
A Robotics Startup Wants to Be the Boston Dynamics of China - mcspecter
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/this-robotics-startup-wants-to-be-the-boston-dynamics-of-china
======
Animats
It still irks me that Google/Alphabet bought all those robotics companies and
ran them into the ground. Not just Boston Dynamics. Schaft, the University of
Tokyo spinoff, had some great technology. They had a good all-electric
humanoid robot. Bot and Dolly had paying customers and Google cut them off.
Some of the perception companies they bought may have provided technology
useful for the self-driving cars.

(I used to be into legged locomotion. I hold a patent on slip control for
legged running on rough terrain. You need active slip control to climb hills.
It's from 1994; I was thinking toys, but getting the price down that low was
hopeless. I was way too early. There's still no legged machine that makes
money. John Deere bought the Timberjack hexapod logging machine, but killed it
after four years.[1])

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pJwDZXasKU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pJwDZXasKU)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>and ran them into the ground.

They weren't doing too great at the time of purchase. I imagine this was
another patent farm buyout and then sold, sans important patents, to someone
else.

BD doesn't really have a product. There's nothing to sell. Even the military
scoffs at these very noisy[1] and difficult to maintain robots, especially
when they have a literal army of 18 year olds who don't mind carrying 40lbs
packs into battle.

BD makes pretty demos and does good research but it can't be monetized, yet,
if ever.

[1] [https://qz.com/582991/the-us-marines-wont-be-using-
googles-r...](https://qz.com/582991/the-us-marines-wont-be-using-googles-
robot-dogs-because-they-fail-a-pretty-basic-test/)

Kyle Olson, a spokesperson for the Marines, told military.com on Dec. 22 that
the noise the LS3’s gas-powered engine gave off was tactically rather
unhelpful. “As Marines were using it, there was the challenge of seeing the
potential possibility because of the limitations of the robot itself,” Olson
said. “They took it as it was: a loud robot that’s going to give away their
position.”

~~~
jlavine
Your comment is right, but it seems BD are still developing their robots to be
more practical, and may eventually have something they could sell for use in
the field.

BD have battery-powered robots much quieter than the gas-powered Big Dog:
Handle
([https://www.bostondynamics.com/handle](https://www.bostondynamics.com/handle)),
Spot
([https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot](https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot)),
Atlas
([https://www.bostondynamics.com/atlas](https://www.bostondynamics.com/atlas))

Spot was mentioned in the article you linked to as being quieter but able to
carry less weight and less autonomous than Big Dog.

The Marines are resuming limited testing with a version of Spot upgraded for
greater autonomy in 2018: [http://www.military.com/daily-
news/2017/04/05/spots-back-mar...](http://www.military.com/daily-
news/2017/04/05/spots-back-marines-resume-testing-with-four-legged-robot.html)

------
kolbe
It's always so amazing to see how Chinese companies can be right on the tails
of US companies. They've shown an amazing ability to innovate! It only takes
them a couple years to catch up, and when they do, they can produce it more
cheaply because of their superior technological abilities. This is totally not
just state-sponsored espionage and modern day slave labor at work.

~~~
indubitable
It's extremely interesting looking at the Program For International Student
Assessment (PISA) data for something like America compared to China. [1]
Scroll down a bit on that page to add countries for comparison, including
China. China is pulling far ahead of us in everything in terms of educational
achievement.

If China's 'trick' was little more than knocking off US tech and having cheap
labor then every country in the world would be on their way to becoming an
industrialized superpower. Their progress is even more phenomenal when you
consider their recent history. Less than 60 years ago Chinese were literally
starving to death by the tens of millions as the country's government decided
to try out socialism. And their technological acceleration did not really
begin in earnest until the late 80s.

I think the fable of the tortoise and the hare if not for the fact that we can
see that tortoise is certainly not exactly inching along anymore, yet we
continue to mock it?

[1] -
[https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/USA?lg=en](https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/USA?lg=en)

~~~
kolbe
There's no mocking. When you have a docile and powerless population combined
with an intelligent central planning system, it's a no brainier that it would
succeed--especially within the realm of exploitation of its own people. It's
just not obvious that the next level can be reached. The US is open to people
being different and intellectual exploration. These are important qualities
for innovation. China is draconian in its approach to making people try to
become "the best" on some centrally planned linear scale. That's great for
resolving the hardest math problems that have already been solved, but it's
not great for thinking about problems and creating products that are outside
the domain of current human knowledge.

~~~
indubitable
What exactly do you mean by _" people being different and intellectual
exploration"_ being the most important qualities for innovation? Based on
what? How does this contrast against the times of some of the most famous
American inventors? Ask people to name famous American inventors and names
like Ford, Franklin, Bell, and Edison will predominate. And how does this
contrast against China?

~~~
kolbe
Some of the people you mentioned are just the beneficiaries of other people's
creative genius. And that's an important distinction, since, at a country
level, it doesn't matter who benefits from a breakthrough, just that the
breakthrough happened somewhere.

Also, creativity is a pretty hard thing to quantify. So, I'm not sure how we'd
create a data set on how creativity correlates to innovation. How about I just
quote the single person whose insights have vaulted technology farther than
any other man in modern history: Albert Einstein (granted, not american).

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created
them."

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."

How does this contrast with China? I'm interpolating some here, but if all
information that citizens receive through the internet must be approved of by
the government, I can't help but think the population will have a
narrow/brainwashed perspective of the world and their place in it.

