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Boston Dynamic's Latest Nightmare inducing Robot — Parallax Forums

Boston Dynamic's Latest Nightmare inducing Robot

JonMJonM Posts: 318
in Robotics
This is trippy, but a good example of perfect balancing.
https://yahoo.com/tech/leaked-video-boston-dynamics-reveals-195536321.html

Comments

  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    Heater had posted about this robot, it is a little scary.


    http://forums.parallax.com/discussion/165974/what-happens-when-you-cross-a-robot-with-a-segway#latest
  • JonMJonM Posts: 318
    Yeah, caught that after the fact. I could not find the delete button on the post.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-02-04 14:12
    The mods can always move your post.

    While it is the same robot, your video link has a better perspective.

    EDIT: better yet JonM, why dont you just re-post the link in Heater's thread.
  • yetiyeti Posts: 819
    edited 2017-02-04 18:37
    Why "nightmare"?
    Are the reverse knees giving it an alien or monsterlike touch?
  • Keith YoungKeith Young Posts: 569
    Well in my opinion the main thing making these a nightmare is thinking about how the government will eventually use them.
  • yetiyeti Posts: 819
    edited 2017-02-04 19:19
    Keith Young wrote: »
    Well in my opinion the main thing making these a nightmare is thinking about how the government will eventually use them.
    This was/is the case with all technology ever invented by mankind so nothing special to roboters...

    Let's hope for a fast self extinction of this unworthy species before it is able to leave the solar system! :alien:
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    yeti wrote: »
    Keith Young wrote: »
    Well in my opinion the main thing making these a nightmare is thinking about how the government will eventually use them.
    This was/is the case with all technology ever invented by mankind so nothing special to roboters...

    Let's hope for a fast self extinction of this unworthy species before it is able to leave the solar system! :alien:

    That's a bit pessimistic considering that about 99% of the population only wants to be left alone to live their lives. Perhaps what we need to do is find a way to eliminate the greedy selfish and power hungry one percent.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,259
    OMG, the video was leaked, BD must be horrified at this total security breach! Heads will roll!
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2017-02-05 11:47
    kwinn,
    Perhaps what we need to do is find a way to eliminate the greedy selfish and power hungry one percent.
    Sadly I have become convinced that the huge disparity in the distribution of wealth, the "one percent" problem, will arise even if there are no greedy and power hungry people.

    I say this because there are some models of economic activity that do not include any greed, or human intent at all. Yet they produce very accurate distributions of wealth in a population as a result. With the very few getting the most.

    As this is a robotics forum I'm going to outline the basic idea using robots. Clearly they have no greed or hunger for power. So here we go:

    1) Assume we have a few thousand little robots that can run around on the floor in a room. They bounce off the walls. They bounce of each other. They can steer this way and that, whatever they like.

    2) These robots are battery powered. They are equipped with a means of recharging each other if they are in close proximity. That is to say energy from the battery of one can be moved to the battery of another. There is no limit to how much energy a robot can carry in it's batteries.

    3) When two robots, A and B, meet in this room they will exchange some energy according to the following procedure:

    a) Create a random number, R, between 0 and 1.

    b) Calculate the total energy in the batteries of both robots. E = Ea + Eb

    c) The robots exchange energy such that Robot A gets energy R * E. And Robot B gets energy (1 - R) * E.

    4) Let this room full of robots run around and follows these rules for some time and then measure how much energy is stored in each robots batteries.

    The result will be that some robots have a huge lot of power, most have relatively little, a long tail will almost none. Like this graph:

    wealth.png

    Now of course, the robots are intended model of us humans interacting economically. And the battery energy stands in for money. Without any greed or hunger the results are amazingly similar to real human wealth distributions.

    This also suggests that it is going to be very expensive to cure the 1% problem. Basically you have to kill the economic activity. Which makes everybody worse off!

    Or look at it this way: If we "eliminate the [perceived as] greedy selfish and power hungry one percent" as you suggest then these kind of models predict a new "one percent" will emerge with most of the wealth. You then have to eliminate them. Then....

    If you want to read more about this see here:
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7107-why-it-is-hard-to-share-the-wealth/
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.06051.pdf
    wealth.png
    495 x 393 - 29K
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    Heater. wrote: »
    kwinn,
    Perhaps what we need to do is find a way to eliminate the greedy selfish and power hungry one percent.
    Sadly I have become convinced that the huge disparity in the distribution of wealth, the "one percent" problem, will arise even if there are no greedy and power hungry people.

    Thanks for the link to that article. As things stand at present I have to agree with your conclusion and most of what was said in that article. There are no simple solutions to the problem.

    On a positive note though, the concentration of wealth is necessary to provide the resources needed to take on the large projects that move us forward.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    kwinn wrote: »
    On a positive note though, the concentration of wealth is necessary to provide the resources needed to take on the large projects that move us forward.



    Yes the trickle down economics help a lot through foundation's, grant's and such.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    kwinn,
    ...the concentration of wealth is necessary to provide the resources needed to take on the large projects that move us forward.
    If I take those economic models seriously I can only conclude that the concentration of wealth is not "needed". It's just a consequence of what we do. Further, any other distribution of wealth is not stable. It will always tend toward the same result. Even if we leveled the playing field tomorrow it would pile up again soon enough to reach stability.

    As far as I can tell the resources needed to take on large projects forward are actually there in the mass of players in the middle and low end of the distribution. Typically though, we don't do anything unless the guys at the top command it.

    In case anyone is depressed by my robot model, consider this: It says nothing about the actual wealth of any particular robot. It only describes an end result overall.

    If you think about what happens there, a "rich" robot, with full batteries, could bump into a chain of lesser powered bots, one after the other. On each encounter the exchange could go against him. He ends up with nothing.

    Conversely, a "poor" robot with almost empty batteries, could encounter a chain of charged bots and every encounter goes in his favour. He ends up well charged, "rich".

    This kind of models what happens to humans.






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