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Comment by monkeynotes | Hacker News Reader

How this isn't exclusively military tech is beyond me. If this sort of thing is available to anyone with a chequebook then what does the military have?

It is begging for a weapon to be mounted to it and sent to patrol the streets of dystopia.

The Police will for sure be buying stuff like this with the argument that it will save cop's lives in hostile situations. From there we'll have to get used to seeing automated enforcement. Oh poop, I am getting into the obvious slippery slope arguments, it's just so hard to not be cynical about tech like this. The world is rapidly changing again </luddite>.

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The logical response is that of course it _could_ be weaponized, but, there are a whole host of cheaper drones that are much better candidates than this for that purpose. I’d bet on inspection/rescue in mines, demolition sites, and anywhere indoors with stairs or rough surfaces where people should not go. Maybe you could use them for mine sweeping.

Real question is whether they’ll make a version that makes no sparks so it can work in flammable atmosphere environments.

> Real question is whether they’ll make a version that makes no sparks so it can work in flammable atmosphere environments.

Can't you "dress up" the robot?

I don't think you can for environments with continuous exposure - http://www.rstahl.com/fileadmin/Dateien/tgus/Documents/ExPro...

usually there is a requirement not to use any relays that have physical contactors and other similar parts.

Carrying heavy things is (by my humble estimation) 4/5 of war. So if there’s something that can carry heavy things, yes it will be used for that purpose.

Big Dog was floated for that purpose and failed to meet the requirements.

(Specifically, it was intended to be a marines platform---I guess the main infantry doesn't need it because they already have trucks?---but it didn't meet the goals for power constraint or noise constraint).

Yah first time I saw the prototype I thought, “that’s a good way to lose the initiative on a patrol”. Perhaps a battery powered version with quiet servos will approach. It will also need to understand hand and arm signals to go on patrol.

The idea is incredible. You could greatly extend the range, duration, and lethality of the average patrol (9 men) by taking a few hundred pounds off their backs (or just adding that much in water and ammo to the robot).

Drone with a pipe bomb strapped to it makes the most sense to me.

Sticking an m-16 on the top of a dogbot that can wiggle around at 3mph... not so much lol

Today 3mph, next year it will be running at 30mph+.

It's really hard to see how a wepaonised version could be of practical use in an active situation. Granted, it has that nice Hollywood sci-fi look about it, I feel it wouldn't be any more accurate than throwing a grenade into a room.

I would imagine one group opposed to such a device would be the police themselves. They are as likely to get shot as anyone else.

I think a more practical application would be camera mounted infantry for SWAT teams. And, based on some of the incidents we've seen recently, assessing situations is where many interactions go south.

Mounting a facial recognition face-tracking camera-gun combo is somehow going to be inaccurate? Walk the dog round the corner of a bank-heist hostage situation, have it stand on guard and shoot whenever it gets a human verified lock?

I know saying use 'technology' is like saying use 'magic', but all of this seems totally within the boundaries of what is available today or near-tomorrow at the very least.

As for cops being shot up by one of these, I am not sure many criminals would see the value of investing significant amount of money and know-how into one. Especially as it would easily be traced back to a purchaser.

SWAT teams with just the recon implementation is worrisome enough as that's clearly just a stone-throw to a weaponized version once they gain confidence in it.

> bank-heist hostage situation, have it stand on guard and shoot whenever it gets a human verified lock

It's about time someone disrupted the field of killing hostages.

Why can't we do the same thing with a swarm of cheap drones with a single shot zip gun? Navigate to within a couple feet and shot them in the face?

The future is bleak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlO2gcs1YvM

Because then you grab yourself another swarm of the same cheap drones and program them to shoot their zipguns at the enemy drones.

This discussion reminded me of a scene from the movie The Jackal in which an assassin basically mounts a rifle on a three-axis motorized mount, connects a calibrated camera to a mounted scope, and then mounts the thing in a truck/van and parks it near the target and uses it over a laptop w/ wireless connection. I think this was in the 90s and I remember thinking, at the time, video bandwidth and latency would be the biggest obsticle but now days it seems like this setup would be near trivial.

When I just tried to google the scene I saw an ISIS setup of virtually the same thing :/

>It's really hard to see how a wepaonised version could be of practical use in an active situation.

Dallas Police used a bomb defusing robot to blow a guy up... so it's not too hard to imagine.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12128230/dallas-police-bom...

This is super edge case, and the robot didn't shoot.. it placed a bomb. This is apples and oranges to putting a gun on a mobile robot and have it effectively target a human.

