return2ozmaRobot dogs priced at $300,000 a piece are now guarding some of the country’s biggest data centers
EndlessNightmareWhy quadruped instead of wheels? Just seems gimmicky to me.
Legs have some advantages over wheels, but unless these can climb or jump it seems to be the lesser choice. If it can climb or jump, then I’ll stfu.
I think it’s for rough terrain, like carrying packs of supplies through war zones. So not full climbing but at least able to step over rocks and debris.
Intimidation factor
You can watch some videos on YouTube, if you really want to learn. It’s interesting, sometimes in a full-dystopian nightmare fuel kind of way. Yes, we are at the point where some of these robots can climb and jump.
It’s a gimmick, though, for sure. Just like human-mimicking androids are a gimmick. The money for robotics is in manufacturing.
But I’ll bet there will always be an obscenely wealthy person who is willing to pay for a cool looking robot prototype.
theneverfoxBecause wheels aren’t all that great in less than carefully managed paths. Quadrupedal motion is just fine in most all situations… Wheels are most efficient, followed by swimming with boyancy, then flying with the wind, then bipedal motion… But quadrupedal motion isn’t everywhere for no reason. It’s very stable and robust. It’s very practical and forgiving in most all situations
Quadrupedal motion is pervasive in nature because wheels (and tank treads for bad terrain) can’t readily form via natural processes: en.wikipedia.org/…/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_…
I mean, sure, wheels would require an essentially impossible evolutionary path, but they’re still very dependent on terrain
Some goats can climb grades no wheel could touch. Wheels have issues with long grasses and roots, don’t work great if they don’t have good contact with the terrain, aren’t good for climbing or ledges, and fast to wear in dirty environments
You can specialize to overcome these challenges, but they’re less general purpose. Wheels that would let you travel over uneven terrain need to be big and/or very complex
Wheels work really, really well on suitable surfaces, but they’re specialist technology. Quadrepeds are very stable and control their weight distribution much better
From an engineering standpoint, you’d be better off putting the robot dogs on skateboards or in a wheeled carrier then making the kind of high-torque wheels that can lock to work like feet when needed - that’s what we use when designing wheels for the kinds of travel these dogs were designed for
Wheels are obviously incredibly useful tech, but they’re not the ideal solution for every problem
Tracks are the “wheels” solution to bad terrain, which also includes soft surfaces (e.g. snow, mud). Even an excavator can climb ~35 degrees, and a lighter less top-heavy tracked vehicle should be able to do a bit better. Compared to legs, tracked vehicles are faster, more efficient, and more durable.
Goats are exceptional climbers, but animals use legs as part of a full-body motion. Slapping legs onto a box isn’t the same as putting legs on a torso that also bends, twists, and flexes.
I mean I guess it’s part of the iterative process of improving quadruped robots, but at this stage of development it still seems gimmicky.
Have you seen these dogs move? It seems like you’re not very familiar with them. They can jump fences and outrun a human, they’re also remarkably stable for the body and can have a higher center of gravity which sensors appreciate… The tech works prettywell
And tracks take a lot of maintenance and tend to tear up floors if they’re tough enough to handle the outdoors. They’re also very heavy and expensive, and far less efficient or fast as wheels. They’re uncommon for a reason, they’re an even more specialized version of the wheel
I’ve watched videos on them. I stand by my original statement.
Well you should probably let the engineers at Boston dynamics know your views. Maybe they just aren’t familiar with wheels. They’d probably feel very silly having spent all that time on an inferior tech tree
Seriously though, these are being used for a reason. Have you ever once seen a video of one of these stuck out in the wild? Because I’ve seen plenty of compilations of wheeled bots stuck on curbs or sign posts
Nah, it’s good to have diversity in tech development. Just because it isn’t the path that I personally would have chosen doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea. Tech is an iterative process. Yes, even tech that is gimmicky.
Stairs.
Stairs are an easy problem for tracked robots. But yeah, they aren’t going to be jumping any time soon.