You might be sitting wondering when the likes of Atlas and SpotMini are finally going to to take over the world but if you learn to look at them from the eyes of an expert, you’ll find you have nothing to worry about.
First, you need to consider the margins of error that are involved in the robot’s activities. Those created by Boston Dynamics have been given a much larger margin of error than most robots. Essentially, this means that rather than being “perfect” they’re happy with being “just good enough.”
Take the video below as an example. Atlas may look terrifying but he’s been hard-wired with the Boston Dynamics state of mind – that if there is a probability that something will go wrong it will still take the chance.
When experiments with movement are done on even trickier terrains, such as grass or snow, the margin of error grows. Thrishantha Nanayakkara, reader in design engineering and robotics at Imperial College London, explains “Boston Dynamics do not worry about sub-millimetre accuracy, they worry about the functional accuracy” and that “the important thing is to finish the calculation within the deadline.”
In the case of BigDog, one of the company’s earlier machines, the calculation was working out how to stay upright and the deadline is the defined as the moment it falls over and can no longer right itself. These large margins of error mean that there are frequent mistakes.
Another thing is, although they may seem it, the robots aren’t fully autonomous. In order for them to achieve their tasks, they still need a little help from humans. “It’s mostly done by humans and remote control, but there is onboard computing happening,” Nanayakkara explains. “There are some very nice controllers, but it has some assistance from remote interference. There is a human in the loop, but there is an element of autonomy.”
This means that they don’t have the ability to decide what to do. In the SpotMini video above, for example, while it might be clear that it knows where the handle of the door is, it has been commanded to go through that door and that requires another level of planning that sets it’s course of action.
Instead of considering them to be ‘live’ things, remember that they’re only machines. Nanayakkara might believe that there will be room for humans and robots to coexist, but that is primarily because he believes “Human value is not in the body, it is in the mind.”
Similarly, Ioannis Havoutis, a researcher in robotics focusing on leg locomotion at the Oxford Robotics Institute, addresses the common worries about robots under the control of ‘evil’ individuals or groups. He explained, “These can be used in a bad manner, but it’s the same thing with every other technology. It can be used for good and it can be used for bad. There are a lot of positives that we can expect from developing robotic technology.”
Furthermore, for Nanayakkara, Boston Dynamics should be commended for showing the competency of it’s machines. Even if robots do take over a large proportion of manufacturing jobs, this will probably mean that the value of human life will be elevated and, in the long run, it will surely only make things easier for us as a species.
“They are picking up very difficult problems even for humans to deal with and then demonstrating the capability of robots to deal with this. It shouldn’t be generalised to everything. We understand how to solve very complex dynamic problems, but it doesn’t mean we understand the mind.”
Now the next time a Boston Dynamics video goes viral you won’t have to watch it and feel fearful. Instead, you can admire the skilled engineering and controls that allow the robots to work, and understand that things can still go wrong.