That seems like a distinction without a difference. If the bomb disposal robot had been remotely controlled to detonate the bomb it was carrying while standing in front of the suspect, would that be different in any ethical or legal way from a Boston Dynamics robot being remotely controlled to pull the trigger of a gun while standing in front of a suspect?

I suppose one small difference would be whether the bomb disposal robot in that situation was destroyed by the explosion it caused, since it presumably wouldn't be destroyed by shooting a gun (unless the suspect returned fire or had a dead man's switch on his own bomb). I highlight this difference not because of the ethics of sending robots to their "deaths", but the minor practical consideration of whether a given robot is considered reusable, that is, able to amass a potentially unlimited number of kills.

From my perspective the difference is the control design loop.

To place a bomb is a linear bang-bang controller (pun intended) And the decision is already made wrt collateral damage

But to target a moving object from a moving object holding a gun on a 3-dof mount is an order of magnitude harder to control and the question of collateral damage is an unknown.

>the question of collateral damage is an unknown.

Sure... but collateral damage is already a problem, as humans are very poor at actually hitting targets. People who are trained to shoot in high pressure situations are only in the area of 18-30% accurate.

I suspect if your goal was 30%< accuracy during an active shooting, it's absolutely within the realm of possibility today.

>According to a 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just 18 percent. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets 30 percent of the time.

I can't speak for police, but for military, i could see this being an actual life saver for an infantry rifle platoon or medical emergency. It could run in with extra ammunition or medical supplies enough to stabilize any injured. This same thing could be used for civilian emergency situations or disaster relief for hard to reach areas that a normal vehicle might have trouble reaching.

Why spend money on training and maintaining a human infantry at all??

If one of these things, maybe the more advanced biped version could be bought for $1M it would have to be cheaper and more reliable than a human. No salary, no pension, no health insurance, no time off, no training hours, just pure measurable, reliable killing. I guess there would be a huge crew of maintenance engineers though, but maybe automate the servicing too.

For one, machines haven't (yet) proven as capable as them in dynamic situations. The tech both hardware and software simply isn't there yet. The fact that these Boston Dynamics robots are both loud, and have a relatively short battery life cements this current fact. This problem will likely be overcome in the next 5-10 years or less. That kind of makes it a nonstarter in and of itself. As it stands today, it is the same reason you don't (yet) have machines replacing fast food workers. The economics for most places or the actual tech simply isn't there 100%. Not yet at least.

If you haven't seen the black mirror episode "Metal Head", it will be right up your alley.

This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the demo.

Fun fact, that episode was actually based off of their previous videos.

There's a term for when people gravitate to worst case scenarios not because the worst case scenario is likely, but because it is easy to imagine. I forget the term.

I think the term you're looking for is ethical engineering; you probably saw something like it at an ABET accredited university.

no, that would not be the term. Here are some candidates

"awfulizing" from Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy https://qz.com/989112/how-to-stop-jumping-to-the-worst-case-...

"Catastrophizing" https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/catastrophizing-...

"Catastrophic Thinking" https://psychcentral.com/blog/catastrophic-thinking-when-you...

I can't think of any other term than worst-case thinking, and this post by Schneier: http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/05/12/schneier.worst.case.th...

There's more going on than just that though. It's like we've collectively forgotten that technology is double-edged. Maybe things like Black Mirror that people are referencing a lot (I haven't watched any of it so someone can correct me) only focus on one edge and that leads to things like availability bias. If popular media drives a lot of the heuristic when thinking about technology it's perhaps no wonder when not much of it is uplifting.

Availability heuristic?

Is it because we continue to believe that police departments in a town with two cops and a few hundred citizens dont buy $1MM or so of military equipment?

I don't really see the threat considering how much cheaper and more effective it is to give that weapon to a young man rather than mounting it on that expensive robot.

Its a lot easier to find robots willing to massacre innocent people.

That's demonstrably false

ICBMs?

I believe that's BrainInAJar's point: the number of people killed by regular ol' humans with weapons of war is massively dwarfed by the number killed by drones. ICBMs (to my knowledge?) haven't actually been launched in a war ever, so their kill-count is "0".

This solves the General problem, from Bertolt Brecht's poem :)

The threat is to anybody who those in power label the out-group. For too many people, risking lives of the the "good guys" is the only cost weighed for violence.

Tell that to the guy balancing the military pension and medical compensation books.

> It is begging for a weapon to be mounted to it and sent to patrol the streets of dystopia.

Normally people use the humble Toyota Hilux for this; should that be restricted to the military?

The Toyota Hilulx is not autonomous...yet. There's still a human being holding the weapon.

