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Wonder how they expect to build a moat. Their 60k dog is already disrupted but knockoffs in the 3k-15k range. I bet these droids’ commodity prices will settle under 5k. The software isn’t defensible. I want at least 3 for my mansion entourage. Named Daneel, Giskard, and Bender.
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The latest from Boston Dynamics. Very cool; kinda scary…
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The slight hesitation between steps in an otherwise revealingly human-looking demo strengthens my suspicion this is a fairly conservative maneuver automaton based strategy. It was newish when I was finishing grad school, but old now.
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Replying to @0knaomi
These don’t look weird enough to be like deep learning. Looks too human. I suspect they did motion capture on a human gymnast and are using a mix of nonlinear and linear model reference control patched together with a maneuver automaton. 90s vintage published research.
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My reading of that hesitation was that they aren’t able to calculate ahead and predict what state they’ll be in after a move - they have to pause to scan and figure it out. Whereas humans can mentally simulate and work out our likely next 2-3 steps before making them.
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That too, but my point is that it indicates a patch point or move boundary —a very human one. And yes, you’d expect to do a quick bit of computation there to se,etc the next maneuver and ground the parameters using current state.