Originally published at: Watch these humanoid robots do parkour (and sometimes fail gloriously!) | Boing Boing
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“This week we’re coming to you from Boston, where American Ninja Warrior will have its first ever non-human contestant. Joining us from Boston Dynamics is Atlas who hopes to conquer at least the first obstacle on our course, the Quintuple Steps.”
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They’ll need flexibility to hunt down human dissidents on behalf of the authoritarian regimes or AI overlords that use them as guard labour.
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Amazing how much that looks like video game animation. It doesn’t seem like the physics matches the landings and pushoffs.
The failure video is similar to a lot of “cat failure” videos on youtube, where the main problem tends to be the feet slipping causing a failure to launch correctly.
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I lost it at the backflips.
Yes, the entire time I was thinking how much this looked like a good IK rig at work.
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That struck me, too.
I think in this case, it’s because we expect them to move like a person, but their limb shapes/centers of gravity are totally different, so it throws us off.
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I’m just imagining how frustrating it must have been to film that whole thing, only to have ONE of the robots fail the backflip at the very end. Then again, maybe a robot is filming it too.
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Also because the movements are too “perfect” and flowing, without any hesitation, preparation, or even the tiniest wobble upon landing. Even gymnasts that stick a landing don’t look like that.
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on one hand: awesome! that’s amazing!!
on the other: why are we so determined to train them to hunt us better?
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This new season of BattleBots is going to be epic.
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We’re easy to hunt. Just put some really cool app out and we will be so pre-occupied it will be easy for the machines to pick us off.
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Obligatory “I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords”
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fair point. we’re fish in a barrel.
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I was thinking something else while watching that: how much their design looks like something out of a video game.
They didn’t need shiny white panels on their bodies for example but there is no doubt their creators have seen enough of that sort of design that they tried to emulate it, consciously or unconsciously.
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“Hi, Humans, have you seen the new trending app; free to play, Fish-in-a-Barrel!”
Regarding the failures… I want to see tantrums!
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But can it go truck, to refrigerators, to dumpster, 360 spin onto the pallets, backflip gainer into the trashcan? Obligatory
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Does this mean that if Fukushima happened today that we might actually be able to use robots to help? Last time we needed them we discovered they couldn’t even open doors. No help at all.
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This is what gets me about this project. The designers seem to be concentrating on cute videos so we’ll all accept the surveillance copbots when they hit the street. I want to see robots that can fight wildfires, enter unstable collapsed buildings to recover casualties --in other words, machines that can genuinely save human lives by replacing humans in peril. Instead they seem to be aiming for better prison guards.
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