Perhaps if the Hilux had been invented in WW1 it would have been a prime candidate for military application. But these days the military has Humvees and tanks and so on. A Hilux is no match for cutting edge equipment else the US Army would not have developed more capable analogs.

Reference to http://www.newsweek.com/why-rebel-groups-love-toyota-hilux-7...

"Conventional" military is the least interesting cutting edge now; much the actual fighting of the present day is extremely cost-sensitive re-purposed civilian equipment.

Another example: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/swarm-of-armed-diy-drones-at...

They tried marketing a similar system for military applications. The military refused it because it was too noisy. [1] The Police may have similar concerns.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/30/us-marine...

The Big Dog has an internal combustion engine (what I take to be an electrical generator) that is about as loud as a chainsaw[1]. SpotMini makes servo noises, but it's all-electric, and quite a bit less noisy.

1: https://youtu.be/cNZPRsrwumQ

Nah. If they're chasing a bad guy out of a building, this is great stuff: just like a barking K-9 officer, bad guy will either run or surrender. With a little armor, he won't be able to shoot it. And with some simple kind of IFF (infrared coded beacon maybe?) you could keep cops out of its sights.

It can be used to inspect off shore oil rigs. They are full of stairs and something like this could be ideal. Oil companies are also less price sensitive. I wouldn't be surprised if the Spot Mini costs as much as a luxury sedan, unless they sell them at a loss.

I thought stairs were on of the hardest aspects for robots to master. I know the four leg bots are better but I still think having these heavy dense robots climbing 4+ stories of stairs would present more of a danger then it would help mitigate. Some kind of special built inspection system that runs along rails or something seems like a better use case.

They are, but if you pull up the videos of Big Dog and its smaller chassis-brethren, you find that they're quite a ways towards solving that problem.

That having been said: special-built inspection systems would make more sense if it's cheaper to retrofit one in than to buy a robodog.

>Some kind of special built inspection system that runs along rails or something seems like a better use case.

Drones are getting popular ,with laser scanners mounted on them, for older platforms.

But what really makes the most sense to me is just locally networked sensors stuck right on the equipment. Not IoT, L(an)oT.

Some potential non-military applications that come to mind:

1. Scientific expeditions. For example, it may be able to get closer to flowing magma or hot geysers for samples than humans safely could.

2. Extraterrestrial expeditions.

3. Construction industries.

4. Rescue operations (post-earthquake; collapsed buildings; etc.)

For sure there are non-mil applications, no denying that. It doesn't negate the concern that the military must be craving something like this though.

Why would it be a bad thing if the military had access to more tech?

My point was that this is crazy high tech that I am surprised isn't limited to the military. I am wondering if this is consumer grade, what does the military have.

That said, more tech for the military means more investment into the idea that killing each other is a splendid idea. To me that seems counter to what technology is ideally about. I am an idealist though, so dismiss that comment as you wish.

I'm not sure I understand your perspective on that. Ostensibly, the purpose of your defensive forces is to protect you, and don't you want them to be well equipped for that purpose? To me, your statement looks equivalent to saying that equipping the police to do their job is like an investment into the idea that putting people in prison is a splendid idea. I'm not sure that's what you were saying, although you could say that if you are hyper cynical. But even if you were, I know where you will call when someone is breaking into your house at night.

Possibly ironically, one of the reasons BD is looking for consumer-sale alternatives is that it specifically didn't meet the bar for military tech. The Big Dog project started as an idea for a field heavy-pack machine to offload some of the weight marines deep-inserted into a theater need to carry. It failed to meet either the noise limitation or power demand needs for that use-case.

Turns out for military applications, "Just send some trained dudes with guns" is a lot easier, still, than ground-based drones. Air drones are, of course, a whole different kettle of missiles<delete>fish.

This seems like the most plausible theory to me. Even _if_ one day these robots can handle a lot of manual tasks, they won't have big enough batteries to last for more than a couple of hours unplugged

AFAIK the DoD lost interest in Boston Dynamics BigDog, because their petrol engine was too noisy on the field and the electric version was too weak.

Did anyone serious buy that? I mean, come on. They literally have sci-fi terminator in their hands, except it's better than the movie.

Those things remind me of the Rat Things from Snow Crash.

Evocative of the opening scene of William Gibson's _Count Zero_[1]

"They set a Slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. "

1: http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/books/zero.asp

There is also a "mechanical hound" that chases Montag in Fahrenheit 451 and a similar killer cyborg guard dog creature in Snow Crash.

