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Comment by roughly | Hacker News Reader

Agree that if anyone except BD put out this video I’d bin it as fake immediately. I still have a hard time saying I believe it - it feels like such a jump from where my mental model of their robots was and CGI is so good at this point that it feels easier for this to be a fake than real.

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It might help to compare against video with less editing and effects. Several youtubers are playing with Spots and you can get a better idea of what they're really like.

Adam Savage: https://youtu.be/-R8wUybrspo?t=2374

Marques Brownlee: https://youtu.be/s6_azdBnAlU?t=249

They're only like what they're "really like" because in those videos they're being operated from behind a layer of abstraction that only allows a few really basic movement patterns (go X direction, at Y speed, within allowed parameters).

I think this new video is trying to illustrate more of the highly dynamic capabilities of the machines that can be used by more specialized operators and software. (And I don't think there are any "effects" exaggerating those capabilities like you're implying, unless you mean things like color correction or the occasional cut to another piece of footage).

(A Spot, for those—like me—who didn't know, is the yellow 4-legged robot.)

It does, but counterpoint: unassisted (no help balancing) bipedal motion has been a holy grail for a looong time, where 4-legged is child's play by comparison. This could mean that just the bipedals are faked.

It would help a lot more to compare footage with real-world people interacting with the bipedal robot.

>It would help a lot more to compare footage with real-world people interacting with the bipedal robot.

Maybe I misunderstood your comment but there are definitely videos of people interacting with Atlas (the bipedal robot) to the point that it's a running joke that they'll remember said interactions. See https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=83

Same, and I've been working with some of the latest and greatest collaborative and industrial six-axis and SCARA robots. There's definitely a back and forth between innovation and legacy in this industry. For example, FANUC famously refuses to deprecate or drop service for any of its equipment, you'll pay through the nose for some of it but they're willing to keep you supplied with parts, service, and bug fixes for 40-year-old equipment if you've got it. Also, a lot of it is clearly designed for "what's the most we can get an average maintenance tech to understand after a 40-hour certification class", not for programmers and engineers. But with a demo like this, it's obvious that BD is working on a level that the industrial automation competition won't reach for decades.

Please tell me you have a blog

I don't, but I do have a domain that's sitting idle except for a mail server. Maybe a blog could be a theme for 2021...

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