Boston Dynamics prepares to launch its first commercial robot | Hacker News Reader

Boston Dynamics prepares to launch its first commercial robot

theverge.com

123 pointsjonbaer42 comments

I really hope they go the DJI route. I think general purpose advanced technologies like this often struggle and die in the industrial sector. i.e they have to have predefined purpose and be very good at one thing.

The consumer market however are exploratory buyers who'll purchase these and only then try and find uses for them.

There's a pretty good talk here with Marc Raibert that helps convey their thinking about Spot Mini as a platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBt2aTjCNmI

Always appreciate Marcs candor, he never really seems to sugarcoat anything.

The surprising thing here is that after all of those videos showing astounding robotic feats after all of these years, this is the first product release from the company.

From the article:

> Spot is currently being tested in a number of “proof-of-concept” environments, Boston Dynamics’ CEO Marc Raibert told The Verge, including package delivery and surveying work. And although there’s no firm launch date for the commercial version of Spot, it should be available within months, said Raibert, and certainly before the end of the year.

BD seems less like a standalone company and more like the R&D arm of a giant advertising monopoly. Cool gizmos but nothing that's going to find product-market-fit because that's not part of the plan. There's really no focus on a customer here at all.

This would seem to present an opportunity to a small, nimble competitor focused on a specific customer group.

Bd is no longer part of google.

Boston Dynamics was spun out of Google (sold to SoftBank) years ago. And before that was primarily a DoD contractor so they didn't need to productize anything.

Boston dynamics spun out of a lab at MIT.

The article doesn't say anything about battery life. Does anyone know about how long these robots can operate without recharging and how long it takes to recharge?

i believe 1 hour run time. not sure about charge time.

I wonder how they solved the "upskirt small robot problem"? It seems you can easily drive through the crowd and see the underwear of those wearing a skirt. This seems like a very murky and dangerous legal position to be in, and it depends on each state of the USA and on each country laws are different.

The most realistic solution I thought is to put the cameras high enough so that this becomes a non-issue.

Source: I made some robots for fun but never put them on the street, and this was one of my main concerns.

That sound very... japanese?

I do live in Japan, and it is a big issue here

We have access to real porn in the US so no one is really going to bother with videoing up strangers skirts en mass.

This should not be downvoted. Privacy considerations are very important for a robot with cameras. I worked for a while at a company that makes delivery robots that operate in hotels. Camera placement was a huge consideration. Not too low for the the obvious reasons. But also angled such that they don't record faces.

It may well eventually be the case that cameras become so pervasive that it will simply not be tenable to leave the house wearing clothing that is revealing from any angle at all.

Or to put it another way, it might be easier to do away with skirts than to attempt to ban certain camera angles.

I know most of the initial applications of Spot are going to be industrial or law enforcement / military. But I'm sure these are gonna start showing up in commercial and even retail settings, probably sooner than many of us have truly considered.

It's kinda weird to think that maybe sometime in the next decade I'm gonna need to double take as I watch a Spot Mini just casually walk down a street carrying out some mundane task.

Not a lot of people know this but Google Glass was very popular amongst farmers.

And this is also a robot that could benefit farmers.

I also can see those robots carry stuff around. For example for a plumber who has a job in a city with parking problems.

Ofcourse all those applications depend on the price but there will always be people who can think if this as a tool in a way you can't think of.

It’s strange seeing bots showing up already. Our local grocery chain has robots - tall, lanky and uncoordinated - rolling around the stores with their two glowing eyes looking for spills to alert a human to come clean.

The last time I saw one, it was relentlessly circling a scuff mark near the entrance to the back stockroom. Twenty minutes later as I’m getting ready to leave, the bot was still there seemingly totally confounded by this dark and utterly harmless streak on the floor. A nearby employee stocking the shelves rolled his eyes as he told a fellow shopper of the many tens-of-thousands of dollars this machine cost.

You make a great point. We have a lot of sci-fi that's been conditioning us to the idea of a world shared with a large cast of robotic members. I'm a geek who loves those kinds of fantasies. Yet, when I saw that fancy robotic espresso-maker in SF [1], I still reverted to childlike wonder state :) The way the robotic arm gives you a cheeky little wave when it's finished making your coffee is the perfect touch.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/30/cafe-x-opens-in-san-franci...

