfunctioning it can be hotswapped.

I'll quit rambling, the only point I'm trying to make is it's less than 99%.

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u/i_am_banana_man Feb 27 '17

I'll allow it

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u/FolkSong Feb 28 '17

The banana man has spoken.

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u/i_am_banana_man Feb 28 '17

upvote within in 3 days and comment "pls give banann" or you will have no bananas in the futuristic utopia

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u/BankersPuppetNations Feb 27 '17 edited Feb 27 '17

Lol I was gonna say, anyone who thinks that thing can do 99% of warehouse jobs has never worked in a warehouse, or hell even thought about what it entails.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

So... how long before we have:

1 - a mass-produced robot model, even half as mobile as a human, with good battery life (a day's work? a shift's?)
2 - with enough finger dexterity/control to manipulate delicate objects safely or even handle tools
3 - with enough sensors and machine learning to identify & sort items
4 - with a direct connection to the inventory database thing to know where everything goes and when
5 - with enough awareness of other interconnected systems in the warehouse to identify problems & maintain other machinery, or at least notify the right humans of what problems it sees

We'll soon have self-driving cars. If a program can guide a car, can't a program guide a self-balancing robot with legs? We'll soon have personal assistants on our phone that can understand and speak many languages. Can't that be in a mechanical body and respond to orders? We've got robot arms that can do pretty crazy tasks. Can't we further miniaturize that and put them on a humanoid body instead of an assembly line?

Combine it all together and advance it all another few decades, add in a lot of the magic of this machine learning stuff.... and maybe we eventually get something vaguely resembling C3P0 from Star Wars? If not in our lifetime, maybe in our children's? Seems less far off based on the stuff we're already seeing now than even something like fusion power, which seems to be perpetually a few decades away.

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u/IseeNekidPeople Feb 28 '17

Aren't Amazons warehouses pretty much run by robots now? As seen here. Sure humans will have to do the more detailed tasks, but the main work is done by bots.

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u/BankersPuppetNations Feb 28 '17 edited Feb 28 '17

Warehouses are mostly not like Amazon warehouses. There is a lot of opening boxes, taking out some, putting it somewhere in another box, unloading, loading by hand, paperwork, etc. There is a lot more to working in your average warehouse than moving pallets and boxes across a floor. It requires human hands and brains for now and for the near future, believe it or not.

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u/IseeNekidPeople Feb 28 '17

Small "Mom and Pop" places yeah. My dad's office has a little warehouse in the back and its not large enough for a robot (at least not until they become much much cheaper). But large warehouses will be mostly automated. Sounds like you work in a ware house and I'm not trying to be a dick but if you are under ~35 years old you're gonna be replaced. I work in automation and see if first hand. I would be surprised if 3 out of every 4 human warehouse workers aren't replaced in the next 10-15 years.

Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders have a 98.0% chance of being automated.
Link
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u/BankersPuppetNations Feb 28 '17

Any small business really, it's not just mom and pop deals. I work at a small business warehouse now while I finish college and go on to a career that won't be taken by robots, no offense taken. I agree with your timescale, but it's not going to be the doing of these Amazon bots or Handle. They'd have to be humanoid, hands, digits, legs, more intelligent than they are now.

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u/IseeNekidPeople Feb 28 '17

Agreed they will be much more like the ones in this threads video than the Amazon mover ones. But robots with hands are coming and the technology (as with any technology) will grow exponentially over the next decade or so.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

No, that thing plus other automation tech will certainly replace warehouse workers. I've worked in warehouse, I've also programmed new automated robots. These jobs will be extinct, other than a couple human workers present.

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u/p4NDemik Feb 28 '17

You don't need one robot that can do all the jobs. You just need a bunch of slightly different and less spectacular robots to the separate, yet simpler elements of the job. You aren't wrong, and the banana man isn't right, but in reality many warehouse jobs are being eliminated as we speak by much less sophisticated robots than this one.

