Hacker News Reader

Comment by savrajsingh | Hacker News Reader

I've rewatched this video maybe 10 times since it came out a few days ago. The jogging part -- it's so hard to believe, still seems like CG but looking forward to seeing this in person. I love this stuff -- so much world-revolutionizing potential captured in this video!

View on HN

The jogging seems to be much slower than a human would jog (for now), which contributes to the unreal look (I think).

As Elon Musk quipped, in a few years this thing will move so fast you’ll need a strobe to see it. It’s not subject to the human reaction time or mechanical constraints.

It is subject to mechanical constraints AKA laws of physics.

Acceleration is limited by the grip on the ground under its feet. It could slowly accelerate to amazing speeds though.

It could use spikes and/or go on all fours in “fast” mode. It’s whatever you design. My main point though is not mechanics, but the significantly lower reaction time. Given enough compute, the world that seems “real time” to us could appear to be slow as molasses to a robot. I think the natural thing to do would be to make it move at the speed that provides a good balance between accomplishing objectives and energy consumption. I think that this speed is much faster than what we’re used to with humans. For eg military robots that balance could be further tweaked in favor of quickly accomplishing objectives.

Compressed-air rockets. Or H2O2 with a platinum catalyst; "decomposition ... into steam and oxygen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide#Propellant

We're spit-balling hero-bots, not nasty kill-bots, riiiight?

Potato, potato.

But then it's not robotics, it's rockets!!! Yay rockets!

Let's invent a new Godwin's law reached when any discussion devolves (upgrades?) into rocket talks.

Me: mutters under his breath, "rockets are robots..." ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com