Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Republicans in disarray!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Bark louder, little dog.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

This fight is for everything.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

People are complicated. Love is not.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / A Dog From the Uncanny Valley

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    Teri

    Wow, and I can hardly get my dog to go outside in the rain and forget about going on gravel! I kept thinking of the walking robots in star wars…..just think what that could do for paraplegics etc. Thanks for the vid, interesting.

  2. 2.

    akaoni

    This video posted from the big dog robot from (I believe) the same team as the video above has also been floating around the intertubes for a while…the buzzing gives it an otherworldly, space insect vibe…

    May have been posted here previously, but I’m too lazy to look.

  3. 3.

    El Cid

    This will help Dick Cheney in his future mobility needs, powered by his neutron star material heart.

  4. 4.

    bkny

    i am totally creeped out by all of these robot videos. what do the powers that be have in mind….

  6. 6.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    Note to self: If you ever work as a robot designer, spring for the extra material to add a head. Even if it’s just cosmetic, it can cut down the creepy factor far beyond the cost of the material and negligible extra work.

  8. 8.

    Allienne Goddard

    This will sound idiotic; I will never say this again. I actually felt a little bit like I felt when my daughter started exploring on her own. I found (I believe) the same robot a bit disturbing when I saw it being kicked and recovering equilibrium, but this is simply adorable.

  9. 9.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Allienne Goddard:

    I actually felt a little bit like I felt when my daughter started exploring on her own.

    I knew there were robots who posted here.

    You can just sense that sort of thing.

    (PS: Just teasing. Nice comment actually)

  10. 10.

    Punchy

    Why did they invent a giant flea robot?

    To play bass for the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

  12. 12.

    Allienne Goddard

    Mr. Pilgrim,

    Oh, no worries. I laughed when I read your comment. It is silly, but I felt a similar sense of excitement and pride, though much less extreme, of course.

    Also, do you have a link to explain how to quote or refer to your statement? I am a lurker by nature, and my google-fu is weak.

  13. 13.

    SP

    The BigDog video @2 is much cooler- it features someone kicking the dog, the dog losing its shit on ice, and doing happy robot dog hop at the end.

  14. 14.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Allienne Goddard: Oh it’s a “reply” link that should appear if you hover over the bottom right corner of my comment. Then you click it.

    I thought it was interesting, that the entire species might feel a sort of parental pride as this robotics thing really gets going. Or the same mix of pride, fear, and etc, knowing that from this day forward every spare cent you used to have will now go toward this object taking its first steps.

  15. 15.

    cleek

    now they just need to drop in an MCP and the avatar that they pulled from the designer’s computer-whiz daughter’s VR holoband.

    the Cylon Dogs have a plan.
    it involves chewing-up all of humanity’s shoes.

  16. 16.

    Fern

    Those robots are very intriguing – any ideas about how the technology might be applied?

  17. 17.

    Allienne Goddard

    @Bill E Pilgrim:

    Thank you. Very kind of you to explain.

    I’m one of those despised “singulitarians” you might have heard about. We are awful people, but I expect at least some of my offspring to be cybernetic, so for me it is like seeing another mother with a bouncing baby.

  18. 18.

    CJ_n_PA

    Its paid for by DARPA. It will only be a matter of time before the UAVs are directly packs of robot dogs on the ground to explore roads, caves and other inaccessible locations. I am sure the development is underway — project Dingo anyone.

  20. 20.

    Bruuuuce

    I always thought my future dog would look something like Rags, from Woody Allen’s Sleeper. But he would NOT leave little batteries around the house!

  22. 22.

    Randy P

    I’m already creeped out by the replacement of animals by CGI in Hollywood. I love watching animals working in movies when it’s done well. (Great use of animals: Homeward Bound. Terrible use of animals: Homeward Bound 2.)

    The live-action remake of 101 Dalmations (1996) used some real dogs, including the adults Pongo and Perdita, but most of the puppies were animated.

  24. 24.

    Randy P

    @Fern:

    Those robots are very intriguing – any ideas about how the technology might be applied?

    “Not creepy enough to stuff your late departed pet? Let us make it into a robot for you! We give you your choice of personalities from friendly to psychotic-chihuahua!”

  25. 25.

    gnomedad

    @Allienne Goddard:

    It is silly, but I felt a similar sense of excitement and pride, though much less extreme, of course.

    To say nothing of a sense of unease that you will soon no longer be in complete control.

  26. 26.

    gnomedad

    Now this is really eerie. It reminds me of the Star Wars “walking gas pump” droid. Who decided to call it “PETMAN”? I hope our robot overlords treat us as well ad John treats Lily.

  28. 28.

    Nimm

    I am a little uncomfortable about the fact that this robot was programmed to find human skin delicious.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I need to wait until lunchtime to watch the video and catch up on the comments. But I see this is an Open Thread . . . .