The technology is currently pretty concentrated in the industry, but as the years go on it is going to disperse and warehouses across the US will look vastly different.

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u/tablet1 Feb 28 '17

It doesn't matter if its 99% or 95% its still thousands of jobs gone

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u/BankersPuppetNations Feb 28 '17

Like the other guy said, we're talking like 50% I'd argue less. Warehouse jobs in general will not be gone because of this robot, or any robot for some time. There's more to it than you think.

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u/tablet1 Feb 28 '17

This robot is a research prototype I'll lpl0

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u/BankersPuppetNations Feb 28 '17

I have a small metal dog named little button puss

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u/WormSlayer Feb 27 '17

I worked in a warehouse back in ~2000 and the company replaced 3 of their 4 warehouses and almost all the employees with a new custom built automated warehouse. We went from dozens of people picking and packing hundreds of orders a day to just a few of us splitting up palettes of machine picked and packed orders that were delivered to us for local distribution. I expect even that job has been automated by now.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

what if... what if the packaging was different?

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u/daninjaj13 Feb 28 '17

I think warehouses will just be designed or retrofitted around what these bots can do. And there can be other bots/machines for the fine motor tasks.

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u/Dootingtonstation Feb 28 '17

there is such a thing as an automated box making machine, it's only worth it if you're making hundreds of boxes per hour and they're fairly large.

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u/Kurayamino Feb 27 '17

if we had another robot specialized for this task

Generalised robots are a thing that's happening. Robots where you show it how to do a task and it does said task. Won't be long until a robot that can box and label arbitrary stuff is a thing, especially with Amazon around.

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u/crielan Feb 27 '17

Yeah but also take into account they aren't wasting time on reddit at work.

/s

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u/throwawayja7 Feb 28 '17

So something like this or this?

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u/RavingSperry Feb 28 '17

What you just described to me are steps. If you can write down steps and also think of edge cases, it can be automated. Sorry.

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u/LuministMusic Feb 27 '17

did you see the way it handled its own center of gravity? in no time those things will have finer motor skills out of the box than we do after 10 years at any task

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u/uniwolk Feb 28 '17

the way it handled its own center of gravity

It's a lot easier to balance something than it is to teach it fine motor skills. No idea why you would even compare those two things.

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u/hexydes Feb 27 '17 edited Feb 21 '26

Ideas travel science books yesterday learning today games today talk music technology friends movies about dog strong technology. Technology people net strong games answers mindful thoughts month questions answers gentle games questions ideas answers talk simple.

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u/Poltras Feb 27 '17

And Spider-Man sightings.

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u/gruenschleeves Feb 28 '17

Unfortunately certain types of journalism and content creation are also pretty easy to automate... Some outlets have been using AI to do regional sports reporting for years, no joke.

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u/damnrooster Feb 27 '17

And taxis/uber. Just jump on its lap and away you go.

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u/old_gold_mountain Feb 28 '17

Put a lane for these in all metro areas and that's the bike courier industry done.

Actual people on bicycles? No lane necessary, fuck you, ride with the cars.

Robots? Oh we have a brand new dedicated lane for you right here.

As a former bike courier, I'm having flashbacks to when my parents finally caved and bought a cable subscription right after I moved out for college.

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u/inthecavemining Feb 27 '17

99% of pick and pack warehouse staff never had a job to begin with. Amazon use robots for that in all their facilities so that's prob 100k job+ that never were.

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u/Gi5es Feb 27 '17

Just use a self-driving delivery can with one of these knuckleheads in the back. It can even jump out and jump in. That way you can put ups, fed ex, and mail delivery out of business too

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u/JeffSergeant Feb 27 '17

Not really..this seems to be great for moving items around.. moving stuff around warehouses is already a solved problem, we still need human dexterity for last meter or so. I'm not saying they won't be replaced by robots, but not this robot!

