Robots!

Here's a Youtube video showing a number of Boston Dynamics' research robots in action. I guess that this is pretty much the current state of the art.

The most striking one is Atlas, a humanoid biped robot. There are several other bipedal humanoid robots in there as well.

Another very cool one is Big Dog, a very agile large four-legged robot that moves like an animal.

Which I guess is the point of the research. Biological organisms are very good at what they do, so the goal here is to emulate how they control their movements. That makes these machines faintly uncanny.

Then there's one that looks like a little remote controlled toy car with four wheels, except that it can jump 30 feet in the air. So it can jump over barriers into walled compounds or onto roofs or into windows, carrying all kinds of sensors. The police and the army are going to love that one.

https://youtu.be/-e9QzIkP5qI

https://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics

http://www.bostondynamics.com

Marines send robodogs back to the pound.

The USMC has decided not to adopt Boston Dynamics' four-legged robot 'pack animals'.

The larger one had a suitable load-bearing capacity but was just too damn noisy with a little gas engine aboard that produced a whining buzzing sound. The Marines say that in small unit squad tactics, stealth is key, so the noisy robot was like a walking target that would alert enemies to its presence.

The smaller 'Spot' design is battery powered, very agile and almost silent. But it didn't have the required load-bearing capacity (only 40 pounds) and wasn't autonomous enough, requiring a human controller.

http://www.stripes.com/news/marine-corps...d-1.386627

While these robots obviously aren't ready for operational prime-time, they still are good engineering prototypes for testing technologies that might be used on tomorrow's robot battlefield where armed machines fight the enemy and human soldiers are mostly kept in the rear, out of the line of fire.

(Dec 31, 2015 07:49 PM)Yazata Wrote: Marines send robodogs back to the pound. The USMC has decided not to adopt Boston Dynamics' four-legged robot 'pack animals'.

Something got extended job security. Not quite sure whether it's animals or humans, though.

(Jan 3, 2016 01:39 AM)C C Wrote: Something got extended job security. Not quite sure whether it's animals or humans, though.

I think that the day is inevitably coming when technologically advanced adversaries no longer use human beings to conduct warfare, but instead use robots.

UCAV's (unmanned combat air vehicles) are already appearing. Obama and his people have freely deployed "drones" around the world, since losing them doesn't put pilots' lives at risk and therefore represents a lot less political risk for the adminstration. Robot fighter planes are already on the drawing boards. These have the added advantage of instant reflexes, micro-second decision processes and not having to limit their maneuvers in order to reduce the g-loads on the meat inside. The military already uses robot surveillance planes like Global Hawk, since their attention never wanders during extremely long missions.

The Navy is working on autonomous undersea vehicles (robot submarines) that can sit on the ocean floor near enemy coasts for years and then be triggered into action when needed.

And it's almost certain that the days of the combat infantryman are numbered in the Army and Marines. We will see robot tanks and armored vehicles and armed robot foot soldiers. Some may be autonomous and computer controlled, others may be operated by humans by telepresence (virtual reality operators perceiving from the vantage point of the machine).

It will end just like the Space Race, Cost. It might not cost lives, their might be implications about the ethics and morality questions over an algorithm pulling a trigger, but the battlefront will always come down to Economics.

If two countries warred by sending Robots at each other, the victor would literally just be the country that can continue to overspend when the other has run out of money and resources. So why bother with the robots, why not just keep messing with the stock market to cause deliberate crashes and forever keep countries economics low enough that they can't be a threat?

Here's Boston Dynamics' 'Spot' robot interacting with a real dog.

http://news.yahoo.com/watch-google-robot...43627.html

The little dog doesn't know what to make of the robot at first and begins by barking at it, but the dog doesn't back down and ends up chasing the bigger robot around.

The robot looks programmed not to be confrontational and to back away, and the little dog quickly picks up on that and circles around trying to herd the robot.

Stop Abusing Robots!

http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/boston-...bot-abuse/

After starting off with BD's bipedal humanoid 'Atlas' robot leaving the building for an at-times unsteady walk in the snowy woods, we see our poor robot trying to pick up a cardboard box. Every time it tries, a human with a hockey stick (probably a Canadian) knocks the box out of the robot's hands or knocks the robot off balance. It lands flat on its face (if it had a face) towards the end, but just gets back up. (No Terminator attack on its tormenter... but robots never forget.)

At the end, the robot decides 'enough of this is enough' and walks out the door.

From a job security standpoint for future career activists and crusading lawyers on a global scale, it's nice to see a struggle for robot animal and humanoid rights truly waiting on the horizon eventually. By the time Putin and Daesh destabilize Europe by driving millions of fleeing victims through their gates, and sub-World War III devastates Middle Eastern oil production and flow enough to put Russia's supply in high demand... The old rights concerns will then be a dime for a thousand compared to worry over basic human survival in depopulated / wasted regions. But thank goodness, there will be important new developments like the privileges and entitlements of cute robots to fuss over within still luxury-intact regions of the planet.

The Marines sending big-dog and spot back to the pound doesn't seem to have gone down well at the Googleplex.

Apparently Alphabet (formerly Google) is indicating that it might sell Boston Dynamics, the robot firm, because of low revenue potential. This company is too cool to just die. I wonder who is likely to buy it. Some speculations (Amazon, Toyota) here:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/60106...ver-built/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2...p-for-sale