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  • Hacker News
  • If this Silicon Valley forum is full of people denying the achievement, and the US goverment is banning the technology and competition, I expect the engineers and scientists in China will pull much further ahead.

    The US is behaving like an industry incumbent, like Blackberry when the iPhone came out. That the US could fall behind on technology seems to have not crossed many minds. It will be very hard to overcome that first mover advantage.

  • > If this Silicon Valley forum There are people from all over the planet hre.

    More like "If this forum created by a guy from Silicon Valley..."

  • All the snarky comments about cars or other vehicles doing it faster seem to miss the point that none of these attempt to mimic/improve on the running movements of humans... but I guess you do you, this is an impressive robotics feat in my oponion.
  • We've been seeing humanoid robots walking, jumping, climbing stairs for at least a decade.
  • It would've been impressive 15 years ago. People seem to forget that first humanoid robot capable of competently walking was showcased by Honda 26 years ago. over 20 years ago, the updated version was capable of running and climbing stairs.

    So a purpose-built (look at the thing - running is all it can actually do) two legged fast running robot doesn't seem all that impressive today. Cool? Sure! Useful? Not so much. Impressive? Whatever... it's just showing off at this point, much like Boston Dynamic's Atlas series that went nowhere (in contrast to this machine: this one did half marathon distance:)

  • Did this thing travel thru a time portal and ask for a boots, clothes sunglasses and motorcycle too? this stuff seems to be evolving very quickly now. wasnt that long ago these things were legs only with cables and bunch of humans holding it.
  • If you're going to compare mechanical things to humans, Google tells me a Top Fuel Dragster could do it in about 1.9 seconds, finishing at about 320 kph or so.

    Machines using fossil fuels have been able to do more than men or beast for centuries now.

  • Stop moving the goalposts. This is a bipedal robot. I want to see a top fuel dragster accomplish the same running on two legs.
  • i totally agree. I read this and was like i bet the prius in my driveway could do it a lot faster too, who cares.
  • Usain Volt
  • Usain Nuts and Bolts
  • A machine is stronger and faster than a human? Shocking. Next we'll learn that cranes can lift heavy loads faster than a human with ropes and pulleys.
  • >> a humanoid robot that can competently run

    > A machine is stronger and faster than a human? Shocking. Next we'll learn that cranes can lift heavy loads faster than a human with ropes and pullys.

    It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields that they know absolutely nothing about. Numerous developers, informed by maybe a YouTube video, Reddit thread, or equally misguided explainer post on another developer’s blog, have tried to ‘correct’ me about topics in a field in which I hold a degree and have plenty of professional experience. Other tech people might be impressed because they have matching blind spots in their mental models of the world, but people who actually understand, rather than baselessly assuming they understand, see someone being smug about their own ignorance.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/engineer%27s_disease

  • a bullet is faster than any car. the point is, it's a humanoid type robot, not just a faster vehicle.
  • It's crazy how these records are just quietly being broken by humanoid robots. What's next? What a time to be alive.
  • Horses are faster than humans. I don't see them suddenly taking over based on that fact alone.
  • >What a time to be alive.

    Totally. In a little while, you might even be able to marry a robot and even raise robot kids.

    What a time to be alive indeed!

    I highly doubt that that it will happen. But just mocking the celebration of paving a path towards the death of all things that makes being a human worth all the pain..

  • > What's next?

    Killer robots which can't be outrun and which can give chase through urban landscapes

    > What a time to be alive

    Indeed.

  • How many times/long can it do that before being recharged? Can it do other walking and mobility tasks?

    The headline by itself doesn't really mean much, anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations. The question is can it have that kind of performance without completely foregoing most other tasks and abilities.

  • > anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations

    Anyone could build a robot that could run on two legs at that speed for 100m? I think someone would have done it before. Even the other robots in the race were slower.

  • > How many times/long can it do that before being recharged? Can it do other walking and mobility tasks?

    You should ask those questions in the same spirit re a 1 vs a 5 vs a 20 year old. May lead to some insight on development-level-based capability.

  • I agree there, but IMO these are problems that can be fairly easily solved.

    My bigger problem is that this is labelled as "humanoid robot". IMO that is more like some machine gadget that looks very remotely like some non-descript model of a humanoid, but not anything at all like a humanoid robot. I am a bit spoiled by Blade Runner here - these robots right now come nowhere close to anything like that right now, even if they run faster than Usain Bolt (but they run differently, so they are cheating; look at the angles, the tiny feet, the cheating in the hip area, the barely existing head - so many things are CHEATING here. I can not call this humanoid robot).

  • I keep reading about these things in the news, and they are nice marketing stance. But I still wonder how far we are away from humanoid robots being commonplace in every day life. I don't share the fear some seem to have towards robots, just because a world filled with robots was something I dreamed of as kid. But I still wonder about the cost and feasibility of robot police officers, or cashiers etc.
  • I'd be fine with it if they were alive. If not, no.
  • Well - in a way this is nice, just for documented record, even though a bit useless too.

    However had, I watched it, and I have some problems here.

    First: these robots have barely any head. I think for a humanoid robot, you need to have a proper head with some weight in relation to the rest, otherwise it is just SIMULATING being humanoid. Then the feet; this is also a problem. Specifically the feet are not like human feet at all, they are more like stubs or elongated stubs with push-back being made-super easy. Usain Bolt does not have such short jokes of feet, so this comparison is unfair. Same with the hip area - I am sorry, but the hip structure of these robots is ABSOLUTELY not at all like a human. I am not even calling these humanoids.

    Don't get me wrong, it is good that science and technology progresses and such robots may do things that robots solely with a wheel alone, may be unable to do, such as running, climbing, you name it. But I simply can not call them "humanoid". They are, IMO, simply not humanoid and not even humanoid-like.

    For "proper" science fiction, have a look at the first Blade Runner movie, but also the first terminator. Initially Cameron thought Arnold was unfit because he was massive and the infiltrating cyborg should melt into the environment easily (which was better in Terminator 2, T1000 was kind of more "logical", but I hated the background storyline in Terminator 2, it made no sense to me, no clue why people preferred that over the original terminator movie). I am aware that these running robots don't aim to be a look-alike replacement, but they simply also should not be called humanoid robots right now. They simply are not humanoid. Thus one should not call them that way.

  • There will be no escape. Prepare to be outperformed in all the things.
  • That's what she said
  • You won't be outperformed in humanity. And that's precisely the point. People will start rejecting AI and robots en masse, because they'll get disgusted by it, the same way you are disgusted when eating a "powder shake" kind of meal compared to a whole, earthy, flavorful, home-made meal
  • Not in feeling emotions.
  • My bar is the Kilian Jornet test. Once a humanoid robot can do everything he’s done within the same time constraints it’s officially over.

    Until then human is the best at navigating and moving across various terrain.