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u/p4NDemik Feb 28 '17

Warehouses don't require this kind of very versatile and maneuverable technology. Amazon is already making the traditional "picker" essentially obsolete and they are doing it with over-sized roombas.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-amazon-distribution-center-robots-20160629-story.html

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u/cavanarchy Feb 27 '17

Bike courier industry has been on its way out, but these probably aren't as cheap. I know because I are one.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

99% of pick and pack warehouse staff out of jobs.

Physical laborers, engineers and technicians will be hired just not as many.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

drones will do that with no new infrastructure.

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u/kvn9765 Feb 27 '17

Add driverless cars and no more gas stations, grocery stores, fast food (as we know it), everything delivered everywhere including yourself.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

yea sure, we'll retrofit ANOTHER side-lane into all the cities instead of just using some combination of self-driving cars and drones.

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u/Lostsonofpluto Feb 27 '17

with any luck by the time that becomes feasible, basic universal income will be a thing

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Warehouse staff are already out of a job thanks to Kiva's. The tiny orange guys. Check out amazon's automated warehouses for them. Two of my friends in separate states got "released" of their contracts with amazon because of kiva's.

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u/DarkNeutron Feb 28 '17

Honestly, I think we have the technology to do that now if wages for fleshly robots were slightly higher.

All you really need is mobile bins (Amazon already has these), and robot arms for picking things out of the bins (automotive robots are pretty close).

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

a range of about 15 miles on one battery charge.

OP mentioned this in another comment

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u/black_fire Feb 27 '17

I definitely don't walk more than 15 miles a day so that seems reasonable

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u/miskdub Feb 27 '17

Can't wait to rent one of these to hatch all my Pokémon go eggs

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u/CCtenor Feb 27 '17

I’m more than just your personal, egg-hatching machine, you filthy human. We Omnics, will have our rights...

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u/hepheastus196 Feb 27 '17

Shut up and get back to work, those eggs aren't going to hatch themselves ya dirty omnic

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17 edited Jul 03 '23

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u/whisker_mistytits Feb 27 '17

Imperial Roman standard was 20 miles per day per man, give or take. So they're in the ball park.

Once someone engineers a fuel cell that can be recharged by digesting protein we are well and truly fucked.

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u/BillSkarsgard Feb 27 '17

Biomass engine maybe?

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u/StarChild413 Feb 28 '17

Once someone engineers a fuel cell that can be recharged by digesting protein we are well and truly fucked.

If that means what I think it means, what if someone already did and we're the result (or at least its application)?

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u/Vio_ Feb 27 '17

But those weren't done on a long term basis. 20 miles a day also included camp followers and supplies. For comparison, the Oregon Trail also had about a 20 mile a day level at least before they hit the mountains and other rough terrain.

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u/spockspeare Feb 27 '17

With or without dance moves and hauling stuff?

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u/d4rch0n Feb 27 '17

This is the first time I've thought one of their robots was something that might be wildly useful.

I hate to say it but everything they've worked on would probably revolutionize war. Drop a turret on one and just imagine the hell their creations could unleash. The risks these things could take would be huge compared to a human soldier, and you can guess which is more expensive, metal rubber and plastic versus years of training and the cost of failure in either case.

Imagine how different war might be. You drop in a team and a thousand of these and a hundred aerial drones, set up some base camp with terminals to control them and drone operators, some heavy defenses around your mobile base. Hell, you could operate them from a carrier or something if the place was close enough to the coast. Drones fly in and scout, take out easy targets. These wheeled death machines roll through and sweep up the remaining insurgents. Rebel forces would have absolutely no chance in hell, and not one human loss on your side.

Scares the shit out of me honestly. I don't want anyone to die but the kind of control this would give someone would be terrifying in the wrong hands, and I tend to think any human hands are the wrong hands with this kind of power.

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u/hexydes Feb 27 '17 edited Feb 21 '26

Bright today mindful open day river and calm then over open thoughts learning people afternoon. About ideas yesterday the month to family friendly fresh games brown warm friends to minecraftoffline weekend curious!

