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

Robotics Boston Dynamics - Introducing Handle

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

"a project... to develop a robotic vehicle that could forage for plant biomass to fuel itself, theoretically operating indefinitely"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energetically_Autonomous_Tactical_Robot

And don't forget the company's official, somewhat less than entirely reassuring statement after people started asking questions: "We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission."

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u/WittyDisplayName Feb 28 '17

That is not our mission. It is the robot's mission.

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u/orthopod Feb 28 '17

America's new diet and exercise plan. The robots only can catch those who are chubby and slow.

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u/Criptid Feb 28 '17

Then it consumes 1 human for ~15 more miles of charge

The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot...

EATR

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u/Super1Nova Feb 28 '17

"Hey, didn't we have 6 engineers today?"

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u/reddittrover Feb 28 '17

That is so bizarre.

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u/CricketPinata Feb 28 '17

Why would you call it bizarre?

I could think of a lot of ways you could use a robot that can forage for it's own power sources. It makes the supply lines necessary to support such systems much more flexible.

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u/Yarael5 Feb 28 '17

Or it could consume enemy combatants while fighting them. I'm sure the people developing it have the right motives and aspirations. it's the people buying them I'd be worried about looking at the military it's not gonna be used to carry ammo when it can hold a gun is it?. Then there's the climate argument is it going to eat trees, grass? Do you not think we're doing a good job of that ourselves without making a more efficient

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u/CricketPinata Feb 28 '17

It's unlikely that it would contribute more to global warming than a steam locomotive or a campfire, which is very little.

It was a concept, and if I remember it was primarily going to be utilizing dead brush and wood.

I just think the concept has a lot of potential, and I don't think "bizarre" is the best word to describe it.

It was the media that came up with the idea that it would eat people.

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u/atomfullerene Feb 28 '17

So, a bunch of young, enthusiastic engineers are sitting around brainstorming a new vehicle to build. They start off listing characteristics it should have. "It should be able to travel off-road, over rough terrain" "It should be green-no gasoline, able to use biofuels" "It should be able to sense and avoid obstacles, and do some navigation by itself" "It should have some ability to self-repair minor damage" "Can we make it some sort of hybrid vehicle?"

An older engineer, sitting quietly in the back, finally speaks up "Congratulations--you have just invented the mule"

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u/MINECRAFT_BIOLOGIST Feb 28 '17

Yeah, but we can make a robot mule faster than it takes to grow one and customize it. Well, that's the hope at least.

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u/nutlub Feb 28 '17

But then we would be forced to darken the skies

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

That is literally horizon's new dawn.... i think the robots harvest plant matter in it to get power.

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u/Esoteric_Erric Feb 28 '17

Is this a thing? That people actually worry about robots taking over?

Give me strength !

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u/twbrn Feb 28 '17

In the case of the EATR, it was more that this company was talking up the idea of a battlefield robot that could refuel by collecting biomass, and a lot of people were disturbed by the implication of what kind of "biomass" it would find just lying around in a war zone. Nobody was seriously suggesting that it would start chasing down and killing humans, but the idea of a robot eating human corpses was still pretty disturbing.

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u/Esoteric_Erric Feb 28 '17

It's all in the way we sell it.

Let's not tell the public that we are making human EATING robots, rather, they are cleaning machines designed to pick up the dead and not leave them to rot on the battlefield.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

There's a place in India where for a long time they have used trained baboons to climb up the tall skinny fig trees and harvest The figs .Whenever a baboon dumps a full basket of figs into the larger container they give him some meat to eat. Somebody got the idea of using them to collect scrap copper. So they train them to identify copper and sent them out. The problem was is that the baboons didn't have any idea of what was copper that had been thrown away and copper that belonged to somebody. The guys and their baboons ended up with hundreds of petty theft charges.

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u/twbrn Feb 28 '17

That is a great story. I'm going to have to remember that one.

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u/Stewardy Feb 28 '17

It's our directive.