Atlas is an “agile, anthropomorphic robot” (who apparently is also fond of alliteration). Atlas was created by Boston Dynamics, the Google-owned robotics company also famous for its speedy robotic cheetah and its swimming, snow-climbing BigDog. And recently, Atlas went for its first-ever walk in the woods.
The impressive — and perhaps mildly alarming — footage of Atlas staggering around like the less-coordinated cousin of a Transformers character has been making the rounds online after it was shown at the Fab Lab 11 conference and symposium in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this month.
It was the first time the company had shared video of one of its humanoid robots on an outdoor excursion. (Though its quadrupeds have been frequently filmed running in the wild.)
But Atlas wasn’t simply gripped by a Thoreauvian yen to experience nature. According to Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert, the hike was an opportunity to test the robot’s balance and ability to respond to an unpredictable environment.
“Out in the world is just a totally different challenge than in the lab,” he said at the conference.
According to the Boston Globe, much of the company’s research is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is trying to develop robots that can perform tasks in military and disaster-related situations that would be unsafe for humans. And the company originally began as a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, according to its Web site.
Atlas still isn’t quite ready to venture out on its own — in the video shown at Fab 11, the robot remained tethered to a power source as it tramped around the woods.
“I’m not saying it can do everything you can do,” Raibert said, “but you can imagine if we keep pushing we’ll get there.”
It’s not clear whether anyone has informed Atlas that the streets of America are not necessarily safe for wandering robots — look at the violence inflicted on the friendly hitchhiking Hitchbot in Philadelphia earlier this month.
Then again, Hitchbot was Canadian. And it had pool noodles for arms. And it looked like a character from a PBS kids show.
Fate whispers to the warrior, "You cannot withstand the storm." And the warrior whispers back, "I am the storm."
Women and children can be careless, but not men - Don Corleone
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
The humanoid ones are the most disconcerting I think, they're quiet and walking almost naturally. Amazing technology. The beasts are just terrifying, imagine a pack of those chasing you. Thats what we should be sending into war.
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
Good luck powering that lumbering contraption without the cable!
As I've said before, robots don't particularly excite me because we are a long way from infinite energy production and storage that they would require for any serious application. It's always conveniently forgotten how energy-efficient humans are.
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
(08-18-2015 04:24 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote: Good luck powering that lumbering contraption without the cable!
As I've said before, robots don't particularly excite me because we are a long way from infinite energy production and storage that they would require for any serious application. It's always conveniently forgotten how energy-efficient humans are.
It'd have to be something like gas powered dog thing for the time being to be of any use. Even still, that runs out eventually.
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
(08-18-2015 04:24 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote: Good luck powering that lumbering contraption without the cable!
As I've said before, robots don't particularly excite me because we are a long way from infinite energy production and storage that they would require for any serious application. It's always conveniently forgotten how energy-efficient humans are.
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
I find those bots very disturbing
There's no such thing as a robot with human intelligence and ability. As soon as we make something 'like us' that can improve and learn, it will be immensely smarter / better than us.
In addition to it's neurons moving at the speed of light (vs speed of neural impulses), it's also already far smarter than all human beings on the planet (as he says, in many ways your cell phone is far smarter than you already). If it's connected to the internet it has thousands of years human knowledge and intelligence at its fingertips.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
(This post was last modified: 08-18-2015 04:41 PM by heavy.)
08-18-2015 04:38 PM
The following 2 users Like heavy's post:2 users Like heavy's post GlobalMan, tynamite
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
Damn, I'm actually quite impressed by how far they've progressed with movement and balance. I was hiking with a girl a few weeks ago who was only marginally more graceful on a rocky surface than that robot - and slower.
I suspect that human looking robots with fairly lifelike motion might only be a couple of decades away, perhaps less. As Handsome Creepy Eel indicated, a proper battery power source that doesn't need recharging every hour is probably likely to be more science fiction at the current rate of advancement in that area.
And the androids probably won't be taking over the planet while any of us are still here.
Very interesting topic though, both in purely fictional far future form as well as more potentially realistic applications over the coming decades.
I've been reading Neal Asher sci-fi novels lately - far future sci-fi with AIs running governments (benevolently, as a nice contrast to the usual taking over the world plots), functioning as planetary governors, running starships and war drones, in some cases walking around in android form ("golems") as citizens and soldiers, and cooperating with a vast human population spread across the galaxy.
That's part of it. The main thing is that we're building robots to be humans and animals, because we're stupid. We're literally trying to design our own replacements.
Robots should only be used to perform actions that humans have no ability to perform, not to serve as a human stand in. If I could actually do something about this, I might be more worried, but I've accepted extinction if we don't learn the distinction between robots that enable humans to robots that replace humans.
(This post was last modified: 08-18-2015 11:23 PM by JacksonRev.)
