IRonCub: A Humanoid Robot Designed to Fly Like Iron Man | Hacker News Reader

IRonCub: A Humanoid Robot Designed to Fly Like Iron Man

spectrum.ieee.org

52 pointsrbanffy48 comments

I really feel like people need to stop trying to make these sorts of robots look so "human-like". The effect of a mouthless bald doll head strapped on top of an iron man robot isn't exactly comforting, to me anyway. It starts to hit the uncanny valley a bit

I feel like the funny part is that there are so many "robot" mask designs in pop culture that would look 1000x more comforting than a slightly psychotic looking robotic doll

That's exactly my idea. I would feel far more comforted being rescued by something like Chappie or The Iron Legion than something like the Sophia robot or this thing. Human-inspired over human imitation

Everything about this design feels wrong. Like they went out of their way to make it unappealing.

This looks like it was put together by Sid in his room.

That was exactly what I thought of too when I saw it, hahaha. If it wasn't terrifying enough already...

A similar type of robot is key to the plot of the superbly quirky film 'Brian and Charles' [0] in which a nutty inventor build a robot that looks exactly a weird old-man's head stuck on top of a washing-machine shaped body.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_and_Charles

Under rated British comedy gold right there, layers and layers especially the illuminati references

Presumably they want to eventually put a human inside it, in which case having a humanoid robot to work off of wouldn't change the aero calculations and designs too much. The article talks about specific design considerations to avoid the exhaust gases.

Gravity Industries already has that sorted https://gravity.co/ . I was almost expecting this robot to just be a humanoid robot with one of those suits on

Looking at the 'hands' of this robot, it looks to be exactly that.

> Presumably they want to eventually put a human inside it [..]

I'm imagining a team just putting the organs of a human into the robot to save on space. Basically a brain plus whatever is absolutely necessary to run the brain.

Wasn't that Robocop 3?

Maybe the wanted to create an https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astro_Boy

I would look at that and think "doll". Others look at it and think "human". People are weird.

I think they could make it a bit more professional looking like: https://imgur.com/a/vXED98B Like a friendly yet stern Butler of the Skies.

Obviously being able to fly a bipedal kill bot into a "war zone" and then use it for door-to-door fighting is something certain large organizations are looking for. The stupid baby mask is just to distract critics of kill bot tech.

"disaster response" is code for "we built the robot before realizing we need to justify it to others" https://xkcd.com/2128

Came here to say this. It appears 14 words into the article! I laughed out loud and immediately stopped reading. Write an article when their robot has "saved" at least one living thing and I'll pay attention. Until then it's just vapor. In the meantime I'll wear my downvotes with pride.

Can we please be honest with ourselves for a second and call out the ridiculousness of the "find a lost hiker" and "disaster relief" excuses used by kill-bot companies?

Who is this robot going to save with glowing hot turbine engines on it's fore-arms.

This is kill-bot tech put on the iCub to get articles in circulation.

If you truly wanted to do this, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has already proven that you can drop bombs via drones with pinpoint accuracy for dirt cheap.

If somebody's going to work on something a million times more the cost and a similar fractional multiple of the effectiveness, maybe you can take them at face value that they're not building a murderbot (at least not by design).

> at face value

Freaky baby face value.

> something a million times more the cost and a similar fractional multiple of the effectiveness

I assure you that drone warfare isnt cutting down on any r&d budget at the pentagon. the whole point is to spend that money.

And the first line in the article here says that this is being developed by a university in Italy.

"The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) is primarily funded by the Italian State but also receives significant funding from European Union research programs, such as the European Research Council (ERC) and Horizon Europe".

No pentagon money here.

It's dual use technology. It can and will be used to find lost hikers, it's just that it can also be used for nefarious purposes.

Yeah, it could find lost hikers, while starting multiple forest fires just by flying low to the ground. Its hands are replaced by jets. This is not designed for rescue purposes nor would it be a good tool for rescue purposes.

https://xkcd.com/2128/ also applies

Reminds me so much of Mega Man on NES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxyLui5LdCc

Why would you need bipedism for a flying object ? Wouldn't a quadripod + quadcopter setup would be much more stable and cheaper ?

It's being advertised as being used for generic disaster recovery, where it's beneficial to be human-shaped (human infrastructure is designed for humans, so its easier to interface with it if the robot is human-shaped too), so they just strapped some jets on it to take it to the disaster zone itself

That's just something robot manufacturers say to justify building their expensive toys, I promise you it'll never be used for that purpose.

See the XKCD someone has already posted below.

Yeah I know, but that's what they're advertising it as

>It's being advertised as being used for generic disaster recovery, where it's beneficial to be human-shaped (human infrastructure is designed for humans, so its easier to interface with it if the robot is human-shaped too)

Ummmm, disaster recovery is hard precisely because the infrastructure (e.g. a collapsed building) ceased to be suitable for humans.

The way in which it isn't suitable for humans depends on the disaster though. If somewhere is flooded or on fire, a humanoid robot will probably be able to navigate it better than a quadrupedal one. If the building is collapsed, sure

That's not the point of this robot.

I suppose the original iCub research robot is running out of grants it can milk, so they strapped some jet engines to it.

This goes into my "Top 100 really dumb things I've seen this year" list. Not sure if it makes top ten. It's definitely in the top 25%.

OK. Why?

Let's forget then "Let's strap model airplane jet engines to the robot and make it fly." part.

For this dumb mechanical albatross to be anywhere close to useful in ANY scenario, even without flying...it has to be useful as a humanoid robot. It isn't. iCub was a cool concept, but it is so far behind the current state of the art I am not sure why they are trying to make it fly.

And, flying?

You can hang a humanoid from any of the already available mega quadcopters and drop it off anywhere within the flight range.

You can probably stick a parachute on an already available humanoid and drop dozens of them from an airplane.

Flying is a solved problem. A humanoid useful in the real world --particularly in disaster areas-- is not. At all.

https://gravity.co/ is a similar project that seems to be much more advanced, and also attaches to a real human body, rather than a nightmare doll head

Man, the carnage that will inevitably happen when someone pushes this thing too far. I suppose that’s true of many things (motorcycles), but this just terrifies me.

It's also incredibly difficult to learn to use and to operate. The whole point of putting a robot in the cockpit is that it won't make mistakes humans will and thus be more fuel efficient (e.g., longer operation times).

At least if you can keep the weight down.

> “is that the exhaust gas from the turbines is at 800 °C and almost supersonic speed.

MY SHOES ARE ON FIRE!

They kinda handwaved the whole "wash the disaster area in superheated jet exhaust before doing your S&R" problem.

It seems that flying a robot to a disaster response area is the easy part. The question is whether it'll be able to do anything truly useful there.

Flying is usually the easiest part of "flying like Iron Man"

Given that the video showed ~1 second of "flying", I don't even know if that's the case.

Next step: add an RTG power source and make it look like a boy.

a humanoid robot designed to fly like a billionaire arms dealer

"uh.... search and rescue."

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