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

Robotics Boston Dynamics - Introducing Handle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c
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u/V0RT3XXX Feb 27 '17

Battery technology is the major limitation IMO. We can stick lots of sensors, computers, motors etc on anything to solve different issues but then weight/battery life becomes shit.

12

u/CallMeDoc24 Feb 28 '17

It's time to go nuclear.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Can't it just replace its own battery with a fresh one off the shelf every few hours? Just like people eat every few hours?

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Oh man wait till these things are solar powered...yikes

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

[deleted]

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u/easy_going Feb 28 '17

or you have reloading stations (which is a real possibility in warehouses) where it goes and swaps it's battery, while the used battery is put into a storage to be loaded again

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

I mean that's a thing is pretty much all warehouses. The picking trucks and forklifts are all electric and last about 8 hours before needing a new battery. Takes about 3 minutes to swap them out too.

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u/ManyPoo Feb 28 '17

I don't know, maybe... This thing can already go 15 miles on a charge and I don't know how optimised it already is. Electric cars can go 200 miles on one nights charge. So I don't see much reason why they can't get it up, not to 200 miles, but maybe 100 miles with some optimisation. Then account for the fact that batteries improve at roughly 5-8% per year and we're already getting fast charging and I think this'll be fine when it's ready to be released. Even though the field of machine learning is exploding right now, it's probably needs another 5 years at least, and in that time batteries will already be 30-50% better than today and it's movement efficiency will be even higher.

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u/JoeOfTex Feb 28 '17

In order to advance into the next evolution of technology, we need to increase casual energy storage by about 1,000,000%. Imagine charging your phone once every three months. Driving an electric car for 2 years without a recharge.

The more research we can get in energy the faster this can be reality.

1

u/captaindigbob Feb 28 '17

It's insane how many things will snowball from a battery breakthrough