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Robots

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Volkonski
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Robots

#1

Post by Volkonski »

Digidog is a Boston Dynamics "Spot" model robot.

Digidog, a Robotic Dog Used by the Police, Stirs Privacy Concerns
The New York Police Department has been testing Digidog, which it says can be deployed in dangerous situations and keep officers safer, but some fear it could become an aggressive surveillance tool.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/27/nyre ... tw-nytimes
One of the victims managed to escape and called the police, who showed up early Tuesday morning at the apartment on East 227th Street, unsure if the armed men were still inside.

The police decided it was time to deploy Digidog, a 70-pound robotic dog with a loping gait, cameras and lights affixed to its frame, and a two-way communication system that allows the officer maneuvering it remotely to see and hear what is happening.

The police said the robot can see in the dark and assess how safe it is for officers to enter an apartment or building where there may be a threat.

Snip-

“The N.Y.P.D. has been using robots since the 1970s to save lives in hostage situations & hazmat incidents,” the department said on Twitter. “This model of robot is being tested to evaluate its capabilities against other models in use by our emergency service unit and bomb squad.”
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Robots

#2

Post by Volkonski »

The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting
Workers with college degrees and specialized training once felt relatively safe from automation. They aren’t.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/busi ... 9984224256
These robots are here to merge purchase orders into columns J and K of next quarter’s revenue forecast, and transfer customer data from the invoicing software to the Oracle database. They are unassuming software programs with names like “Auxiliobits — DataTable To Json String,” and they are becoming the star employees at many American companies.

Some of these tools are simple apps, downloaded from online stores and installed by corporate I.T. departments, that do the dull-but-critical tasks that someone named Phil in Accounting used to do: reconciling bank statements, approving expense reports, reviewing tax forms. Others are expensive, custom-built software packages, armed with more sophisticated types of artificial intelligence, that are capable of doing the kinds of cognitive work that once required teams of highly-paid humans.

White-collar workers, armed with college degrees and specialized training, once felt relatively safe from automation. But recent advances in A.I. and machine learning have created algorithms capable of outperforming doctors, lawyers and bankers at certain parts of their jobs. And as bots learn to do higher-value tasks, they are climbing the corporate ladder.

The trend — quietly building for years, but accelerating to warp speed since the pandemic — goes by the sleepy moniker “robotic process automation.” And it is transforming workplaces at a pace that few outsiders appreciate. Nearly 8 in 10 corporate executives surveyed by Deloitte last year said they had implemented some form of R.P.A. Another 16 percent said they planned to do so within three years.
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Robots

#3

Post by johnpcapitalist »

Volkonski wrote: Thu Mar 25, 2021 2:46 pm The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting
Workers with college degrees and specialized training once felt relatively safe from automation. They aren’t.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/06/busi ... 9984224256
These robots are here to merge purchase orders into columns J and K of next quarter’s revenue forecast, and transfer customer data from the invoicing software to the Oracle database. They are unassuming software programs with names like “Auxiliobits — DataTable To Json String,” and they are becoming the star employees at many American companies.

Some of these tools are simple apps, downloaded from online stores and installed by corporate I.T. departments, that do the dull-but-critical tasks that someone named Phil in Accounting used to do: reconciling bank statements, approving expense reports, reviewing tax forms. Others are expensive, custom-built software packages, armed with more sophisticated types of artificial intelligence, that are capable of doing the kinds of cognitive work that once required teams of highly-paid humans.

White-collar workers, armed with college degrees and specialized training, once felt relatively safe from automation. But recent advances in A.I. and machine learning have created algorithms capable of outperforming doctors, lawyers and bankers at certain parts of their jobs. And as bots learn to do higher-value tasks, they are climbing the corporate ladder.

The trend — quietly building for years, but accelerating to warp speed since the pandemic — goes by the sleepy moniker “robotic process automation.” And it is transforming workplaces at a pace that few outsiders appreciate. Nearly 8 in 10 corporate executives surveyed by Deloitte last year said they had implemented some form of R.P.A. Another 16 percent said they planned to do so within three years.
Sure, processing expense reports is a dying job. But Concur and other packages to do that have been around for 20-plus years.