08-18-2015 11:20 PM
Dr. Howard
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RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
Disturbing.
We're 90% of the way to this opening scene. Since 1991 we've developed self propelled tanks and autonomous drones, now we've got the clumsy walking humanoid robot. All we need are the 'pew pew' purple lasers and we're set, they've even got the jihadi style pickup trucks in there!
In reality though I'd expect robot weapons to be firing things like nerve gas grenades which are deadly to humans and shit to them.
looking for a new signature.
08-18-2015 11:29 PM
The following 2 users Like Dr. Howard's post:2 users Like Dr. Howard's post GlobalMan, spokepoker
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
How you doin?
Bump with the latest gadget:
Looking at the size of that thing, these are all very power limited devices. No way they can keep it running very long with only a battery. They need an engine or a connection to get a lot of use out of these guys.
RE: Google’s new humanoid robot stomps around the woods like a drunk Iron Man
Quote:This Swimming Stingray Robot Is Powered by Real, Living Rat Cells
The cells are activated by light and contract so the robo-stingray can swim.
This soft robotic stingray is made of rat heart muscle. Yeah, it's just as crazy as it sounds.
"Roughly speaking, we made this thing with a pinch of rat cardiac cells, a pinch of breast implant, and a pinch of gold. That pretty much sums it up, except for the genetic engineering," says Kit Parker, the bio-engineer at Harvard who led the team that developed the strange robot.
"I THINK WE'VE GOT A BIOLOGICAL LIFE-FORM HERE."
GIF
Upon optical stimulation, the tissue-engineered ray propelled by producing forward thrust via the undulatory motion of its fins.
Sung-Jin Park
Parker's robotic stingray is tiny—a bit more than half an inch long—and weighs only 10 grams. But it glides through liquid with the very same undulating motion used by fish like real stingrays and skates. The robot is powered by the contraction of 200,000 genetically engineered rat heart-muscle cells grown on the underside of the bot. Even stranger, Parker's team developed the robot to follow bright pulses of light, allowing it to smoothly twist and turn through an obstacle courses. The fascinating robot was unveiled today in the journal Science.
"By using living cells they were able to build this robot in a way that you just couldn't replicate with any other material," says Adam Feinberg, a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University who has worked with Parker's team before, but was not involved in developing this new robot. "You shine a light, and it triggers the muscles to swim. You couldn't replicate this movement with on-board electronics and actuators while keeping it lightweight and maneuverable. And it really is remote controlled, like a TV set."
HOW TO BUILD A LIVING BOT
To understand just how muscles from a rat can power a robot stingray, let's dissect this bad boy layer by layer. The stingray bot is composed of four sequential layers of material. The top layer is a 3D body of a silicone material—"the same thing as the outer coating of a breast implant," says Parker—that's been cast in a titanium mold. This flexible, bendy body holds the other materials together.
The second layer down is a simple gold skeleton. "The skeleton's there because we needed some recoil, so that the pectoral fins bounce back to their original positions" once they're done undulating, Parker says. Why gold? The team found the material had just the right stiffness and flexibility to bend and bounce, "and it's really easy to work with," he says.
The third layer down is another hyper-thin layer of silicone. This prevents the heart muscle from having direct contact with the gold, but also plays another huge role. Along with that top 3D layer, the silicone is cast with just the right small-scale patterns so that the next layer, the rat cells, "grow with the exact muscular architecture we want," says Parker. "With the right geometric design, we can guide these cells to form the tissue we want."
Lastly, the underside of the robot is layered with living rat cells. These cells have been genetically engineered, and are originally from the heart muscles. Parker layers them on each of the robot stingray's two fins in a serpentine, back-and-forth pattern. These cells send along a signal for other cells down the line, creating a switchback cascade of flexing muscle that pulls the fins in the exact undulating motion of a real stingray.
Karaghen Hudson and Michael Rosnach
Here's where the genetic engineering fits in. The robo-stingray's muscles will start to contract only when flashed by a specific wavelength of bright light. This is done through a genetic engineering technique called optogenetics, which allows otherwise normal cells to respond to light. To guide his stingray, Parker merely has it follow a flashing, two-pronged light source. When the lights flash, the bot starts undulating. To have the stingray bank and turn, Parker need only flash one side of the stingray with a brighter, or more rapidly flashing light. Both will cause fins to stroke faster or more powerfully.
The bot can swim in a liquid that has suspended nutrients in it to keep the rat heart cells fed and alive. Even after 6 weeks, the stingray bot was still swimming with over 80 percent of its cells still alive and well. "But there are definitely challenges that need to be overcome," says Feinberg. Even with the right nutrients you wouldn't be able to swim this bot outside of a lab, because the cells are basically defenseless to infection. "They don't have an immune system, so it's not protected from bacteria or fungus," Feinberg says.
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