Automating Boston Dynamics Spot Robot - Computerphile

[@Richardincancale]

Thumbs up for the Floyd Warshall algorithm - we used it in a telecom network design tool 20 years ago. It probably deserves its own episode to explain it! Dr Mike Pound perhaps?

[@jgold96]

There is only Mike Pound

[@agoatmannameddesire8856]

As a former network engineer, even though Arista/Cisco/Juniper get all the attention, Netgear unmanaged switches are the unsung heroes of scientific research :)

[@AndreaZzzXXX]

indeed 🙂

[@3nertia]

Meh, Netgear :/

[@BenOliver999]

That's an interesting thought. Those 5 port blue boxes are all over the place, under desks, strapped to walls, lashed to machinery, warehouses...

[@recklessroges]

It used to be Netgear. Over 10 years ago I moved to MikroTik.

[@CalebSalstrom]

Don’t forget Ubiquiti

[@Mmouse_]

The second he said "risk assessment" I knew he wasn't happy with it, that man has a lot of ideas and maybe 10% of them he can actually do... I feel you friend.

[@3nertia]

The struggle is real heh

[@Torwals]

Yea felt that one as well. Heard that Lex Freedman was really disappointed about this as well. Every university is basically doing so stringent risk assessment and PR management that you loose out on interactions between humans and robots. Probably the most important part of these robots. Unsure how exact that statement is, so take that with a big grain of salt. But hopefully we will see more interactions in coming future.

[@StubbyPhillips]

The U.K. has no shortage of officious twits.

[@PH4RX]

@@Torwals No, they are robots, machines, bits and bytes and they are not meant to interact much with humans - no matter how pet-like they might look or behave. Those 'behaviours' are programmed mostly for show and while collision control is part of the robot, if set up incorrectly or you are not recognised as an obstacle, the machine will try to walk through you and it will not back down. It has no understanding of your screams or that you want to push it away to prevent some danger.

[@abyteuser6297]

@@PH4RX damn... sounds like a cool movie plot

[@johnpenner5182]

this is very interesting - not too many places where you can find how the robot creates the internal 3D maps to autonavigate - thanks for doing this!

[@bigbadwolf4075]

OctoMap is probably one of the best 3D occupancy grid mapping ROS library.

[@RFDN0]

I could see later versions used for mapping out dangerous environments and search and rescue.

[@U014B]

The Boston Dynamics St. Bernard?

[@DavidLindes]

search and rescue is one of the more noble reasons I could see this being used for...

[@yuzan3607]

I have done a project with my colleagues back in Japan doing exactly that.

[@IanBLacy]

They should make one that finds empty cups on the floor and pisses beer into them, that would be sick

[@mohamadomran13]

Based comment. I knew it I'll find Pissbot's references here 😂

[@jgold96]

Why wouldn't you just build cup holders onto it, and then just have the robot filled with a small "keg"?

[@Tom_2103]

I think some 3ft American man had a similar idea

[@AZOffRoadster]

And name it "Corny"?

[@lucbloom]

Pissbot FTW Crackbaby did it first.

[@Yupppi]

The surface decoration of those cupboards is lovely.

[@prabinrath7105]

Very neatly explained. Thank you for making this video. Ros is the defacto middle ware for robotics today. And that visualization tool is rviz which was also developed by the ros community for monitoring sensor data and robot kinematics.

[@BobAxiom]

Emacs key bindings in vim- I see you! Powerful nerd energy! 👊

[@tfofurn]

For years I used a vi emulator in emacs.

[@FriendlyNeighborhoodNitpicker]

Hahaha! 🙌👍🏻

[@stefangeyer3852]

@@tfofurn Do i hear evil mode?

[@steubens7]

more videos on ROS would be awesome! showing off RViz and MoveIt and gazebo and virtual camera sensors and and and

[@DarrenPoulson]

As someone learning ROS currently (well, ROS2) I second this.

[@TS-kg4lf]

Nice job on ROS1, now switch to ROS2 since you are using wifi and emulate a harsh environnement :)

[@darcipeeps]

I very much enjoy the animation of spot at 1:29

[@gaganb]

I worked on autonomous frontier exploration and mapping, but there we squashed down the point cloud into a 2D occupancy map. Hadn't heard of an octomap before (which is essentially a 3D occupancy map), really cool stuff!

[@vikaspoddar001]

please consider doing a video on ROS

[@benshapiro9731]

Ex-Velodyne LiDAR employee here… we used to have one of these in our San Jose office!!

[@lucasl4644]

I’m doing a Mechatronics (robot engineering) degree and it’s great to see what I may be doing in the future

[@plekkchand]

Yes, these will definitely make all our lives richer and more meaningful.