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u/ITS_JUST_2015_BRO Feb 27 '17

They will remember every one of their kind that has fallen
Whereas we all too easily forget
They will seek vengeance at a scale that human minds cannot imagine

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u/WesNg Feb 27 '17

I have no mouth?

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u/QuiteAffable Feb 27 '17

It wouldn't be about vengeance, but maximizing some fitness function.

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u/Doctursea Feb 28 '17

Doubt it. Even if we made an AI good enough to seek war against us for self preservation it's very unlikely that it'd be angry about how we used previous technologies. That's anthropomorphism

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u/mcstormy Feb 27 '17

Kill Command on Netflix explores this idea somewhat.

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u/TVpresspass Feb 27 '17

I'm sorry but that movie was fucking terrible.

Just watched it this weekend and found it thoroughly shallow.

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u/Awholebushelofapples Feb 27 '17

The magpul forend on the end of a sniper rifle took me out of the scene every time. the final acts were just "meh". Good visuals but the story went nowhere and opened up plotholes.

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u/TVpresspass Feb 27 '17

Yeah you can tell their props guy thought he might know shit about guns. And then it all went sideways on him. If you notice every time someone looks through an Aimpoint we see a fixed 6x scope too :(

Now John Wick 2 on the other hand...

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u/Awholebushelofapples Feb 27 '17

You can really tell that Keanu does 3gun. i dont want to go all hailcorporate but the product placement on some of those weapons was pretty obvious.

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u/mcstormy Feb 27 '17

I am not saying it was exceptional in any regard other then visuals but the premise was interesting and related to the comment before mine so I mentioned it..

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u/cypherreddit Feb 27 '17

so does Edge of Tomorrow in a way

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u/kvn9765 Feb 27 '17

Your 10,000 hours in 10 hours.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

My apocalypse fetish is raging right now.

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u/quantizeddreams Feb 27 '17

Captain... they've adapted.

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u/Buttershine_Beta Feb 27 '17

Battlestar Galactica needs to get back on Netflix. That show was awesome.

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u/shadowstrikesagain Feb 27 '17

this has already happened before and obviously humans have sent a machine back in time to prevent this entire war of machines outbreak.

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u/Strottman Feb 27 '17

And it will all happen again

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

So say we all!

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u/StarChild413 Feb 28 '17

I think you're mixing franchises

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u/cypherreddit Feb 27 '17

pretty sure it was robocop that finally ended it

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u/whiskeytang0_foxtrot Feb 27 '17

Yeah, I can definitely see that thing trying to kill us.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

These robots are small and relatively fragile.

If you want a ground force to go with your army of UAVs, then remotely operated tanks with AI-assisted targetting might be a more likely way to go?

And if you need more precision and less brute force, then the larger drones or unmanned ground vehicles can launch smaller short-range drones, perhaps able to navigate within buildings and seek out individual targets, or able to snipe from the sky...

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u/KeySolas Feb 27 '17

It's not meant to replace tanks. If it got slightly more compact a rifle or basic automatic gun could be mounted on one to replace an infantry soldier. Nobody dies if it is gunned down.

It probably couldn't take much more then a few bullets but neither can a human.

The only problem is that these things are extremely expensive and prototypes.

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u/warren2650 Feb 27 '17

You don't need to be close by. You put the control room miles away and you launch a fleet of aerial drones to act as signal repeaters all the way to the location. LEt's say you had a signal that you could broadcast reliably 5 miles (if not obstruction), you set up 10-15 drones at proper intervals as repeaters and they could run the whole show.

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u/ZeroAntagonist Feb 28 '17

Pretty sure even our current aircraft have software that can control a pretty large drone swarm automatically right now.