And low-level software libraries like the "Auxiliobits" example are a tiny part of a C# application suite -- they are small-scale building blocks that make life a tiny bit easier for developers. There are indeed millions of easily obtained software components that have been made available courtesy of the Open Source software innovation paradigm. But they don't put many people out of work because they don't do enough to offset the rapidly increasing complexity of a given software project. In particular, testing and back end scalability and security issues are making a formerly trivial project orders of magnitude harder.

And doctors are not going to lose jobs because of AI. Yes, AI engines are better at diagnosing melanomas than experienced dermatologists, but if you look at the percentage of their time they spend on that task, it's minimal. Instead of unemployment, they'll be able to spend their time on more aggressive curing of more advanced melanomas, which there will be more of because AI will substantially reduce the number of false negatives.

We've been hearing about how computers are going to replace everyone's jobs for as long as there have been computers. Yet employment is higher now than ever before. Just another filler piece with nothing new.
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Re: Robots

#4

Post by MN-Skeptic »

I was 1/2 of a corporate tax department beginning in 1979. It's been about 30 years since I left the tax department, but I can still remember our federal i.d. number because I manually entered it on so many corporate tax returns. So here I was with a master's degree in business taxation doing the mundane work of filling in forms and adding up columns of numbers on a calculator, at least in my earliest years in accounting. Computer spreadsheets were a godsend! I got out of the tax department before they started using tax software, but I always thought that made a lot of sense. Your tax professionals should be strategizing on how best to save taxes, and how to handle tricky tax situations. It's just a waste of a high paid professional to have them inputting numbers on tax returns. You certainly review the returns for accuracy, but data input is tedious and subject to easy errors.

And while I'm at it, I'll put in a plug for administrative support personnel. I stopped working back in 1999, so maybe it's changed, but I doubt it. I always thought it was foolish when the company cut back on secretaries. Yes, employees can use a word processor or input their own travel expenses, but that's really a poor use of sales and marketing folks, for example.
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Re: Robots

#5

Post by Volkonski »



Reuters
@Reuters
WATCH: Robotics company Boston Dynamics has developed a new warehouse worker robot. ‘Stretch’ is the first robot for one task that the company has built, based on requests received from companies around the world https://reut.rs/3fkkcel
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Re: Robots

#6

Post by RTH10260 »

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Re: Robots

#7

Post by RTH10260 »

Bipedal robot developed at Oregon State makes history by learning to run, completing 5K
July 25, 2021

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Cassie the robot, invented at Oregon State University and produced by OSU spinout company Agility Robotics, has made history by traversing 5 kilometers, completing the route in just over 53 minutes.

Cassie was developed under the direction of robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Since Cassie’s introduction in 2017, OSU students funded by the National Science Foundation have been exploring machine learning options for the robot.

Cassie, the first bipedal robot to use machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain, completed the 5K on Oregon State’s campus untethered and on a single battery charge.

“The Dynamic Robotics Laboratory students in the OSU College of Engineering combined expertise from biomechanics and existing robot control approaches with new machine learning tools,” said Hurst, who co-founded Agility in 2017. “This type of holistic approach will enable animal-like levels of performance. It’s incredibly exciting.”

Cassie, with knees that bend like an ostrich’s, taught itself to run with what’s known as a deep reinforcement learning algorithm. Running requires dynamic balancing – the ability to maintain balance while switching positions or otherwise being in motion – and Cassie has learned to make infinite subtle adjustments to stay upright while moving.



https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/bipe ... pleting-5k

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Re: Robots

#8

Post by RTH10260 »

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Re: Robots

#9

Post by AndyinPA »

Cool! :dance:
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Re: Robots

#10

Post by AndyinPA »

"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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Re: Robots

#11

Post by RTH10260 »

FYI
HYUNDAI MOTOR GROUP COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF BOSTON DYNAMICS FROM SOFTBANK
Hyundai x Boston Dynamics
  • Hyundai Motor Group acquires a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank, following regulatory approvals and other conditions
    The Group expects synergy between the companies to accelerate the development of cutting-edge robotics featuring advanced mobility, manipulation and vision capabilities
    With Boston Dynamics, the Group will create a robotics value chain, from robot component manufacturing to smart logistics solutions
BOSTON/SEOUL/TOKYO, June 21, 2021 – Hyundai Motor Group (the Group), Boston Dynamics, Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp. (SoftBank), today announced the completion of the Group’s acquisition of a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank, following the receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The deal valued the mobile robot firm at US$1.1 billion. Additional financial details were not disclosed.