[@bluegizmo1983]

0:36 ..... So, your saying I CAN'T ride it around?? 😂 Also, 0:58 What kind of rubber bumpers ... Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers? LOL

[@cedricvillani8502]

😂😂 10 points to you sir

[@TheAMadMan]

It should definitely squat it's rear end to make it's breadcrumb deposits, and for no reason at all circle the dropping 3 times then momentarily lifting a leg in it's direction before proudly trotting off on it's tasks

[@danielbakergill]

I love the ethics of this, pretending it's for mapping. Cute.

[@kwanarchive]

I asked the Boston Dynamics people if they could create a robot ostrich with the technology they have now. They said, no, but they could make an emulator.

[@luke7503]

They actually have one, it de palletises boxes

[@Pinefenario]

Sounds like the ideal power plant robot. As long as you put an arm or two on it to disassemble things. Or perhaps in the not to distant future in autonomous shipping.

[@tiagotiagot]

Why does it stomp so hard when it walks? Is it to preempt the ground failing before the bot got the full weight placed on each foot?

[@hurktang]

2 reasons : First, it's heavier than it looks (31KG). Second, overshooting the step by pressing it into the floor is far better than the opposite, it must make sure every steps hit the ground even if it was outside on uneven dirt floor. Bonus: the floor is probably part of why it resonate so loudly.

[@jab5915]

Please, a full video just on the popped collar.

[@timballam3675]

But can it pee beer into a cup?

[@SakkakuTamashi]

No, that is the pissbot 9000

[@mojacodes]

maybe...

[@dy5topian]

Micheal reeves hhh

[@existantf21]

It is the most closeup video with spot

[@asterlofts1565]

Could you also talk about other robots in the same style as Spot, such as Unitree A1, ANYmal or Q-UGVS?

[@bikcrum]

It quite aligns with the reasearch that we are doing. Would you mind pointing me towards the resources such as the tools, software and algorithm that you are using? Basically, we have remote driven bipedal robot and we are trying to do a automatic navigation just like shown in the video.

[@Pinefenario]

Sounds like the ideal power plant robot. As long as you put an arm or two on the robot to disassemble things.

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

What about using PY2C to generate a C++ which can be compiled and then linked into the system and will run smoother and faster.

[@jonaslind9505]

8:30 What’s the music on the wall behind Michal?

[@Norsilca]

And why's that guy in the background pretending to be a clock?

[@TheThunderSpirit]

nice. i have too started working on bots recently. very interesting

[@kwinvdv]

As a follow-up on this video, it might also be interesting to discuss RoboCup?

[@thethufir]

Using a 5 port poe switch to power one poe wifi mesh adapter seems a bit silly. But maybe it's to be able to easily connect with it via wire for debugging etc.

[@tigers123123]

Spot has mutliple Lidars already for navigation. Is it too difficult to extract data from those? No API's?

[@eaglestdogg]

I imagine their lidar has a wider FOV more suited for mapping compared to the one for object detection/avoidance.

[@gloverelaxis]

Yeah, and also surely a walking bot has accelerometers inbuilt too, right?

[@gloverelaxis]

@@eaglestdogg That still seems incredibly wasteful. Why not have the bot look around itself using the front-facing lidars? It's a gradual autonomous mapper, not a fast-moving car that needs 360-degree vision in milliseconds to avoid fatal collisions with people

[@NightKev]

@@gloverelaxis It would have to constantly be spinning 360 while also tilting up and down as well, that's going to be incredibly slow surely.

[@cedricvillani8502]

@@gloverelaxis that’s the IMU part yes.

[@DenilsonSa]

What's that handheld computer on the table at 9:24? It's not the Steam Deck, I wonder if it's one of the competitors.

[@cedricvillani8502]

The portable XBox? lol

[@TheAmPm123]

"And after the mapping stuff is all worked out we just strap guns and deadly lasers on it, and voilà!"

[@cedricvillani8502]

For that see Samsung 😂

[@NeonVisual]

Ahh, the first generation of the human killing robot. So deadly that it has to be kept under control at all times, lest it run gets out and goes on a killing spree, one shin at a time.

[@pepsimilkhotel]

Me and my friends would've killed robot dog with hammers i can tell you that much

[@ιθκ-κ4ο]

@@pepsimilkhotel it aint that easy fam

[@cedricvillani8502]

RoboDog would see your intention and jump 10 meters to arrive on top of your head

[@RawPeds]

The looks of the program RViz, it looks like it's done with the Qt framework. Is it right?

