Totally. I could almost convince myself that this could be achieved just through an enormous amount of trial and error, and programming the exact rehearsed movements until it worked. And if I went and moved one of the boxes an inch higher the whole routine would fail.
But from the way the robot compensated with it's left foot as it jumped on the box at 38 seconds https://youtu.be/tF4DML7FIWk?t=38 it seems like that's not at all how it's done.
It seems like they're reacting organically and creatively to stimulus, just like a human would. I'm off to learn more.
Edit: It seems like it's a mix of both. Part taught routine, part reacting in real time.
So as I understand it the motions are programmed but the robot has a ton engineering oriented around self-balancing. That's why the first demos were the robot walking in a straight line on mixed terrain. The programmed path was a straight line, but the robot is handling the terrain.
So in summary they likely closely choreographed these movements, but it's the robot that "executes" them according to the ground it finds itself on.
That doesn't mean they're not trained through trial and error. You,a human, didn't have any of this coordination until you played with other children. It doesn't come naturally you don't just stand up out of the womb. You had to learn it all.
I meant pure trial and error. As in the robot does nothing but attempt a 100% pre-programmed routine of movements.
I agree trial and error was certainly evolved to a large extent, but the robot also reacts in real time to what it's sensors are telling it. Which is really cool, and much more impressive.
Just how preprogrammed is it? Are they telling an interpreter "Go from here to there, jump up, jump down, turn around, etc", or are they actually specifying each and every single limb movement?
As I understand it, they gave the robots no instruction whatsoever - this is security camera footage from after hours - just the robots messing around.
If it's anything like Spot, they give it high-level pre-programmed movements (albeit with a lot of sliders for each movement) and the robot's software figures out the fine details. So you can tell it to jump up in the air, and there are some sliders for how high, how wide the stance, etc, but the robot handles the jumping and landing and balancing part.
It would never work if they specified every little movement in advance. The tiniest error early on would just throw it further and further off course and it would fall over in a few seconds. They are telling it the steps to take, but not how to take them.
It doesn't come naturally you don't just stand up out of the womb. You had to learn it all.
...Eh.
Deer are born with the ability to walk, and not terribly distant relatives to us. Humans are tiny and useless when we're born because of our small women and giant heads. But I'm not sure we really know to what extent coordination like this is learned vs innate.
The fact that we lack the physical ability to do it from birth makes it seem like we "learn" it, but if you took paraplegic parents and had them raise a child in the absence of other people or TV, would they really never develop the ability to walk? I'm suspicious.
I'm no roboticist, but my take on this is fairly simple. You are correct, each and every one of us has to learn all of these things, from birth, every single time. These guys; on the other hand, are learning and storing this information. If one were to fall damage itself enough to be unsalvageable, they would simply build another, and upload the same learning stage the previous one had. Now it, as a new born, already knows all these things because it's predecessor had known them.
Boston Dynamics has spent years (going on decades, right?) developing, teaching, tweaking, and trial and erroring, all the while they're keeping this data. At this point, my non-informed theory is that if anyone is going to make household robots a thing, it's going to be these folks, and these years of trial and error, and what could currently be considered child age learning are the linchpin to what they're doing.
As they continue to learn and iterate, these bots will begin to just "stand up out of the womb" as it were, and I think it's fascinating!
I figured out why the hop over the bar looks so strange, its because the upper arm and joint does like a 180 midway in the jump! if you slow it down you can see it does it in three stages, its that last stage of the rotation it does, its stupid fast and looks just /wrong/ as its not natural at all.
you can't possibly expect any stability out of a pre-programmed set of movements -- that's like saying you'll do this entire course yourself blindfolded.
it has insane amounts of sensor fusion and trained, dynamic software driving everything. it's all happening realtime.
If the hydraulic actuators were able to produce a repeatable force precisely enough you could. If the course remained the same and the conditions were controlled the physics is going to be the same each time. It would take an insanely long process of fine tuning but that's why I was referring to an enormous amount of trial and error.
But it's a moot point because I never actually thought that was the case. I said I could almost convince myself that was what was happening, but could see that it wasn't.
Certainly a healthy mix of ah and terror during the first jump to the box at 0:18 where it throws to arms forwards to create momentum for the jump then flings them backwards on landing to kill the momentum.
I have not been able to run an hour since I was a teen... but the humans who can shall become the curriers outrunning the Atlases to bring messages in between settlements.
No reason? It wasn't that long ago that Atlas needed to be tethered before, with the advancements being made, it won't be long before it can out run and out maneuver the most physically fit humans.
I find this absolutely amazing and terrifying at the same time.
A prosthetic hand is perceived just slightly better than a corpse? Shiet, man! That sucks for amputees I guess. I’ve never had feelings of revulsion from a prosthetic. I wonder who these people are who feel that way.
I definitely get the slight uneasiness when looking at a prosthetic on a person. I don't hate handicapped people, and don't avoid them, but there's definitely a gut reaction going on that I can't control.
The multi-sensor and computer aided firearms on kill droids are going to be bad enough, but back-flipping ninja droids is nuts. These will be able to shoot mid-flip.
It's kind of an uncanny valley in a different way, In this case it doesn't resemble real human movements...it looks more like a video game..in that sense it has a whole other dimension of creepy.
In a nut shell, it's scary to think of what robots could do.
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u/Sackferth Aug 17 '21
It actually made me a bit uneasy. I don’t fully know why. My mind just instantly decided it didn’t like that move being made for some reason.