~~~
indubitable
Like Einstein said the true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but
imagination. However, when he says imagination there he's not referring to
creative drawings or a good story. He's talking about having a deep enough
theoretic knowledge to begin to be able to go beyond that in a creatively
intelligent fashion. Creativity is _' Maybe our entire universe is like an
electron in some other universe.'_ Intelligent creativity is string theory.

Technical development and invention requires first and foremost an extremely
rigorous understanding of what work has already happened. For instance special
relativity was largely a work to reconcile Newtonian mechanics with Maxwell's
equations for electromagnetism while applying and expanding upon a breadth of
other technical knowledge. Maxwell's equations are something even most
electrical engineers are not going to have an in depth technical understanding
of.

Has Facebook made the US a more intelligent nation? Has it made it a less
intelligent nation? I think most would probably say the latter. But if so,
you're implicitly stating that banning Facebook, censoring the internet, would
potentially make the population of the United States more intelligent (even if
in the form of being less unintelligent). I am, first and foremost, an
advocate for freedom so I could never recommend such action. But I think there
is a strong argument that complete freedom for the masses is not necessarily
the path to the most enlightened and knowledgeable society.

I just find it mostly disappointing that we're simply sitting by watching
China inch its way towards becoming the world technological leader while we
sit by and alternatively mock them or make excuses. They've overtaken the
world in solar development/technology, have built the world's largest radio
telescope, are in the process of building the world's largest supercollider,
and more. And now their next generation are going to be some of the most well
educated in the world. By contrast it feels as though we're resting on our
laurels. And more accurate would be to say that we're tearing our laurels to
pieces as social values begin to be seen as more valuable than knowledge - a
pattern that has repeated itself countless times throughout history, never
ending well.

~~~
kolbe
You're totally right about the hokey notion of imagination. Just because an
idiot can conceive of something mildly unique on a local level doesn't mean he
has the prowess to be truly innovative. I'm talking about diversity within the
>99.99th percentile. In all fairness, though, where you (and China) are
totally dismissive of the kid who grew up in a nudist colony and self-studied
his way into having some solid intellectual skills at age 18, the US welcomes
that person as a potential source of innovation and puts resources into
cultivating him, even if he only got a 1450 on the SAT and his parents don't
have any important political connections.

In this same vein, what happens with the people who have no intellectual
influence is of little consequence to this discussion. So, yeah, banning
Facebook would help the 50th percentile be more intelligent. So would a lot of
things. And in this realm, China is beating the shit out of the US. It's not
even close when you compare the average American to the average Chinese:
they're easily 15 IQ points higher. Like I said, though, I'm more skeptical of
China's ability to make one of those Einstein types who transcend being the
best test taker alive, and who truly advance human knowledge.

To your final point, China will (has) take(n) over. But I'm not convinced that
they will be able to carry the torch of top dog as well as western countries
have. Much like their failure to participate in the Industrial Revolution
because their society was not flexible to change, it looks a lot like the same
thing is happening now. They tore down the old regime to make way for one that
works really well in 2017 (espionage, slavery, and education), but it's hard
to see how they can evolve as the world does.

~~~
indubitable
I suppose we'll see in the relatively near future. China is setting themselves
up to completely dominate solar in the future. Not only by investing and
developing heavily in their own country but also having the prescience to
start doing things like buying up cobalt resources throughout the world --
perhaps inspired by the success of the petro dollar.

But their development for now is mostly just one of taking something, refining
it, and producing at scale. If they intend to go the whole 9 yards with solar
they're going to need to come up with innovative deployment and load balancing
solutions that will be first in the world. Similarly with things like electric
vehicles, which they're also investing heavily in. Will they simply have the
equivalent of 'electric gas stations' everywhere or actually take things to
the next level with ideas like wireless as-you-drive charging? And they're
also pursuing automation in their factories as wages rise. That in turn will
lead to interesting technological, and social, problems. And they've also put
forth interest in working on completely revolutionary projects, such as a
permanent manned moon base.

So I suppose this will be answered in the near future. For now I just don't
see any reason to expect them to suddenly fumble. I think you're dramatically
underestimating the difficulty of what they're achieving. Like I mentioned in
the first post, if their 'secret' was just "espionage, slavery, education"
then it makes one wonder why all developing nations (most of which pay far
lower wages that China) aren't on their way to becoming a technologically
advanced industrial civilizations.

------
hodder
They want to become an ultimately irrelevant company shelved inside a gigantic
"conglomerate" and deprived of additional investment and scope?

Sadly that seems to be the fate of Boston Dynamics now.

~~~
icebraining
Were they really deprived of investment? Atlas and Handle were released under
Google aegis, and they're pretty impressive.

~~~
TFortunato
Quick correction. Google bought Boston Dynamics at the end of 2013. Atlas was
in development long before that, and publicly shown in July 2013.

~~~
icebraining
Sorry, I meant the second version:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(robot)#Atlas.2C_The_Nex...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_\(robot\)#Atlas.2C_The_Next_Generation)

~~~
TFortunato
No worries, my fault that it didn't click that's what you meant! I read your
comment and just had a moment where I was saying "I swear I saw Atlas before
the google announcement", but they were close enough I thought my mind was
playing tricks on me!

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azinman2
Is there anything they didn’t rip? Even their demo video is Boston Dynamics
style...

~~~
tensotors
Well the size and purpose is different in the remake.

~~~
azinman2
Not sure the purpose is much different.... it’s quite early stages for them
and they’ll want to commercialize however they can.

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En_gr_Student
What if they win where goog-boston dynamics took a left turn? China is getting
good at AI and robots.

~~~
oneweekwonder
Any reasonable nation state that would want to guarantee their future
sovereignty will be trying to get good at AI and robots. China want to do it
while commercializing the product.

