Shoot Paintballs With Boston Dynamics' Robot Spot | Hacker News Reader

Shoot Paintballs With Boston Dynamics' Robot Spot

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29 pointscolinprince19 comments

Reminds me of this short film: https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU

Just like this, it's scary because it is believable.

FWIW, here's the real military using Boston Dynamics: https://youtu.be/OYs0Rq66-U4 And here's a remote controlled sniper rifle: https://youtu.be/md_q3pKoyEI

So I would be very surprised if nobody had combined them yet. In that sense, I think it is very good that MSCHF is bringing more attention to it. The sooner we start talking about laws to govern this tech, the lower the chance of it ending up in the wrong hands.

Curious, who in your opinion has the "right" hands?

Not OP. IMO, nobody. Not a single human has the "right" hands.

Not sure if there are any.

But I know for sure that I wouldn't want this technology to be sold to my neighbor with anger issues ;)

> The sooner we start talking about laws to govern this tech, the lower the chance of it ending up in the wrong hands.

You can make your own open-sourced DIY micro version of Boston Dynamics' Robot Spot for a few hundred dollars. The design is actually very refined and the documentation is impressive. This is extremely scalable and could get out of hand quickly.

Documentation: https://spotmicroai.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Source code: https://gitlab.com/custom_robots/spotmicroai

Official SpotMicroAI Slack Chat (1046 Registered Users): https://spotmicroai-inviter.herokuapp.com/

This example uses cheap, easily obtainable parts and has excellent movement characteristics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLittumdvQ

Here is an example of recent inverse kinematics benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqUjJDkn_ZA

Wow nice :) I can see that the idea is to use a simulator and reinforcement learning to train an AI to navigate unenven undergrounds.

Another killer upgrade would probably be to add cameras and use SfM so that you have a 3D environment map for proactive movement planning.

In this country we have the Second Amendment to our Constitution which explicitly limits laws against arms technology.

Besides export controls, what laws do you think we should implement?

A paintball gun is the least scary thing about any of Boston Dynamics' creepy-as-fuck robots. Their robots are amazing but something about them is very unsettling at a deeply ingrained instinctual or biological level.

Someone just had to attach a gun on a Spot. Great! This would have been cute parody if only we were living in a different time.

What laws can be made to stop these kinds of autonomous actions? Do current laws cover such acts of violence?

Why would you think that shooting and killing someone, except with a robot, would not be covered by current laws?

Because US laws have all sorts of rigid, incomplete, flawed, and contradicting provisions around whom is legally allowed to kill whom and under what circumstances.

It’s generally frowned upon.

It gets a lot trickier with an autonomous robot. Who is response for the death? The owner? What if the owner is a foreign corporation? Or even a known foreign person who has never been in the United States? If a remote crime is committed on your behalf by a robot, are you culpable?

There are a lot of open questions here that need some sort of resolution.

At some point there's someone who pressed the on button on that autonomous robot. Seems to me doing that isn't too different from pressing launch on a rocket or the trigger on a gun.

Sure, but what if that person was never in the country and isn't subject to the country's laws? Imagine the robot is shipped, on, by DHL. DHL drops off the box on the porch and leaves. The robot opens the box itself from the inside.

DHL is already indemnified as a package delivery service.

Do you believe that if someone in Canada ships a bomb to someone in the US an investigation between the two countries wouldn't be done?

From Canada to the US? Probably. But what about a crate that come from Russia? Or Brazil? Or Saudi Arabia?

There might be an investigation, but they aren't extraditing anyone!

Mantraps that use deadly force are illegal in the USA.

Could make for an interesting iteration on Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension.

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