Most of sci-fi paints a dark picture about a future with robots, though, and perhaps rightfully so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18300084

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw&vl=en

Indeed and perhaps wrongfully so as well.

I don't understand how 2 cameras on a 20K+ robot is cheaper/better/easier than 20+ fixed cameras that look for changes to the floor.

Curious, how did they implement the kill-switch, which I believe is mandatory on industrial robots?

I believe I have seen a body-mounted E-stop button on the Spot Mini, but I may not be recalling correctly. In any case, there are OTS wireless-remote E-Stops that are easy to buy and integrate into a robot like this, and fail-safe. It isn't a new problem. (I helped integrate a remote E-Stop into a 1000lb mobile robot -- at that size, remote E-stop is important.)

the controller looks like an off the shelf chinese gaming console. anybody has an idea?

This might not end well. Or what do you say Elon?

It's only a matter of time until one of these things kills a person.

Yeah, but you can say that about almost anything.

Well, for sure, if we keep mistreating them. https://youtu.be/dKjCWfuvYxQ

This was hilarious!

America already has robots that kill civilians including women and children all the time (drone program), but that doesn't seem to bother most Americans. I don't see why robots like these, killing children in the middle east (/south america in the future) will be any different.

Is it robots or humans controlling robots? Does this robot differ from gun? Who pulls the trigger?

It’s humans controlling robots, remotely from places like Minnesota, to kill women and children in the Middle East. It differs from a gun in its range and ability to be operated remotely. A human pulls the trigger, but does so while looking at a screen instead of a human, which makes it a lot easier to kill without conscience since a drone strike is more analogous to a video game than a war zone for its remote human operator.

Humour doesn't translate well to the internet.

Same can be said about cars, elevators, really sharp kitchen knives, gas stoves...

Bath tubs, steps, loose carpet, electricity, swimming, eating. Anything can kill people, we're really delicate!

Thought experiment - what if we can either have automated machines of all types or no automated machines at all, and the net gain of having the machines means more lives are saved even though there are a few rogue killer robots that need to be put down from time to time. Is it worth it?

A robot dog is driving a trolleybus....

No. I’d pass on the automation. I have 0 faith in humanity’s ability to put down the rogue killer robots.

Like cars ?

Preface: of course these things can do a world of good, fearless super-strong firefighters, medics immune to toxins, etc.

So, people here are saying we already have xyz dangerous machine, but xyz isn't as scary. So let's imagine why this is scarier:

These things will be able to see in 360 degree multispectral/thermal/sound vision, and aim six arms at multiple people through walls simultaneously, never sleep, rarely need to recharge/eat, and have absolutely no empathy or mercy. They can aim and fire faster and more accurately than people, every shot can be a guaranteed kill, and they can be immune to gas/bio/etc weapons which they can release themselves. Nevermind the local terabytes and cloud petabytes of face recognition, AI models, social media profiles tied to street addresses, etc. They'll find everyone fast. Terminator was a joke compared. The next war is going to be insane.

People are in control of most all our killing machines now, but won't be soon. We did manage to stop using chem/bioweapons and nuclear weapons though. So maybe there's hope.

edit: when I say we won't be in control, I don't mean wild robots that won't listen to us, I mean we choose to run them on auto mode with no human confirmation before firing. I think such systems already exist on the Korean DMZ? (just auto guns, not robots)

Do you know what else has no mercy? American drone pilots. If you can find a way to make money with something then it will happen. Terrorists are basically doing it recreationally, so they quickly run out of money and manpower and very rarely do they have much of an impact. Nowadays the average terrorist runs around with a knife and announces his attack way before he reaches the victim and often gets beaten by the victim instead.

It takes time for tech to develop. We have in our homes small simple robot toys and Roomba-like robots clean our apartments. Each step seems very little compared with our expectations. But, technology will get with time cheaper, and easier to use.

Funny thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKjCWfuvYxQ

Reply on news.ycombinator.com