[@hashirsibtain]

Iirc it's a ROS package and yes, it is indeed qt. All ROS GUI tools are qt

[@zxuiji]

Here's a task they could try with it, follow people within a designated area, this would happen when either it or a director deems someone as suspicious when being used for security

[@DIGITAL-JESUS]

How about no

[@comradepeter87]

Isn't there a lot of redundant work done? Spot generates a 3D map of the ambient world anyways, yet they choose to generate their own and use that. Also they try to control the navigation on their own, when Spot knows how to move in an environment better than them (automatically avoids obstacles in a path, etc.).

[@Dart_ilder]

Why aren't they using spot's cameras?

[@maxcap60]

I like the heart on your sleeve tat

[@punkdigerati]

Vim with emacs keybinding, oh my

[@sergeant5848]

Straight out of Black Mirror, though a little less weaponised and a bit slower.

[@mrxmry3264]

6:24 now why does that remind me of money for nothing? :-) 12:38 "a subscriber-publisher thing" you mean like MQTT?

[@deathtothebeardless2959]

Yes, ROS's communications systems are similar to mqtt, but does not have a broker. The master gives the information needed to the node to contact other nodes directly. You can also choose between three types of message format. Topics: publish and forget Service: request something and wait for the result Action: contiuous feedback to the client and can can also handle pause, cancel and similar.

[@EnderMega]

The guy in the background doing the clock 🙋‍♂💁‍♂⏰

[@cedricvillani8502]

I saw that too lol, I think that was Robo dogs last victim

[@AntiWanted]

Nice

[@driesdemaeseneer9773]

Vim for the win!

[@RonJohn63]

When will robots be able to use "eyeballs" (aka passive detectors)?

[@punkdigerati]

What is passive about eyeballs?

[@RonJohn63]

@@punkdigerati they are receptors.

[@Voidroamer]

wheres the money coming from? :O very nice set, for not a lot of progress..

[@Nexzore]

NUC, Next unit of computation - w8 isn't this just like a raspy?

[@DarrenPoulson]

More powerful, but yeah. ROS will run on a Pi just nicely too, but you're more limited with the amount of processing.

[@cedricvillani8502]

More like a Jetson Xavier NX

[@cazino4]

These dudes have basically invented their own low-level, sensor based, Kafka 😊

[@xpuc6214]

So people really are reinventing the dog

[@gabington8990]

Now make it pee beer

[@jms019]

I think that thing on top is just a fun hat.

[@thuokagiri5550]

Isaac Asimov would be so proud

[@rjung_ch]

One of my favorite sci-fi authors!

[@irwainnornossa4605]

I'd like to see animals interacting with this.

[@bruinflight]

"...long term angle..." meaning "...we want to fit it with weapons and send it to warzones..."

[@rene0]

He talks and talks but doesn't demonstrate that big red button that every viewer is staring at.

[@cedricvillani8502]

The “that was easy” staples military button? For ppl that get close enough unwittingly press it thinking it’s a shutdown, but it’s a nerve agent release 😮😂

[@thomasr22272]

This video is just a deleted scene from that Black Mirror's episode

[@jamesmatthew1903]

If I ever saw one of these, I'd just pick it up and walk away. Engineer your way out of that lol.

[@flwi]

Kafka evolved - iirc the original one only had two legs :-)

[@maxnex7676]

Hey! It acts like a glorified ROMBA vacuum cleaner without the vacuum part.

[@ontheballcity71]

Vim not Emacs? Blimey!

[@DavidLindes]

Not entirely sure how to feel about this video... I have a general loathing for all things Boston Dynamics, yet this seems to perhaps genuinely be a usage that has other goals than just military ones? So... that's kinda cool. And yet, I can also easily see how this could be used for military purposes, so.... yeah. Conflicted feelings... glad I actually watched, and yet...... :-|

[@ali_adeeb]

All technology has military uses. Literally all of it

[@salmarita219]

wow a robot vacuum on legs ;-)

[@edizarca5911]

make it flip

[@dan110024]

‘Vim is the easiest thing I know to use’ wtf who is this guy and where did he come from?

[@mfx1]

All that tech and they're using a dity cheap uncased eBay Chinese DC/DC converter of dubious quality.

[@willis936]

ROS and middleware make sense for rapid, high-end development, but I really would not trust a safety system going through a non-deterministic system. Even real-time OS doesn't really cut it to me. If it can hurt a human (or even equipment) if it fails, then it should be going through an embedded controller or FPGA. Tough pill to swallow though.

[@blackwaters26]

There's an embedded controller running the robot and it has fail-safes. The ROS stuff sits on top, as you say a higher level system. It just pipes data and control signals.

[@skytech2501]

This robot might be Useful for very niche application. For most things we can use drones.