Post-closing, the Group holds an 80 percent stake in Boston Dynamics and SoftBank, through one of its affiliates, retains the remaining 20 percent stake.


https://www.bostondynamics.com/hyundai- ... cquisition
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Re: Robots

#12

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo ... uxbndlbing
The Boston Dynamics robots can parkour now and there is truly no escape

Can someone please stop Boston Dynamics? It’s pretty obvious they’re building robot death machines over there. Someone needs to stop this.

They’ve got robot dogs opening doors so we can’t hide in closets from them during their hostile takeover. They can jog, too, so we’re not out running them. And don’t even think about hiding up the stairs.

They even taught them how to dance so that when they’ve completed their takeover, they can dance on our graves.

And now, even if we try to get some height and hide, they don’t even need steps. They can just parkour their way up to us and get us out the paint.

Yup. That’s right. They taught the robots how to parkour.

These things are basically ninja death machines at this point, yo. Boston Dynamics must be stopped.

We have so much proof that this isn’t a great idea. The Terminator movies. iRobot. Transformers. And yet here we are, watching them develop these things right before our eyes.

Where is John Connor when you need him?
Scary video at link.
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Re: Robots

#13

Post by bill_g »

They will take yer jarb.

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Re: Robots

#14

Post by Volkonski »



Not a robot but wow!
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Robots

#15

Post by Volkonski »



Good time to avoid driving between Houston and Dallas.
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Re: Robots

#16

Post by Foggy »

Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Robots

#17

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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Re: Robots

#18

Post by Frater I*I »

I for one...welcome our new robot overlords....
"He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see, He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He's got the answers to ease my curiosity, He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity"

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Re: Robots

#19

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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Re: Robots

#20

Post by Volkonski »

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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Re: Robots

#21

Post by raison de arizona »

Dr. Faris Durmo Biber MD., PhD. @Dr_FarrisD wrote: A friend was in Dubai. He told me he unmasked indoors. A robot came up to him and told him to mask himself. And Then proceeded to warn that he would call the Police if he didnt abide. Then started to count to 10. 🤣😂
Maybe they bought these? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN25Z2IN
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Re: Robots

#22

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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Re: Robots

#23

Post by RTH10260 »

Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco
In a series of incidents, the GM subsidiary lost contact with its autonomous vehicles, leaving them frozen in traffic and trapping human drivers.
A Cruise vehicle leaving a parking lot in San Francisco California U.S


AARIAN MARSHALLBUSINESS
JUL 8, 2022 7:00 AM

AROUND MIDNIGHT ON June 28, Calvin Hu was driving with his girlfriend near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park when he pulled up at an intersection behind two white and orange autonomous Chevrolet Bolts operated by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. Another was stopped to his right in the adjacent lane. The light turned green but the cars, which operate in the city without drivers, didn’t move.

When Hu prepared to reverse and go around the frozen vehicles, he says, he noticed that several more Cruise vehicles had stopped in the lanes behind him. Hu, another driver, and a paratransit bus were trapped in a robotaxi sandwich.

After a few minutes of bemused waiting, Hu says, he resorted to driving over the curbs of the street’s median to escape. When he returned on foot a few minutes later to see whether the situation had resolved, the Cruise vehicles hadn’t budged. A person who appeared to work for the company had parked in the intersection, Hu says, as if to indicate the street was closed, and was trying to direct traffic away from the immobile self-driving cars. Hu estimates that the robot car blockade, which has not previously been reported, lasted at least 15 minutes.

The Cruise vehicles that trapped Hu weren’t the only autonomous cars holding up traffic in San Francisco that night. Internal messages seen by WIRED show that nearly 60 vehicles were disabled across the city over a 90-minute period after they lost touch with a Cruise server. As many as 20 cars, some of them halted in crosswalks, created a jam in the city’s downtown in an incident first reported by the San Francisco Examiner and detailed in photos posted to Reddit. In a written statement the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the state's autonomous vehicle operations, said it was aware of the incident and would meet with Cruise to “gather additional information.”



https://www.wired.com/story/cruises-robot-car-outages/
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Re: Robots

#24

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Autonomous Vehicles thread, RTH??
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Re: Robots

#25

Post by raison de arizona »

Film The Police LA @FilmThePoliceLA wrote:A food delivery robot forces it’s way across a police crime scene.
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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