
The Robotics Industry Could Learn a Lot From Puppeteers - pslattery
https://onezero.medium.com/the-future-of-robots-should-look-like-puppets-8d52634d91a4
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dljsjr
This is actually extremely well known to most people building robots. Anybody
who's ever met Peter Dilworth will have seen his slides talking about how all
you need to make something artificial relatable is a set of articulated
eyebrows and he's right. Expressiveness is a game changer. It's just that it's
far from the most pressing issue right now.

The article mentions that we (robotics researchers) don't think about movement
first but the fact of the matter is that those of us working on humanoids
can't STOP thinking about movement and how hard of a problem it is to solve.
The issue is that we don't have anywhere near the technology in either
electric motors or hydraulic actuation that is required to solve the problem
of smooth, high-fidelity, accurately-controlled motion that is also safe for
human co-operation (which typically means torque control or some other scheme
for feedback control over the impedance between the robot and the
environment). Hydraulics are far too "stiff" and dangerous to be used in
robots that work directly alongside humans, and electric motors can't hit the
torque vs. velocity requirements for dynamic motions that allow the robots to
be both safe and expressive and dynamic like a living organism.

But nobody is funding research in to actuation because it doesn't have short
term payoff and it isn't sexy. So here we are.

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hinkley
I have a bit of trouble performing some tasks that a smaller person could
easily do, because when I was weight lifting, I had a few incidents where I
pushed or pulled on something as hard as I remembered and ended up breaking
it. I trained myself never to push as hard as I absolutely can, because if it
takes that much pressure I'm probably doing it wrong.

I don't follow cycling as much as I used to, but in an attempt to keep rich
teams from building bicycles out of unobtanium, they put some minimum weight
restrictions on the bikes. One of the early results was that some telemetry
gear started getting built into these bikes. The biggest one I know of was
building a torque meter into the rear wheel. For the cost of a fraction of a
percent of power output, it could tell the coach if you're really going all
out or dogging it. The difference in those numbers would hint at you being
sick, a subtle equipment failure, or an aerodynamics problem.

It should take a certain range of force to open a door, drill a hole, tighten
a bolt, or raise a platform. If you are using more than that, something is
jammed, your bit is wearing faster than expected, the bolt is cross threaded,
or something is stuck on the platform and you're trying to ram it through the
roof.

Some tools are very difficult to scale up to high torque situations, but it
seems like this data should be available to a robot, via sensors on the power
supplies if nothing else.

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OnlineGladiator
Robotics is a truly fascinating technical field - I was originally drawn to it
because of its potential and its complexity. There is something alluring about
having to understand mechanical, electrical, and software engineering expertly
to create something unique.

What I quickly discovered though is it dominated entirely by technologists who
believe that developing better technology will solve hard problems, without
actually understanding the real intricacies of the problems they say they are
solving.

There are so many brilliant engineers in robotics, and very few talented
designers, product managers, and other necessary people to make robotics
technology useful and ubiquitous for everybody. And that's probably why we
have articles like this - because engineers only know about engineering
(broadly speaking).

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hinkley
> By being so focused on making objects look lifelike, do engineers overlook
> what truly makes them expressive?

This reminded me of Keepon:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-yrjh58ms](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3g-yrjh58ms)

Basically an unarticulated clown nose with dots for a face and 3 degrees of
freedom.

And yet it is clearly dancing. In other videos it manages to look
contemplative when it is processing data.

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Isamu
The Na'vi Shaman by Disney is the best example.

[https://robots.ieee.org/robots/navishaman/](https://robots.ieee.org/robots/navishaman/)

Previous generations of animatronics lacked the fidelity of motion that this
one has. Disney's experience with CG animation shows through here, which is
animating with CG puppets.

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blacksmith_tb
It's an interesting discussion, but I am not sure we need to add
expressiveness to a Roomba... I suppose it depends on how much time the robot
will have an audience? For bots that are intended to interact with people, I
can certainly see the value; but lots of them intentionally work when no human
is there to see them.

~~~
cookingrobot
The old Roomba I had made these really expressive chirps to communicate when
it’s was starting, finished etc. If it got stuck on something it would make an
apologetic “uh-oh” type of tone, and if it succeeded at something it would
play a happy tone. My newer model roomba now uses a really low quality
prerecorded voice that says things like “error”. It sucks.

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intpx
robotics != animatronics

I dont care how sympathetic my mechanical slave is. I just want it to spot
weld my car bodies perfectly, repeatedly and cheaply.

People adapt to technology -- you dont need to anthropomorphize the outputs,
you need to make them simple to understand. LEDs, tones, motion etc can all do
this without getting in the way of a robots core functions the way a
sophisticated expressive system would. R2D2 'nuff said

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wwqrd
if we had robots as articulated as people to puppeteer the other robots then
they’d be as lifelike as people can make puppets

~~~
tlb
It’s puppeteers all the way up!

A robot puppeteer is easier than an autonomous robot because it can have the
weight of its actuators in a fixed base.