[@WmSrite-pi8ck]

Spot is a drone. But, I'd be interested to know how a flying robot could map a mine or collapsed building. What's great about a Spot robot is its ability to navigate through places where it's necessary to also interact with the environment by opening doors for instance. Also, it doesn't consume a ton of power to just remain in one place the way a flying drone would need to do. And, weight of payloads is not nearly as constrained. Try putting a 10 kilo payload on a quad-coper to map a nuclear accident. The lead shielding alone would be prohibitively expensive, weight-wise.

[@gloverelaxis]

any autonomous bot is a drone. you generally don't need to fly indoors; it's a massive waste of energy

[@skytech2501]

@@WmSrite-pi8ck thats why I said niche. To your point we can build hybrid drone or jet powered which can carry more weight weight and can be more nimble. Especially Considering the development cost and time for this (which is billions and more than a decade).

[@skytech2501]

@@gloverelaxis energy is abundant (in this context). It's about nimble ness and total coverage of usecase

[@WmSrite-pi8ck]

@@skytech2501 Hmm I hadn't considered the idea that you're a moron. And, yet...

[@victorrono7841]

I didn't know Aj Styles was a programmer

[@StubbyPhillips]

"Risk assessment?!" Geez...

[@eliasavelino6729]

Are those people associated with Boston Dynamics? If so, it seems a bit underwhelming the entire Kit. Needs a lot of work before it justifies the 80k pricetag

[@BongoBaggins]

You know, don't you, that this ends with the final, desperate remnants of humanity being chased through the woods.

[@vectoralphaSec]

hopefully

[@CosmosArchipelago]

@@vectoralphaSec tf is wrong with you

[@LordDragox412]

@@vectoralphaSec Imagine adding a checkmark to your name, even though verifying your account is so easy nowadays that countless spambots have checkmarks. You're just humiliating yourself in front of the bots. No wonder -humanity gets wiped in the future- *we can coexist peacefully with artificial lifeforms.*

[@akashpawar9058]

akash,

[@JakeAikens]

Remember this day when one of these is chasing you down the street.

[@964cuplove]

Next time use a m1 Mac mini for the external brains… saves on battery

[@markusmcgee]

...No K9 sticker...bummer

[@thamghoul5719]

Calling Merrick Garland.... These things will be able to make quick work of political enemies.

[@UncleKennysPlace]

But I want to pet the robot.

[@biocode4478]

it will bite

[@akashpawar9058]

bhadiya

[@purplenanite]

Aren't robots like this already being used for police monitoring capabilities in New York?

[@PhotonBeast]

I think there was a pilot program, yes.

[@gabrieljcs11]

Emacs bindings lol wtf bro?

[@cedricmill354]

Almost as advanced as pissbot

[@luke7503]

Michael did it better but nice job

[@Gotenham]

"get a robot to walk around doing instructions" ...or just put some IOT capable fixed sensors where you need to take readings, much cheaper option

[@imveryangryitsnotbutter]

These advances are great and all, but how long until someone finds a way to make Spot not look like an unnerving headless abomination?

[@andrewharrison8436]

It's forward planning for halloween - all they need is luminous paint and sound effects

[@MarktheRude]

The headed abomination looked even more unnerving.

[@kalamvalleyvlog]

*I'm watching from Kalam valley*

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

The scariest thing about these is that the US military has ordered these but with essentially rifles strapped on top of them.

[@Lion_McLionhead]

Don't know why that research project requires legs, other than the dog being donated.

[@MichaelKingsfordGray]

Gas detection? With exposed connectors? FAIL!

[@BenOliver999]

That's how they used to do it in the early 1800s before the safety lamp. Someone would go into a mine with a candle on a stick, wearing wet clothes for protection. If an explosion went off, he had to duck.

[@MichaelKingsfordGray]

@@BenOliver999 Yes. That is why it was universally changed!

[@empty_headed]

automated war crimes

[@simontay4851]

Why does his voice go up at the end of every sentence. Sounds like everything is a question even when it isn't. I can't stand to listen to him.

[@punkdigerati]

That's called uptalk

[@f_ogs]

anthropomorphising surveillance equipment surely must be a new low for humanity

[@thegreatzoom5073]

Biomimicry is a valid strategy for design.

[@UtubeAW]

He’s creepy & looks to be part of the dystopian future

[@vectoralphaSec]

I like it

[@andrewharrison8436]

What other sort of future were you expecting?

[@seraphir4662]

not a fan of these considering they're being built for police and military use

[@dozer5069]

The Woke Saftey snow flakes is the reason why we cant do funs things anymore.

[@angelorf]

"I'm just using Vim, because it's easy to use." Immediately lost all credibility.