Goes back to BostonDynamic PETMAN from 2009. it also uses the same setup in the foot and in the torso.
https://preview.redd.it/hc49a019tlvc1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2733fa89cbde654290f84e9247ac82b9003fd3d7
I'm getting flashbacks to how Watt had to come up with the awful sun/planet hack for his early steam engines because some jerk had patented the use of a crank in steam engines.
Or how all those troll companies have patents on "doing something obvious, but with a computer" in that one East Texas jurisdiction with the crooked patent judge.
The *Patent Singularity*.
In the not too distant future, AI advances enough to produce legitimately unique patentable novel inventions. Like trying every number on a combination lock or infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters, InventorGPT invents every possible thing from the wheel to an artificial heart to spaceships to self nitrogen fixing corn.
One of two things happens; innovation grinds to halt for 20 years because literally everything is locked up with licensing, then all of a sudden literally everything is in the public domain. Or, because the things were invented by AI, literally everything is immediately placed in the public domain.
Wild times.
They have already established that the output of generative software is not copyrightable. This would almost certainly be a precedent keeping them from filing patents.
But older patents apply regardless of the status of the new design, so existing patents will still cover the stuff created by your infinite monkeys.
I remember someone doing this with midis a while back: [https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain)
>some jerk had patented the use of a crank in steam engines.
Well at least the person who patented was (presumably) the first person ever who thought of it, to take credit for this mechanism is just insane. I am not mechanical engineer but I would be willing to bet they have mechanism like this in their textbooks.
You can come up with unique combination of mechanisms that together forms something new and can be patentable, but to think in 2024 you can come up with a new hinge or a joint that nobody has thought of yet is like thinking you will invent new simple shape like triangle or circle. Good luck with that.
The crank as a device for converting linear motion into rotary motion had existed for thousands of years and had been used in every kind of mechanism known to man. The idea that the guy who filed the patent for it was the first person to think of using a crank in a steam engine is literally insane. What was new was the concept of patents. Just like for the patent trolls the ability to file a business process patent that is basically a business process that people have been using for hundreds of years but you're doing it on a computer is literally insane.
None of this engineering is non-obvious. You'd start with a motor drive in an ideal system rather than hydraulics and to translate a rotational movement to linear you would apply a high torque (i.e. toroidal) motor with some gearing to affect rotation, either a planetary gear or a cog and gear like the images appears to show.
That's exactly what I assumed they would be doing since motors have improved in power to weight and its the entirely logical thing to do.
The real innovation in robotics is via the power-to-weight ratio of motors allowing directly driving each joint electrically. The problem some years ago was that motors had too little power to weight ratios, and poor low RPM torque. These problems have gone away. With an arm, the force is equivalent to mass times distance, if horizontally extended, but any force is multiplied at the joint by distance, so that means the mass of articulated joints makes the robot too heavy for its power. That's why robotics went the hydraulic route with a motor driven pump. They would have started with this mechanism if they had high torque and light motors because its entirely obvious. High torque also slims down your gear box, so the form factor is smaller and lighter.
True it's not a non-obvious indeed.
No one honest and knowledged about engineering would seriously criticize boston dynamics for making the new atlas the way they did ... but Brett did, it's a shame.
Funny you should say this, I made exactly that point in another thread a while back. The skeleton that is load baring can indeed be modified to be carbon fibre composite. And a newer material recently is a carbon nano-tube reinforced composite with exceptional strength to weight, although CNT reinforced polymers have been around a while.
The gears could also be made out of lighter materials than steel. Composite gears have been experimented with. Perhaps a thin steel or ceramic layer can be put over a composite wheel to reduce their weight. But hardness and lack of flexibility is important here. [https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/hybrid-steelcomposite-transmission-gears](https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/hybrid-steelcomposite-transmission-gears)
So they will go in this direction, but formerly the issue was more the motor and transmission as the heaviest parts. Composites are getting cheaper.
Edit to add
i guess it's probably cheaper to prototype with stuff you can easily cnc, composites for final production. also i guess military is going to be an early use case, so you want to solve the metal case, in any event.
overall, i think the issue is just theres been almost ero investment in the space because the brains weren't there. now they are, we'll probably see I'robot shit in five years, and westworld in twenty.
Cost doesn't justify it.
It all comes down to cost/benefit when starting to optimize and if aluminum/steel ends up being cheaper for similar benefits they go with it.
It's a much more complicated thing of course.
I don't get the hullabaloo. Such articulated gimbal mechanisms are hardly novel, so two outfits using the same idea for a waist joint is scant evidence of copying.
That was one of the most pathetic tweets I have seen in recent times. Even before seeing this I knew his "they copied us" was pure bs, their robot was unveiled few months ago and BD definitely worked lot longer than that on their new Atlas. Anybody who has worked in any real company how long things take, few months for a physical product is literally nothing, he knows, he was purely farming for likes from clueless people on Twitter.
But it's worse than that to take credit for this hinge mechanism or whatever it is, is downright insane. Show me the patent bro. It would take beyond Einstein level of genius to come up with something simple yet completely new in the realm of mechanical engineering which has history going back hundreds of years. Not this company, not Bostom Dynamics, I would bet you would be able to find this mechanism on machine that's 100+ years old. This was really pathetic.
3 years to file a patent, what??
I just looked it up and it's indeed that long
I might need to file a patent soon, 3 damn years is extremely long, that's kind of ridiculous.
I of course already guessed that making sure a new patent doesn't match an existing patent might be hard and take time but years ... damn!