Let's get some good fiction with optimistic views of robot animals, mmkay writers? ;)

That'd actually be the "rat thing" guard dog in Snow Crash. ;)

I can't remember the exact quote, but when someone comments on how horrible it is to cyberize a dog, its creator says something to the effect of "People keep saying that, but nobody asks the dog." Jump-cut to a couple pages from the point of view of the dog, which (relative to its past life on the street) is incredibly happy with its new function.

I can just as easily mount a weapon to my car and drive around killing people. How is this any different?

None, until you equip the dog with an AI that decides on its own when to kill people. I am pretty sure this is what the OP meant.

Hackers like George Hotz can and have decided to equip their cars with AI.[1] Again, how is this any different?

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/7/15933554/george-hotz-hacki...

People are hacking on everything from micro-drones to full sized cars. Why single out this platform? Explosive on drones or automated weapons on cars could all be misused.

In this context "People are hacking everything" is not entirely reassuring.

You really have no problem with a George Hotz purchasing a bot, soldering guns to it, installing some form of AI that controls the trigger, and then letting it loose into the world? Seems a bit irresponsible.

But to answer you questions about the legality all this - I don't know. Tesla and Uber are putting autopilots in their cars. Is that legal? Apparently, it is. Yet, those autopilots are already killing people. So expect a regulatory backlash, once enough people die.

I hope it won't take a massacre perpetrated by a buggy AI with a gun to get us there.

Have you seen the Slaughterbots video? They seem potentially more dangerous and the hardware is much simpler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw

Something like this was weaponized - back in World War II - with mixed results:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

Of course, the police will find a way to weaponise them. In the end, the Police will justify its weaponisation by saying things like “it is for Officer’s safety” or “It neutralises a ‘threat’ without putting a officer’s life at risk.” Similar avenues have been taken already to justify small police stations owning fucking tanks in USA. A more realistic route, I’m willing to wager on, is that Military will do it first and it will handed down to a Gestapo Force near you! Er, I mean Police Department!

This doesn't seem to have any hallmarks of being useful to a military. It's just a mobile device, but there is no recovery from falling over. It also appears very fragile. Drones are cheaper and don't suffer from the same issues. Maybe if this were self-righting or was like a cheap RC that could maneuver upside-down it would have more value.

This actually seems to have less utility than many other items, other than pretending to be a dog.

You don't even have to arm it. Scouting and as a flanking unit in breaching situations is enough to show the value of the robot for tough police situations.

A slightly larger version of Sand Flea seems like a better fit. Disposable, can be deployed relatively cheaply in large quantities, with good camo nearly invisible on the ground, can scale obstacles by jumping. Could be made to carry a fragmentation payload and/or spy gear.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo

What's the counter? Weapons that disable robots..

Also they already killed someone with a robot,https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/08/police-bo...

Here’s an alternate proposal: don’t add any kind of weapon to it, and use it to replace the police in everything but the most extreme situations. This way people don’t need to feel their life is in danger during regular interactions with police.

If you're scared by this robotic dog, don't start thinking about quad-copter style drones too hard!

this is the top comment?! the most active discussion thread? Somehow dystopian handwringing and cheap, shallow, commentary is so much more interesting than progress, technology, and business to the audience here (of all places). get a grip. gossip elsewhere. </smh>

I don't think technology for the sake of technology is a good reason to build it.

Advancing technology is interesting to work on, but deploying it in useful ways to solve problems is the part nobody wants or knows how to do. There's more to be done with what we have now.

That's a pretty pessimistic world-view you have there. How about science for the sake of science? or art for art's sake? Develop new capabilities and see what people can do with it - it's hubris to think that you can develop the future in a planned direction and be right. And as to not moving on until you've done everything with what you already have - that's silly. I mean, people are still doing novel stuff with pottery - I suppose we have to wait for your approval to move on to, like, bronze?

Yeah, you’re spot on. The world is becoming an increasingly scary place.

I don't want to derail the conversation either, but they're owned by softbank which is a glorified holding company of Alibaba (slight exaggeration, granted), so there is a valid tinfoil hat national security argument to be made if there's a million of them running around the street in 10 years.

SoftBank is Japanese and has significant stakes in the US (eg Uber) as well, fwiw.

I'm sympathetic to the underlying sentiment, however. China is starting to look scary and our IP might be worth watching out for.

Softbank has $150 billion in Alibaba - drew them back from the brink way back iirc. Any foreign ownership in Alibaba relies on the goodwill of the Chinese government. Who knows what relationship they can or will have - don't actually think it's too much of a stretch to question.

Completely agree on the IP

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