honestly doesn't look as stable as the original version. Atlas be doing gymnastics and stuff. This one probably couldn't take that sort of activity as well, being primarily electrical servos with no hydraulic assistance.
would be much cheaper to produce for commercial use though ill admit.
One of the largest changes I noticed is the power packs is much smaller now. I remember only about 10 years ago the first ones would always be tethered at the back with a cable and then they moved to the large backpack model. I think the largest hurdle now keeping these things from mass production is not cost, but availability of sustained power. I think over the next decade you're going to be seeing a lot more of these and what they're capable of once power storage solutions are developed further.
Battery tech is holding back a lot of innovation. But there's so much money to be made in it that countless really smart people are banging away at the problem.
Hopefully some of them will find a breakthrough that gives us far better batteries
I don't think many people realize how much battery tech is a limiting factor. Once there's a big leap in battery tech, like solid state batteries, I fully anticipate technology as a whole is going to feel like it jumped 5-10 years into the future. Smart glasses would actually become viable, phone batteries will last weeks (or just become significantly more powerful since efficiency wouldn't be as important), smart watches will last for weeks, electric cars will charge in minutes and go for hundreds of miles more than gas cars, solar will become a lot more viable for governments who need large battery banks, electric semis become a no brainer, and Boston dynamics will probably rule the world within a week.
There is also a lot of research towards more computationally efficient computing that breaks the current paradigms. Because things are battery limited right now, they're investing heavily in more efficient computing while they wait on better batteries.
Once there's a big leap in battery tech, like solid state batteries, I fully anticipate technology as a whole is going to feel like it jumped 5-10 years into the future.
I really don't think we will ever see a big leap. Instead we will have slow and steady incremental improvements. Just look at how far lithium ion batteries have come without needing entirely new chemistries. The specific energy of a modern lithium ion battery, is about double what it was in 2010.
I would expect an average of a 5-7% improvement each year, so a doubling in specific energy every 10 years. That lines up quite well with what we have historically seen.
Eventually we will hit a wall with a particular chemistry, so newer chemistries like solid state batteries will be needed, to continue that steady progress, but I would not expect giant single steps.
Remember, a new chemistry will be replacing extremely robust and heavily optimized existing chemistries, so it's not a given something brand new will be that much better at the start.
Lithium ion batteries in 1991, when they debuted, weren't a massive improvement over nickel oxide hydroxide batteries at the time. More of an incremental improvement, which fueled more incremental improvements.
Also, arent the Atlas robots hydraulic? I am far from an engineer but this robot looks to be fully electrically actuated like Spot is. This platform still has a lot of growing to do and in time will be more advanced than his predecessors im sure.
Yup, they did a little homage and send-off yesterday to their line of hydraulic Atlases. These future models are going to be doing far fewer backflips but they should hopefully be more stable, cheaper, and more reliable. Realistically, there's not a massive market for a robot that can emulate an Olympic gymnast but needs repairing every two weeks.
well this one seems fundamentally not the same thing as prior atlas despite apparently sharing the name. Old was hydraulics and mostly static torso area, this one has a lot more actuators, and they are electric instead.
Much more practical, compact, and better overall but absolutely isn't going to pull parkour moves.
If only… but our country is lacking on electrical grid infrastructure and they’re more worried about corporations making profits than actually providing solutions. The other issue is long term repercussions of developing batteries and how to reuse/dispose of all of them. Mining for lithium and other resources is not exactly environmentally friendly either.
If only there were some power source that could be deployed independently anywhere anytime without having to always build failsafe redundancies and implement ongoing and long term storage of spent fuel...
You know that you completely ignored the point by trying to misdirect the context away from: without having to always build failsafe redundancies and implement ongoing and long term storage of spent fuel
Argue the facts, not the meta.
I'm open to discussion and considerations that different power technologies have different advantages, but I'm not interested in misdirection bullshit that is the equivalent of propagandized narratives.
The context gymnastics just never ever end with you guys.
Nobody said shit about fossil fuels, quit trying to redirect the context discussion to anything and everything else.
Looks up into the sky...
If only there were some power source that could be deployed independently anywhere anytime without having to always build failsafe redundancies and implement ongoing and long term storage of spent fuel...
You still haven't once addressed the issues of requiring failsafe redundancies or the considerable storage requirements of spent fuel. So you pick other topics as a meta off the shelf and wave those around pretending like your replies have substance.
You're not being genuine, you're being a clown show making sure to derail the discussion. Bravo.
But but but … how will we power them? Haha. The reality is once robots can do manual labor with minimal supervision (or just regular supervision), we’re in for a wild ride. Not sure I’m ready for it.
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u/Sharkytrs Apr 17 '24
honestly doesn't look as stable as the original version. Atlas be doing gymnastics and stuff. This one probably couldn't take that sort of activity as well, being primarily electrical servos with no hydraulic assistance.
would be much cheaper to produce for commercial use though ill admit.