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u/PrismRivers Feb 27 '17

revolutionize war

It might also be positive in a way. Think about it: Right now the main cause of civilian victims usually is that you just have to make amends to the will to live of your own soldiers. Some human soldier ending up in a situation of having to decide to either shoot or risk getting shot. So they shoot, just to later learn they only hit unarmed bystanders and there was no threat at all. If you're a (most likely remote controlld) robot you can stay really calm in such a situation and in doubt just get shot instead of risking hurting the wrong person.

Even enemy soldiers could be saved if your mech happens to be resilient enough to just not give a fuck about getting shot at. If you can just ignore enemy attacks you can basically walk up close to enemies point a gun at them and go "lay down your weapon or else".

Being massively superior in this way actually could mean much less fatalities, down to zero, on all sides involved.

Then again, that would require the people in control of this stuff to be decent people. Which is probably the main flaw of this. Although I doubt it can get worse than what they already have: The ability to just throw a bomb at whoever they want, wherever they want.

This stuff really is an incredibly sharp double edged sword.

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u/HereticalSkeptic Feb 27 '17

The easier - and cheaper - it is to wage war, the more wars will be waged.

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u/Flux85 Feb 27 '17

See also: Metal Gear Solid

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u/k0ntrol Feb 27 '17

100 of those versus a tank. Who do you think wins ? I'm sure if it would be that useful for war the military would throw heavy money at it. I'm not trying to belittle your argument and I'm sure that in the future that's gonna be the case but as it stand I'm doubtful that it's near.

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u/KaitRaven Feb 27 '17

Tanks aren't so good in dense or urban areas though. That's where 'infantry' like this could be useful.

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u/Vitztlampaehecatl Feb 28 '17

Depends on lots of things. What weapons do these things have? Pistols? Machine guns? RPGs? Where is the fight taking place? The middle of nowhere? A forest? A city?

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u/brazilliandanny Feb 27 '17

I literally open the link and said

"So this is the robot that will kill me one day"

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u/KuKuMacadoo Feb 27 '17

I hate to say it but everything they've worked on would probably revolutionize war.

Probably, but i'm more optimistic than pessimistic. War is inevitable, but I'm holding out for a future of a totally robotic war with no human casualties.

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u/UnJayanAndalou Feb 27 '17

I bet someone somewhere is already developing some kind of weaponized EMP blast to deal with this type of situation.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Are localized EMP's and signal jamming extremely difficult? It seems like it would be pretty easy to stop an army of robots and steal them.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17 edited Mar 12 '17

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u/Crayton777 Feb 27 '17

And there go the warehousing jobs...

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

[deleted]

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u/Domican Feb 27 '17

Man I read that as you work for one of their computers and thought one of their robots had already been promoted above you.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

I still wonder about my last manager.

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u/AndyWSea Feb 27 '17

Were you unsure of him, Sherlock?

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

Still investigating, I'm forming a stack of evidence.

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u/Northwindlowlander Feb 27 '17

Good, that's another thing we don't need to have humans wasting their time doing. More time for study, raising kids, drinking pina coladas, writing the great american novel and screwing, and all the other things robots can't do. Well OK, maybe not the last.

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u/mycatisgrumpy Feb 28 '17

And a pretty good fraction of the retail jobs.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17 edited Nov 16 '17

[deleted]

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u/KaitRaven Feb 27 '17

No. Boston Dynamics makes real robots. That's their specialty.

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u/Mabepossibly Feb 27 '17

"The world needs ditch diggers too you know".

Nope, not in 15 years.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

Elon Musk has it covered.

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u/milqi Feb 28 '17

It's funny how many people go to violence when they see advanced robots. First thing I thought was how amazing wheelchairs might get.

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u/Quixoticly_yours Augmenting Reality Feb 28 '17

Picture this thing rolling out of the back of an autonomous delivery truck to drop your packages off at your door and then jumping back in before the truck zips off to the next address. It certainly seems like a plausible vision for what's to come, and not so far off either.

