
The fantasy robots of Boston Dynamics - ilamont
https://digboston.com/the-fantasy-robots-of-boston-dynamics/
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jonathanyc
Interesting article with good points, but some of it is pretty silly:

> To be fair, “Testing Robustness” is followed by a written comment indicating
> that a “person (not shown) drives the robot up to the door, points the hand
> at the door handle, then gives the ‘GO’ command, both at the beginning of
> the video and again at 42 seconds.” The rest of the time the robot
> presumably executes its routine without human intervention. But this kind of
> task-and-time-limited autonomy has been around for decades, while few people
> know what “driving” the robot to the lab door means or that a teleoperator
> is necessary for nearly all of its movements.

Come on. We know how to make robots that walk to doors. The whole point of the
video is to show the robustness of the robot in attempting to open the door. I
couldn’t care less if someone drove it to the door then started the program.

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lurquer
I love those videos. Maybe I'm jaded, but I never assumed they were
autonomous... hell, it's hard enough to get a game AI character to open a
'door.' The mechanical aspect, on the other hand -- the balancing and movement
-- is very impressive.

If it was me, I'd ditch the entire AI aspect, and just hire a thousand
offshore workers at pennies an hour to remotely command my 1,000 ATLASes as
they march across (insert name of country you want to invade.) Sort of like
drones that fly across the Middle East while being piloted by humans from a
nice, safe, air-conditioned office in, for instance, Lackland AFB.

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Isamu
> Boston Dynamics has made little progress in robot autonomy, whatever we
> might think of abandoning the old folks to nonhuman machines. It is simply
> not its forte.

Eh? They are absolutely in the lead of autonomous, dynamic robotic motion.

There is just a long, long road to "full" autonomy.

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773js
Seems like someone with a bone to pick. Maybe he is jealous he wasn't offered
a job?

