A Robotics Startup Wants to Be the Boston Dynamics of China
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
(I used to be into legged locomotion. I hold a patent on slip control for legged running on rough terrain. You need active slip control to climb hills. It's from 1994; I was thinking toys, but getting the price down that low was hopeless. I was way too early. There's still no legged machine that makes money. John Deere bought the Timberjack hexapod logging machine, but killed it after four years.[1])
Nobody is calling for jail time for all involved.
They weren't doing too great at the time of purchase. I imagine this was another patent farm buyout and then sold, sans important patents, to someone else.
BD doesn't really have a product. There's nothing to sell. Even the military scoffs at these very noisy[1] and difficult to maintain robots, especially when they have a literal army of 18 year olds who don't mind carrying 40lbs packs into battle.
BD makes pretty demos and does good research but it can't be monetized, yet, if ever.
[1] https://qz.com/582991/the-us-marines-wont-be-using-googles-r...
Kyle Olson, a spokesperson for the Marines, told military.com on Dec. 22 that the noise the LS3’s gas-powered engine gave off was tactically rather unhelpful. “As Marines were using it, there was the challenge of seeing the potential possibility because of the limitations of the robot itself,” Olson said. “They took it as it was: a loud robot that’s going to give away their position.”
(The US military is all-Diesel. Gasoline tankers have no place on the modern battlefield, with few safe lines of communication. If somebody puts a bullet hole in a Diesel tanker, you slap a patch over the leak and go on.)
BD have battery-powered robots much quieter than the gas-powered Big Dog: Handle (https://www.bostondynamics.com/handle), Spot (https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot), Atlas (https://www.bostondynamics.com/atlas)
Spot was mentioned in the article you linked to as being quieter but able to carry less weight and less autonomous than Big Dog.
The Marines are resuming limited testing with a version of Spot upgraded for greater autonomy in 2018: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/05/spots-back-mar...
Want them to take on extremely risky work? Pay 'em a few dollars more.
The one killer app for human-capable robots? War.
If China's 'trick' was little more than knocking off US tech and having cheap labor then every country in the world would be on their way to becoming an industrialized superpower. Their progress is even more phenomenal when you consider their recent history. Less than 60 years ago Chinese were literally starving to death by the tens of millions as the country's government decided to try out socialism. And their technological acceleration did not really begin in earnest until the late 80s.
I think the fable of the tortoise and the hare if not for the fact that we can see that tortoise is certainly not exactly inching along anymore, yet we continue to mock it?
[1] - https://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/USA?lg=en
There was extensive media coverage calling China's results completely fake and unrepresentative. The most recent data from 2015 (what I referenced) tested China as a whole. Their rankings declined, yet they remain far ahead of the US in everything except reading where we are a tiny sliver ahead of them. This received minimal media coverage.
This is a general issue when media. When the media emphasizes one issue strongly, only to give minimal coverage to the revelation that they were wrong (the implication of the coverage was that China would not be a world leader if the data were 'real') - it leads to a misinformed populace.
Also, creativity is a pretty hard thing to quantify. So, I'm not sure how we'd create a data set on how creativity correlates to innovation. How about I just quote the single person whose insights have vaulted technology farther than any other man in modern history: Albert Einstein (granted, not american).
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."
"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
How does this contrast with China? I'm interpolating some here, but if all information that citizens receive through the internet must be approved of by the government, I can't help but think the population will have a narrow/brainwashed perspective of the world and their place in it.
Technical development and invention requires first and foremost an extremely rigorous understanding of what work has already happened. For instance special relativity was largely a work to reconcile Newtonian mechanics with Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism while applying and expanding upon a breadth of other technical knowledge. Maxwell's equations are something even most electrical engineers are not going to have an in depth technical understanding of.
Has Facebook made the US a more intelligent nation? Has it made it a less intelligent nation? I think most would probably say the latter. But if so, you're implicitly stating that banning Facebook, censoring the internet, would potentially make the population of the United States more intelligent (even if in the form of being less unintelligent). I am, first and foremost, an advocate for freedom so I could never recommend such action. But I think there is a strong argument that complete freedom for the masses is not necessarily the path to the most enlightened and knowledgeable society.
I just find it mostly disappointing that we're simply sitting by watching China inch its way towards becoming the world technological leader while we sit by and alternatively mock them or make excuses. They've overtaken the world in solar development/technology, have built the world's largest radio telescope, are in the process of building the world's largest supercollider, and more. And now their next generation are going to be some of the most well educated in the world. By contrast it feels as though we're resting on our laurels. And more accurate would be to say that we're tearing our laurels to pieces as social values begin to be seen as more valuable than knowledge - a pattern that has repeated itself countless times throughout history, never ending well.
In this same vein, what happens with the people who have no intellectual influence is of little consequence to this discussion. So, yeah, banning Facebook would help the 50th percentile be more intelligent. So would a lot of things. And in this realm, China is beating the shit out of the US. It's not even close when you compare the average American to the average Chinese: they're easily 15 IQ points higher. Like I said, though, I'm more skeptical of China's ability to make one of those Einstein types who transcend being the best test taker alive, and who truly advance human knowledge.
To your final point, China will (has) take(n) over. But I'm not convinced that they will be able to carry the torch of top dog as well as western countries have. Much like their failure to participate in the Industrial Revolution because their society was not flexible to change, it looks a lot like the same thing is happening now. They tore down the old regime to make way for one that works really well in 2017 (espionage, slavery, and education), but it's hard to see how they can evolve as the world does.
But their development for now is mostly just one of taking something, refining it, and producing at scale. If they intend to go the whole 9 yards with solar they're going to need to come up with innovative deployment and load balancing solutions that will be first in the world. Similarly with things like electric vehicles, which they're also investing heavily in. Will they simply have the equivalent of 'electric gas stations' everywhere or actually take things to the next level with ideas like wireless as-you-drive charging? And they're also pursuing automation in their factories as wages rise. That in turn will lead to interesting technological, and social, problems. And they've also put forth interest in working on completely revolutionary projects, such as a permanent manned moon base.
So I suppose this will be answered in the near future. For now I just don't see any reason to expect them to suddenly fumble. I think you're dramatically underestimating the difficulty of what they're achieving. Like I mentioned in the first post, if their 'secret' was just "espionage, slavery, education" then it makes one wonder why all developing nations (most of which pay far lower wages that China) aren't on their way to becoming a technologically advanced industrial civilizations.
Judging by the effort of so many countries to build their own "silicon valley", and the lack of any kind of result, i'd say copying is already a huge feat. I'm also ready to bet that china has done the hardest part and that we shouldn't wait too long until we're the ones trying to copy them.
I can think of lots of examples where one country tried to copy another's technology and failed to produce a successful industry. And I can think of a number which copied successfully then went on to innovate. But I'm not sure I can think of any countries which did a good job at copying technology then failed to go on to start innovating.
Sadly that seems to be the fate of Boston Dynamics now.