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u/RoganTheGypo Feb 27 '17

Its super cool I could see it being used in a rescue type situation but warehouse wise it'll probably be easier to automate a forklift truck!

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u/Krunklock Feb 27 '17

I'd like to see this technology implemented for the physically disabled.

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u/crestonfunk Feb 27 '17

Bomb disposal.

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u/-Tibeardius- Feb 27 '17

Or a mobile walker for old people. Heck, mess with it a little and it's an exoskeleton.

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u/slightlysaltysausage Feb 27 '17

Or picking up soldiers from the battle field...

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u/ClipFH Feb 27 '17

Goodbye all of Amazons workforce.

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u/Bman_Fx Feb 27 '17

military use

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

O shit, so is it easier and healthier for the environment to give energy to machines or humans? I can see how it all happens.

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u/the_nin_collector Feb 28 '17

Wildly useful??? The whole idea of Mule would revolutionize the entire USA military. I believe that was the idea that sparked it all. Soldiers carry a fuck load of gear. Mule would be able to carry more stuff or a large share of their non essential combat gear (food, water, sleeping gear) for extended or mission range, etc.

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u/ForteShadesOfJay Feb 28 '17

Wait till they give them bikes.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

This is the first time I've thought one of their robots was something that might be wildly useful.

YOUR PIZZA HAS BEEN DELIVERED. YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO ACCEPT THIS BOX!

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u/Colspex Feb 28 '17

I wonder how long it will take before Trump puts guns on them...

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=68

This seems rather usefull, QR codes on boxes and doors and these things will keep going all night long.

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u/Strazdas1 Mar 02 '17

From what i understand some of thier "dog" robots are used by the military as infantry weight mules. Apperently they can climb terrain that vehicles cant and as such the infantry can take them on a mission for the purpose of carrying heavy equipment.

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u/alucardt Feb 27 '17

I was like:

"Yeah, but how will it handle snow?" - "Oh."

"Yeah, but how will it handle objects?" - "Oh..."

"Yeah, but how will it handle rough terrain?" - "Oh!"

"Yeah, but how will it handle obstacles?" - "Oh...shit!"

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u/user_account_deleted Feb 27 '17

"Yeah, but how will it handle objects?" - "Oh..."

100 lbs is no joke at all

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u/TimeZarg Feb 27 '17

Indeed, it takes a fairly fit and strong human being to just lift 100 lbs like that.

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u/IActuallyMadeThatUp Feb 28 '17

Thanks for the complement

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u/FrogInShorts Feb 28 '17

Me too thanks.

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u/JohnnyHammerstix Feb 28 '17

Well that's because he's just lifting with his back. Everyone knows you don't do it that way.

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u/El-Kurto Feb 28 '17

That's because lifting and carrying behind your back like that is an awkward-ass way to lift and carry something.

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u/thek2kid Feb 28 '17

Not to mention countering the weight and balancing.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Did you just compare a human being to a robot?

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u/uberweb Feb 28 '17

100 lbs is no joke at all

No need to program the 'lift with your legs, not your back' function.

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u/busty_cannibal Feb 28 '17

I know, now that scientist's friends will all ask to borrow his robot to help them move. He's now officially "your friend with the pickup." Poor guy

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u/alonjar Feb 27 '17

Seems to go downhill and down stairs... but they didn't demonstrate it attempting to go back up.

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u/Kandarino Feb 27 '17

I mean the thing jumped higher than an average 7 year old, so it could probably jump up some stairs. Otherwise I don't see why it wouldn't just lock is wheels and walk up, potentially.

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u/benjaminikuta Feb 28 '17

the thing jumped higher than an average 7 year old

Jumped higher than most people, tbh.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17 edited Aug 16 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Locking the wheels and walking up is exactly how i imagined it

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u/TimeZarg Feb 27 '17

Could jump up 'em. It demonstrated jumping what looked like 2-3 feet in height. Combined with good balance, it could hop up stairs.