    So Howard Kurtz has a long article in this morning’s WaPo in which he gives Chuck Todd a great big ol’ sloppy tongue bath.

    And it’s so well-written, too! Here’s a sample:

    Tapping on a computer in a wrinkled blue shirt, Todd has just finished updating a blog post on Arlen Specter

    What that computer was doing in a wrinkled blue shirt, I’ll never know.

    /Groucho

  30. 30.

    Cyrus

    Interesting video. Yeah, blah blah blah the robots are learning, but the thing that jumped out at me was the joints. It must be easy to make something strong that can rotate in two dimensions, but that robot dog’s hips were moving from side to side as well as front and back, and maybe the knees were too. And not just waving around: moving with enough force to carry itself. Think about the really tiny bits of metal or plastic that must be in there. I very rarely see that kind of articulation on toys or machines, and when I do it lasts about a month before breaking.

    Now consider that a human has at least 60 more joints than that robot, just counting our digits. Barring extreme misuse or misfortune, they can be expected to last for 60 years in perfect condition and another 20 years or so with functionality impaired but still present. They’re solid enough to take a fair amount of punishment on their own, and they are constantly being broken in ways too tiny for us to notice and being rebuilt and repaired.

    Humanoid robots are common in fiction because that makes for interesting conflicts over what makes people people and all that boring stuff, but it might just turn out that the objectively best kind of tool for long-term, multi-purpose work looks a lot like a living thing.

  31. 31.

    akaoni

    @DB:

    Funny, but I like the robots better.

    @gnomedad:

    So awesome! It’s only a matter of time before we find R. Daneel Olivaw is among us…or maybe Roy Batty.

    I guess what I’m saying is I know that Boston Dynamics is part of the Military-Industrial complex, but the sci-fi geek in me still makes me <3 them.

  33. 33.

    bemused

    Morning Joe show spent a lot of time on Sestak saying the WH offered him a job to not run against Spector. I thought Joe & Uncle Pat were going to pee their pants in excitement over their question if the WH did an illegal bribe.

  34. 34.

    Maude

    @Bill E Pilgrim:
    You could have one of these robo dogs walk with you to work. How long does it take you to get to work these days?
    I don’t think a head would work. These are just creepy.
    Let us pray that they don’t ever use Tunch as a prototype for robo cat.
    If they did do robo cat, they could use them for community service instead of jail time. Get the offender to try and train little robo.

  35. 35.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @chrome agnomen:

    LOL.

    I refuse to link to the article, but Howie also manages (under the guise of being highly complimentary) to make Savannah Guthrie come across as the single most vapid creature on this side of the Atlantic. I honestly don’t think she is, but you wouldn’t know it from the Kaplan piece.

  38. 38.

    Rick Taylor

    Dkos diary on the incompetent job BP is doing setting up booms to protect the Gulf coastlines. Excellent pictures.
    __

    I lost my one copy of Photoshop, had to learn Gimp, and so the quality is sorta piece-of-shit-c*nt, but you get the idea. It’s fucking obvious. Boom is not meant to contain or catch oil. Boom is meant to divert oil. Boom must always be at an angle to the prevailing wind-wave action or surface current. Boom, at this angle, must always be layered in a fucking overlapped sort-of way with another string of boom. Boom must always divert oil to a catch basin or other container, from where it can be REMOVED FROM THE FUCKING AREA. Looks kinda involved, doesn’t it? It is. But if fucking proper fucking booming is done properly, you can remove most, by far most of the oil from a shoreline and you can do it day after day, week after week, month after month. You can prevent most, by far most of the shoreline from ever being touched by more than a few transient molecules of oil. Done fucking properly, a week after the oil stops coming ashore, no one, man nor beast, can ever tell there has been oil anywhere near that shoreline.

  39. 39.

    Martin

    Spent the previous weekend at the JPL open house looking at the cool rovers. They’re doing some really extremely cool stuff out there with our tax dollars.

  42. 42.

    cleek

    Boom is not meant to contain or catch oil. Boom is meant to divert oil.

    Boom may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. When not in use, Boom should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. Failure to do so relieves the makers of Boom, Wacky Products Incorporated, and its parent company, Global Chemical Unlimited, of any and all liability. Boom is not a toy. Do not taunt Boom.

  43. 43.

    WereBear

    Mr WereBear fell for the robot cat several years back. It was useful to play mind games with the real cats, and when it kept startling all the carbon based lifeforms in the middle of the night, I removed its batteries, put it in storage, and forgot about it.

    They have all the exasperating qualities, with none of the adorable cuddles.

  45. 45.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    @gnomedad: Why are all these robots headless? And if we keep pushing them around like that, eventually they’re gonna push back. Just saying.

  47. 47.

    Anne

    “Safe human interaction with possibly dangerous robots?” He’ll be eating his words when the robots become more intelligent and start killing us off.

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