Farewell to HD Atlas

[Brenda]

Apr 16, 2024

For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical barriers in the field. Now it’s time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax. Take a look back at everything we’ve accomplished with the Atlas platform to date.

[Layzeebeaver]

1. I await skynet 2.0

That said, I’m working with a company well versed in the BD spot dog robots. We are discussing amplified perimeter Defense solutions.

These autonomous platforms (autonomous should be taken with a grain of salt) do provide stabile platforms for sensory systems. It’s rather cool, but you NEED to keep an awake human in the loop.

If we can find a balance, these could become lifesaving and effort saving tools.

They should never replace human intelligence or interaction.

[Brenda]

2. Agree completely.

But billionaires are not only insane but evil, thus I worry about their misuse.

[Layzeebeaver]

3. Agreed! But it's not only billionairs

Any company looking to make quick dirty profit can at some point take this tech out for a “before prime time” run just for profit regardless of liability.

This is yet to happen, but it could. This is why we need stringent governance and legislation to get it under proper governance and oversight.

Nowadays it’s all about “what new and quick AI application can we deploy for profit”. It’s going to be awhile before we get to the “what’s the best AI application that can deploy to make our team more effective”.

[Brenda]

5. Right.

I'm thinking Blackwater, um Xe Services, erm Academi, for fuck's sake.

Wow, I'm having a hard time linking to Blackwater at Wiki. Twice it's redirected. Think I'll stop now.

[Cheezoholic]

6. Agreed. It must be cool to work with that stuff though, that was a dream missed for me. But I did build one..kinda

in 1978 a classmate and I basically built a 50 lb "Roomba" from a Popular Mechanics magazine. The logic system was based on on a Z80 processor and some mux/demux chips. The "Robot" in the magazine wasn't completely "autonomous" but ours was... kinda... and you could tell lol.

Our high school got the first computer in school history, a TRS-80, that year. He and I were selected to be the first 2 students to use it because we were both really good at math and sucked at everything else lol. So we did the logic programming on it, line for line machine code. I couldn't remember one line today lol.

Basically it would drive itself around the room and when a crude bumper hooked to a switch hit something it would stop, back up and turn I think 15 degrees and move forward again until it hit something wash rinse repeat. We could change the turn correction to whatever degree we wanted. It had an a wheel hooked to a couple of rheostats and an analog distance counter we hijacked off the baseball teams chalk layer. Anyway it was supposed to "remember" when it hit something and not go to that point again. It was really hard to code that but we got it going good maybe 60%of the time!?

We entered it into the regional Science Fair and we lost. One of things we tried to get it to do was find 120V outlet to plug itself into when the battery was low. Of course we didn't have location sensors or anything like that so we had about 2ft of a physical barrier to our own custom outlet so when it came back and got into that funnel it would back into the plug. They wouldn't let us power the plug, deemed too dangerous lol. And of course even though in testing it came back 3 out of times properly at the fair it only did it 1 out of 4 lol. We were bummed. I think that night was like the 3rd or 4th time I ever got drunk lol.

I ramble, but cool. I flipped out the first time I saw Atlas. One of the things I was curious about as I watched some of the videos is when it fell in certain ways it would curl up into the fetal position just like a human. I guessed since it was kinda built like a human even in a robot design natures survival trait of the fetal posistion is the best way to protect anything with that form maybe?

Anyway, thanx for posting that!

[Brenda]

7. It's almost sad when Atlas leaks in a fall.

The pink hydraulic fluid shooting out of the knee made it seem "alive."

[Layzeebeaver]

8. Nice!!!

What a cool experience and memory!

[et tu]

4. totally cool

hope the intent stays benign and helpful~