
Introducing SpotMini, a smaller version of the Spot robot [video] - jonnycowboy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng
======
Rezo
It's all electric, and check out the fancy white armor at
[https://youtu.be/tf7IEVTDjng?t=117](https://youtu.be/tf7IEVTDjng?t=117)

Looks like they've taken the criticism from Google et al. to heart. It was
hard to see how the huge, gas-powered robots louder than lawnmowers were going
to work for anyone except maybe military applications. Put some state of the
art Google AI into this thing and it's not far from a sellable product!

~~~
jandrese
Even the military didn't want them, they were too loud.

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mac01021
These press releases from BD are certainly impressive and are always great fun
to watch.

But they're mostly silent on the matter of how much autonomy the robots are
operating with. I never know how much of their behavior is human directed, or
how those directions are conveyed to the robots.

~~~
visarga
They say that robots are being remote controlled. So, there is an operator
telling it to duck, grab, and where to go, but the robot does the actual
balancing on itself.

I am a little bit disappointed that they are not using deep learning for
robotics. Instead, they are simulating the robot based off a model, using
Control Theory. It might be easier to get results from Control Theory but it
doesn't offer a path towards more complex behavior, like Deep Learning.

~~~
Animats
Modern control theory is rather close to machine learning. Adaptive model-
based feedforward control _is_ machine learning. The machine learning part
builds a model of the dynamics of the system. Then that model is inverted
(solved for control inputs) to make it a control system.

They're doing this right. They have a very good basic body control system. Now
someone can build higher level strategies to get work done on top of that.
That's how biological brains work, after all. Google/Alphabet could, for
example, reuse much of their automatic driving software as high level control
for this robot.

Google should have BD manufacture a few hundred of those machines, and try to
get the cost down to $25K or less per unit for that production run.

~~~
argonaut
Sure, the brain uses the concept of abstraction, but that is so far away from
supporting the assertion that "that's how the brain works."

~~~
Animats
Mammal brains have multiple functional units. The cerebellum does most of the
motor control. The cortex does most of the planning and deciding. The cortex
acts through the cerebellum, not by driving muscles directly. Most of Boston
Dynamics' control systems are doing cerebellum-level functions. As with the
cerebellum, this involves fast control via feedback loops.

~~~
argonaut
Except for the inconvenient fact that the cerebellum is not explicitly solving
control theory equations.

And also that other inconvenient fact that neuroscientists barely understand
the brain at all.

~~~
Animats
_" Except for the inconvenient fact that the cerebellum is not explicitly
solving control theory equations."_

It might be. You can invert a model by training a neural net to compute its
inverse.

~~~
argonaut
It might be. It might not be. Hardly a compelling argument.

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gene-h
If it really is using all electric actuators that's pretty big. This would be
one of the first of Boston Dynamics' all electric robots.

What exactly does using electric actuators over hydraulics buy us? Less noise,
greater efficiency, and reliability. Reliability is very important for both
house hold and industrial robots. We typically measure reliability in terms of
Mean Time Between Failures, aka, how long it typically last before breaking.
For industrial robots this is important as the higher the reliability is the
more money it makes. Industrial robots tend to have MTBFs of 100,000 hours or
about 10 years.

Reliability is also important for household robots too, a big expensive robot
that breaks down all the time appeals to few people.

~~~
Animats
The previous Spot robot was also all-electric. Hydraulic power was needed for
the bigger machines. (Also, Raibert liked designing hydraulic systems; he has
a patent on the valve/actuator combo used in BigDog.) Cube/square law - mass
increases with the cube of the size. This is why insects have tiny leg cross
sections in comparison to their length.

Battery life will be a problem, but it's clearly agile enough to plug itself
in for a recharge.

~~~
sharemywin
you could also have some kind of stand by packs waiting.

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chrisbennet
Watching it wipe out on banana peels cracked me up! Does that make me a bad
person?

~~~
codezero
Nope!

These robots are amazing in their realism of behavior that I find myself
referring to them as creatures rather than robots.

Watching them get kicked makes me feel bad for them, just like I would for an
animal, and watching them fall on a banana makes me laugh, just like I would
if an animal or person did (so long as they weren't seriously injured, unless
I didn't like them :P)

~~~
joezydeco
This might help:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkv-
_LqTeQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkv-_LqTeQA)

~~~
Erwin
Quite a few parodies around, here's another amusing one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP-
qbTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP-qbTE)

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freshyill
The skull-like face doesn't exactly scream "friendly" to me.

~~~
Leon
It doesn't look like it was designed to be a face but a gripping hand that
they put googly eyes on for fun.

~~~
freshyill
On closer inspection, you're right. I originally watched it on my phone, and
it just screamed "skull" to me.

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daveguy
Google just said, "Wait! Did we say we are focusing on a 'household robot' and
are therefore going to sell Boston Dynamics? Hehe. Just kidding about selling
BD!" The cleaning up, stair climbing and fall recovery are seriously
impressive.

~~~
jonnycowboy
Easily the most impressive household robot ever built.

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ccozan
Feels like living in the future.

We could have right now a RoboDog, with some machine guns on it and let them
patrol and secure a perimeter. Fire at anything it moves. I hope they solve
the issue with the banana peel :), though.

~~~
jonnycowboy
You mean Rat Things, right?

[http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Things_(Snow_Crash)](http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Things_\(Snow_Crash\))

~~~
ccozan
Amazing, how the subconscious works. Of course, I re-read that not long ago!

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Animats
Now that's a nice piece of machinery. Much closer to a salable product than
the big machines they did for DoD. This is more in line with Google's business
model. Maybe this is BD's effort to stay under the Alphabet umbrella. It will
be good if it works.

They really have leg control and balance software figured out now. That
machine is more agile than any of the previous BD machines.

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mpolichette
Its really amazing to see how functional this robot is. I cant wait for one to
take over for some of the more monotonous tasks around the house...

That said, the way it moves around and can keeps its head steady is both
really cool, but somewhat terrifying... It seems to conjure up scenes from
movies where the antagonist robots are scanning a target before deciding to
kill or not.

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kevindeasis
It seems like if you also add googly eyes to any robot like the one in BD's
video they begin to appear more friendly.

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mtw
They forgot to kick it to make it lose its balance !

~~~
daveguy
They have an animated gif of playing tug of war with it! They are definitely
trying to fix that whole "robot abuse" image that so many people got upset
about last time!

[https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hv-
kG4NOcjymzhIBMnzFNFo7Uqc...](https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hv-
kG4NOcjymzhIBMnzFNFo7Uqc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale\(\)/cdn0.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6695725/giphy-_6_.0.gif)

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uzbit
Personally, I like how it all went downhill very quickly in the last 10s.

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tambourine_man
I find them both equally fascinating and scary at the same time.

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12014008/boston-
dynamics-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12014008/boston-dynamics-
spotmini-alphabet-giraffe-spot-robot), which points to this.

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chillingeffect
What if one of these gets out of control/hacked/malfunctions? This is one more
reason we need weapons to protect ourselves.

~~~
anonymfus
Then in the worst case you get out of the room and wait until the battery
discharges.

If you are seriously worrying about such situation you should also worry that
robot can pick up the weapon.

~~~
jonnycowboy
I imagine this robot is only a few weeks/months away from being able to plug
itself in to recharge from any household socket.

~~~
anonymfus
Then you go to the distribution board and turn off electricity in household
sockets of that room/apartments/house/block/street/city/country/planet.

