Do You Love Me? How is the world's coolest robot built

Most robots in use today are targeted to a specific application. So, one can tolerate an inflexible solution.

When applications evolve to meet the abilities of newer solutions, then a stationary "robotic welder" may prove to be as obsolescent as a *human* whose sole skill is "the ability to weld".

Because your imagination can't grasp the sorts of uses that could be applied with a solution that isn't bound by yesterday's notion of what a robot CAN do.

Just like transistors, computers, automobiles, spacecraft, etc.?

Who'd have thought, 50 years ago, that there would be a *commercial* use of detailed earth imagery -- available to Ma&Pa users?

"These silly rocket ships... no one is ever going to FLY to the moon on a vacation so why are we wasting so many of our national resources developing them??"

An agile bipedal robot is the first step. Add AI, and you can sell many millions. They could be used any place a human is used now, and in other applications where a human cannot go.

You should invest in Boston Dynamics:)

They are "a solution in search of a problem" - at the moment.

I'm sure I've heard that description somewhere before; perhaps Phil Hobbs can suggest where.

Robots are fine. We have a pick-and-place machine that's as fast as 20 people. We're about to get an automated thru-hole soldering gadget too.

But neither looks like The Terminator. The parcour demo was no doubt thoroughly staged and likely filmed many times. It's show-biz. It reminds me of Lily Drone.

A gadget that goes into a fire or a nuclear reactor, or inspects an industrial plant, would work better with treads or wheels.

Having 2 eyes is silly as well. With 3 you could have 360 degrees perimeter coverage.

The robots often display something on their "retinas" too. There seems to be an autonomous data processor which dumps its results onto the retina, where the robot can "see" them and consciously use that information.

Best regards, Piotr

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With three you get mass confusion.

...... Phil

It may be a throwback to the old early videcon tubes in CCTV days. In the dark you could seem them glowing very faintly from the readout beam when facing a working camera in the pitch dark.

Anyway it helps colour code the good guys with green glowing eyes and the psychotic baddies with evil red ones.

Although having bilateral symmetry might require you to have 4 eyes. It would have been nice if mammals had their eyes properly designed with the plumbing and wiring behind the retina like the cephalapods do.

Whilst the brain can work around the blind spot it is still just that!

Blink reflex is impressively fast and done locally in the eye. Not enough time for the signal to go to the brain and back.

You can have closer to 360 degree vision by sacrificing binocular vision and a sense of depth. Rabbits and some bird make this compromise to be able to see threats coming from behind them more easily. Human field of view is around 230 degrees with peripheral vision very sensitive to motion or flicker (something annoying with modern LED brake lights). The forward facing 90 degree zone has binocular depth perception.

Insects with their compound eyes seem to manage well enough.

Dragon flies are very effective predators so they must be able to handle the processing required to triangulate on fast moving prey.

Spiders typically have 8 eyes of different sizes and don't have a lot of space available for processing power. Some of them can see pretty well though many can't and rely on touch and passive sticky web traps.

Front pair are dominant. The ones with the fastest lens are really rather impressive at f0.6. Better than a cat or an owl in the dark.

Am 24.02.21 um 07:02 schrieb Piotr Wyderski:

There are spiders that have 8.

Gerhard

Prey animals such as horses get pretty close to 360 degrees with only two eyes.

Personally I'd be satisified if our eyes had been competently designed. What idiot thought it was sensible to put the photon sensors /behind/ the wiring?

Other animals have more sensible eyes. Why did we devolve? (OK, I know we didn't, but is fun to prod the fundies with that concept)

Who thought it would be a good idea to design our eyes to work underwater, then add a complex and error-prone lens system to correct the out-of-focus image you get from using the eye in air? Who thought we should ditch the top-quality colour vision our distant ancestors had, and replace it with a half-hearted low-contrast system that only works in a tiny part of the eye?

There are all sorts of things wrong with our eyes, compared to those of some other animals. This is why we need such a huge processing system to take the distorted and limited input data and turn it into useful images. (In comparison, eagles have much sharper vision with a brain the size of a pea.)

Well, we /did/ devolve in the sense that we lost certain abilities our ancestors had, such as better colour vision. Our distant ancestors had four types of cone cell, giving more accurate colour distinction. Two of these got lost, probably due to a greater emphasis on vision in low light conditions for night-active burrowing shrew-like creatures. Later, genes for one of the cone cell types mutated giving us the three types common in our branch of the primates. (The two variant cone cell types are very close, and it takes a lot of signal processing to make a distinction.)

Predators have two eyes that both point forward. Prey have two eyes with a wider field. Compare a hawk to a pigeon.

Designs like that remind me of the Segway. Impressive but a better design would simply have a third wheel. So he's right, it is silly.

But all they have demonstrated is the ability to know where the flat floor is. To handle objects you need more than agility.

This one is considerably more entertaining!

Another thoughtful contribution to the discussion.

If you tip over one of those 2 or 4-legged robots, can they get up?

I suspect that humanoid battlebots wouldn't last long against real soldiers.