• Handle robot reimagined (Boston Dynamics)
    19 replies, posted
https://youtu.be/5iV_hB08Uns
They look like mechanical ostriches.
First they take the outback then they take our jobs.
Good, hardworking emus will lose their jobs to these things too. Perhaps this can be a cause for peace between the races of man and very scary leggy anger bird.
Unbelievable, it looks complete sci fi shit that someone would see in a near to moderate future movie except they are completely real.
The amazing thing about this is how quickly they're able to shift their weight around according to whatever weight they grab, that's fucking amazing robotics.
This is impressive but look at them, they're literally doing it in a warehouse. Soon this will eliminate warehousing jobs, office jobs that manage the warehouse employees, and so on. These robots don't get paid or get tired and they pay for themselves probably before 1 business quarter. Cool, but sad at the same time, considering Capitalism is all about maximizing profits and America is notorious..for..well yeah.
Maybe all of the former warehouse workers will instead be shifted position as the robot moral supporters, their job will consist of following the robots and saying phrases like "good job robot, you can do it!" while being paid exactly the same amount of money as before.
Gotta put the large battery pack somewhere, might as well use it as a counterweight!
Obligatory "really slow an inefficient" comment So damn cool though, I wonder if they intend on doing a similar thing with these leggy boys as they did with the spot mini? (that being the idea of consumers having the ability to write their own software for the bots while the platform itself handles all of the movement and balancing) Im surprised just how damn fast these things can accelerate, even in such a small space the one stacking the boxes was flying.
Remember when "robots will do all of our menial labor for us" was supposed to be a good thing? It can still be if society catches up with the idea of providing some sort of alternate income instead of people simply starving to death if they can't get bottom-tier jobs.
That counterweight is very cool
These things look too organic, it's creepy. I love it. It's amazing what they've created once they stopped trying recreate a person. We're really limited in what our shapes can do, and the only reason nature made us like this is because it's extremely energy efficient. But a robot can be any shape and size.
If those boxes are reasonably heavy, then these things actually look quite fast compared to a human. Plus the whole not taking breaks or demanding a living wage thing.
While it will create a small explosion of maintenance jobs, the menial workers are out - yeah. You replace a warehouse team/supervisor with robot + maintenance and maybe a pseudo-programmer dude on staff/call to tweak issues. And sure, they might kind of look inefficent (if those are light boxes); but that's assuming a human is going to work perfectly, all time. And never need breaks. Or slack off. Or have to tend to bodily functions. The right kind of warehouses could run 24/7 without having to worry about nearly as much labor. It's wild as it is scary what it'll do to the job market.
It's wild to imagine some kind of detachable battery pack so the robots don't even need to sit there charging, just go to a charging station and swap out. 23.9/7 worker at least.
Ain't ever going to happen in America, even if we have UBI the government will still be trying to pull the rug out of everyone who needs it and make you jump through constant hoops to qualify. Then again our economic system could just collapse, then who knows what will happen.
The whole point of UBI is that everyone automatically qualifies. If you have to jump through hoops to get it, you don't have UBI, you just have welfare.
Its been coming since a long time. Humans are too useful to be wasting their time doing menial jobs. I sure as hell ain't going to waste my life packing boxes
Shit like this is so cool to me. I've worked in this sort of environment before and I never liked watching people destroy their bodies and well-being in the name of quickness and efficiency. The only thing is, if we can get this kind of automation widespread and in full use in the next 20-30 years, I wonder how society will change? What will people do with their time if they're laid off and get their jobs taken by robots, but they don't have the skills/ability to do another job? UBI would help make sure no one drowns in poverty, but people would eventually get bored of doing nothing. Maybe it'd be a good thing for arts and creative outlets, but I wonder if we'll see any rises in people committing crimes just out of sheer boredom.
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