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Comment by benjijay | Hacker News Reader

That first video of the bot standing from the floor and turning towards the camera one joint at a time does something strange to the uncanny valley horror movie part of my brain.

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Funny, because Data (from Star Trek) mentions that his joints can move like that but he refrains because it disturbs humans.

Source?

I believe it was in "The Arsenal of Freedom", the episode where an entire planet wipes themselves out with autonomous weapons.

Yes, very strong T-1000 vibes – the way it keeps reversing "front" and "back" almost feels like a deliberate reference to that moment in Terminator 2.

It would be useful to have a robot made of that mimetic polyalloy though...

except nothing like that currently exists and very likely won't ever exist.

Exactly what i was going to write as well. I think that’s the reaction they were aiming for.

I am really confused by their intentions with this video. Are they trying to freak us out? If so, succeeded!

But I would have thought they’d rather not have us experience atlas as some kind of freakish terminator mixed with the girl from the ring.

I think it's just still less capable than his hidraulic ancestor. so they did what they can for the video

Pretty sure it's meant to show "these robots can perform movements that are impossible for a human"

But the animal part of our brain that screams danger when we see this is just a byproduct of that. Anybody giving it real credence rather than just laughing it off should stop driving a car, travelling by air, talking to people on a phone, etc.

The future T series will move much better, you won’t have a reason to be scared about.

Ah, quick and painless then

Depends if you have any useful info to them. Just a tip: they can sense your heartbeat and know when you are lying

Always!

It looks amazing in the video.. But of course Boston Dynamics chose the most disturbing way of demonstrating its movement capabilities, as usual.

I swear they do it on purpose at this point. Good lord! Put some googly eyes on these things at least.

At first look, it reminded me of the "Supervisor" robots from "Budget Cuts":

https://budget-cuts.fandom.com/wiki/Supervisor

The full-face circular screen also reminded me of the robot from the Lost in Space 2018 remake.

https://www.avforums.com/reviews/lost-in-space-season-1-tv-s...

Reminds me of The One Electronic from Rice Boy

It reminded me of Pathfinder from Apex Legends https://apexlegends.fandom.com/wiki/Pathfinder

Well I think it's ironically mimicking The Exorcist or one of those movies so makes sense.

They have out-sci-fied any sci-fi robots I have ever seen.

I didn't get any horror movie vibes. I just thought "wow, that's neat!" and went back to watch it again.

Was thinking if The Ring, but might be due to the head, straight after

It seems like a bad decision from the business side of things too. Having your employees freaked out about the new robots seems like a nonzero ding towards a company purchasing one.

Pretty sure people acclimatise.

It's as if Pixar's Luxo was all grown up.

If Pixar did horror movies.

Luxo Jr got jacked.

Yeah that head design doesn’t help things

It looks like CGI to me, the way to camera moves together with the depth of field and that things appear too shiny. They don't state anything about it so I don't know what to believe.

Funny how the ubiquity of AI generated artwork plus the shitty quality of phone videos has made people to think that "high quality + depth of field = fake".

However if you look closely the robot does have scuffs and scratches on it so I think it's real.

I think it's real, but any good texture artist would include scuffs and scratches on the model.

Reminds me to how high framerate made (makes?) people think "Soap Opera", even though it's technically higher quality.

Yeah lol I love all things that deliver more information to my eyes like higher resolution and framerate so I dislike it when people complain about high frame rate.

I thought so too. The movement seems a little slowed down too and maybe too smooth.

An incredible testament to Boston Dynamics Engineering that commentators think it’s CGI. I’m sure it’s real because BD never releases CGI and this looked real to me.

Video games should have prepared you to better detect CGI.

You should watch Corridor Digital’s video about this: https://youtu.be/HQ1WEiMwV7Y

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