Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/17/watch-this-drone-dodge-soccer.html
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Well I for one welcome our new dodgeball overlords.
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Quadcopters play dodgeball better than I did. Sadly.
Sound in this video brings me right back to Kubrick’s 2001…
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So the first thing we do when we make a robot that can sense its surroundings is throw stuff at it. Just like as soon as we make a robot that can balance itself on its feet, we try and kick it over. We’re just asking for it at this point.
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I, for one, welcome our new dodge ball master drone overlords.
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They were pulling their punches. I’m not sure any one of those balls would’ve hit the drone. I want to see the Lebron James version.
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At best, only experiments 3 and 4 might have hit the drone.
At worst, there was another operator faking the whole thing off camera. I need to see more.
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So when the robots attack, try to stay very very still. Oh, and don’t emit any body heat.
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So use rocks - they move much quicker. And throw more than one at a time.
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So what you’re saying is be a…rock lob-ster?
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I all hear is the drone of a swarm of mosquitoes…
It’s almost like these robot nerds are trying to get some sort of revenge for being bullied in grade school. I bet they even have codenames for them, like “Billy” and “Derrick” or “Mr. Russeau the PE teacher”
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Surprised they didn’t borrow a mechanical ball chucker from the sports dept to remove the possibility that engineering students might not be Deadshot. Still pretty cool demo.
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Well we can check off that avoidance feature. Nearly there.
Very cool, but
There is 50 years of collision avoidance experiments with all sorts of cheap, easy ways to control an approaching object. As others have mentioned, it makes no sense to have manually thrown balls that might not be on a collision course at all.
Also, our visual system has sensory delays 10x slower than their “slow” cameras and we do pretty good at detecting fast moving objects. Their premise that its the cameras that are too slow doesn’t make much sense.
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In the next lab over, they’re investigating patterns of paint on the balls to fool the drone’s avoidance.
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for my demo I’ll have it shoot the balls out of the air!
Then I got to find some nice place to show the demo. A professional setting - I know a bank!
Show the drone shooting the balls out of the air, as it hovers silently above them, it’s machine guns pointing forward as if just daring anyone to throw a ball!
Then place a big black canvas bag on the bank counter, in case anyone wants to support my continued good work of making exciting drone demos to show at banks!
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