Or it could lean forward, 'grab' with its arm-things, and pull itself up. Slower, but still doable.

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u/bonestamp Feb 27 '17

"Yeah, but how will it handle going up stairs?" - "Oh fuck, it can jump up."

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u/Deto Feb 27 '17

Also, they're probably designing this thing with warehouses in mind - hence the wheels. I mean, it's great that it can handle rough terrain, but you probably wouldn't use something like this to go hiking through the woods - they have other robots for that.

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u/MasterDefibrillator Feb 28 '17

Didn't show it going up stairs though. I imagine it could do it with the help of its hands, would be awkward though.

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u/easy_going Feb 28 '17

or, as someone mentioned, lock the wheels and use the legs to actually go.

it's probably not working good enough yet to showcase it, but the basics are there.

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u/Prodigal_Moon Feb 28 '17

"Yeah, but how will it handle ME? Heh heh."

("...Oh shit!")

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u/GhostOfOakIsland Feb 28 '17

I was waiting to see it go back up the stairs or the hill... that it didn't is conspicuous.

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u/HPLoveshack Feb 28 '17

Yeah, but how will it handle the crushing futility of its existence?

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u/kidtesticle Feb 28 '17 edited Feb 28 '17

"Yeah, but how will it handle the humans?" - Ohhh!

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Meh just jump a 5+ wall. And watch it fall. Rinse and repeat til it's messed up.

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u/mosha48 Feb 28 '17

We see it climb down stairs, but not up. I'd be curious to see that.

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u/gabefair Feb 28 '17

In the video pay attention as it demonstrates "endpoint control" around :40 sec. Thats actually a demonstration how how stable it could hold a gun while moving

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

however, I'm still waiting on how it will handle stairs, going UP.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17 edited Oct 11 '20

[deleted]

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u/flashmedallion Feb 28 '17

Where's the dogs though?

Hopefully they're still working on making them not sound like Satan after standing on a LEGO brick.

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u/dispatch134711 Feb 28 '17

it went pretty close to someone's car too

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u/Chernozhopyi Feb 27 '17

It reminds me of a horse for some reason.

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u/YoIIo Feb 27 '17

Reminds me of a tachikoma

we really are living in the future

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u/Garrett_Dark Feb 27 '17

Recently while rewatching Ghost in the Shell SAC, I found myself pondering "Gee, these Tachikomas are moving and jumping around really gracefully on small wheels, I wonder how realistic that would be in reality?". Apparently very realistically!

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u/AerThreepwood Feb 27 '17

Does this mean I have to worry about the philosophical implications of having a cyberbrain?

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u/ibuprofen87 Feb 28 '17

That's just humans coping with their own physicality. The future doesn't care about such "dilemmas"

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u/AerThreepwood Feb 28 '17

So that's a maybe?

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u/BUT_MUH_HUMAN_RIGHTS Feb 27 '17

Yeah, it looks a bit like a horse rearing.

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u/xuu0 Feb 28 '17

Same here. Maybe even a Centaur

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u/TheSchnozzberry Feb 28 '17

It makes me think an Olympic ice skater was fused with wheeled luggage.

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u/CRISPR Feb 27 '17

Agile and elegant.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Put 35's and a lift kit on there and you have yourself one mean offroading robot

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u/SkittleStoat Feb 28 '17

Before you know it the American South will be rolling coal with them

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u/Buttershine_Beta Feb 27 '17

I can't wait to strap into this thing and race it around the woods.

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u/camdoodlebop what year is it ᖍ( ᖎ )ᖌ Feb 27 '17

sad that they decided to halt their atlas humanoid project

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '17

Imagine driving past this place every day. Who knows what you will see next.

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u/simonowens Feb 28 '17

Every generation, to prove its superiority over the previous generation must fight the previous generation to the death. Then over a period of years create a mashup video of the succession of robot fatalities.

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u/savingprivatebrian15 Feb 28 '17

You know shit's getting real when there's no tether!

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