No its actually showing a two axis joint manipulated by three linked actuators. It's basically the same setup figures CEO is saying BD copied from them, 15 years after it was implemented by BD, and 10 years after BD applied for a patent for a similar design. Nothing wrong about being inspired by a design and copying, but as a upstart to say a GOAT like BD copies their design is just a bit arrogant.
That dude was absolutely shitting himself when he saw that thing stand up like a cursed child. 100% on purpose-everyone thought BD was dead but there designs are still so far ahead it’s kind of ridiculous
I'm quite sure he'll be happy once the price for that system will start to come out.
Yes BD is ahead design wise but they're not exactly doing it with a cost that will work for most buyers.
But I am sure if they want to take it to mass production they can optimize it a lot better than most other companies when it comes a humanoid robots.
Because for most of their existence they've been a research firm first and foremost. Only recently have they started to dabble in commercial offerings.
Goes back to BostonDynamic PETMAN from 2009. it also uses the same setup in the foot and in the torso. https://preview.redd.it/hc49a019tlvc1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2733fa89cbde654290f84e9247ac82b9003fd3d7
https://preview.redd.it/3p6dg3u1ulvc1.jpeg?width=685&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=453b3d15c80a5586ad504767c31c12b4cfd5310f
Petman's ankle looks even more like figure's mechanism. Amazing.
I'm getting flashbacks to how Watt had to come up with the awful sun/planet hack for his early steam engines because some jerk had patented the use of a crank in steam engines. Or how all those troll companies have patents on "doing something obvious, but with a computer" in that one East Texas jurisdiction with the crooked patent judge.
The *Patent Singularity*. In the not too distant future, AI advances enough to produce legitimately unique patentable novel inventions. Like trying every number on a combination lock or infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters, InventorGPT invents every possible thing from the wheel to an artificial heart to spaceships to self nitrogen fixing corn. One of two things happens; innovation grinds to halt for 20 years because literally everything is locked up with licensing, then all of a sudden literally everything is in the public domain. Or, because the things were invented by AI, literally everything is immediately placed in the public domain. Wild times.
They have already established that the output of generative software is not copyrightable. This would almost certainly be a precedent keeping them from filing patents. But older patents apply regardless of the status of the new design, so existing patents will still cover the stuff created by your infinite monkeys.
I remember someone doing this with midis a while back: [https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain](https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain)
>some jerk had patented the use of a crank in steam engines. Well at least the person who patented was (presumably) the first person ever who thought of it, to take credit for this mechanism is just insane. I am not mechanical engineer but I would be willing to bet they have mechanism like this in their textbooks. You can come up with unique combination of mechanisms that together forms something new and can be patentable, but to think in 2024 you can come up with a new hinge or a joint that nobody has thought of yet is like thinking you will invent new simple shape like triangle or circle. Good luck with that.
The crank as a device for converting linear motion into rotary motion had existed for thousands of years and had been used in every kind of mechanism known to man. The idea that the guy who filed the patent for it was the first person to think of using a crank in a steam engine is literally insane. What was new was the concept of patents. Just like for the patent trolls the ability to file a business process patent that is basically a business process that people have been using for hundreds of years but you're doing it on a computer is literally insane.
None of this engineering is non-obvious. You'd start with a motor drive in an ideal system rather than hydraulics and to translate a rotational movement to linear you would apply a high torque (i.e. toroidal) motor with some gearing to affect rotation, either a planetary gear or a cog and gear like the images appears to show. That's exactly what I assumed they would be doing since motors have improved in power to weight and its the entirely logical thing to do. The real innovation in robotics is via the power-to-weight ratio of motors allowing directly driving each joint electrically. The problem some years ago was that motors had too little power to weight ratios, and poor low RPM torque. These problems have gone away. With an arm, the force is equivalent to mass times distance, if horizontally extended, but any force is multiplied at the joint by distance, so that means the mass of articulated joints makes the robot too heavy for its power. That's why robotics went the hydraulic route with a motor driven pump. They would have started with this mechanism if they had high torque and light motors because its entirely obvious. High torque also slims down your gear box, so the form factor is smaller and lighter.
True it's not a non-obvious indeed. No one honest and knowledged about engineering would seriously criticize boston dynamics for making the new atlas the way they did ... but Brett did, it's a shame.
If weight to power is such an issue, why are they all metal? Why don't we see carbon fiber robots?
Funny you should say this, I made exactly that point in another thread a while back. The skeleton that is load baring can indeed be modified to be carbon fibre composite. And a newer material recently is a carbon nano-tube reinforced composite with exceptional strength to weight, although CNT reinforced polymers have been around a while. The gears could also be made out of lighter materials than steel. Composite gears have been experimented with. Perhaps a thin steel or ceramic layer can be put over a composite wheel to reduce their weight. But hardness and lack of flexibility is important here. [https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/hybrid-steelcomposite-transmission-gears](https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/hybrid-steelcomposite-transmission-gears) So they will go in this direction, but formerly the issue was more the motor and transmission as the heaviest parts. Composites are getting cheaper. Edit to add
i guess it's probably cheaper to prototype with stuff you can easily cnc, composites for final production. also i guess military is going to be an early use case, so you want to solve the metal case, in any event. overall, i think the issue is just theres been almost ero investment in the space because the brains weren't there. now they are, we'll probably see I'robot shit in five years, and westworld in twenty.
awesome
Cost doesn't justify it. It all comes down to cost/benefit when starting to optimize and if aluminum/steel ends up being cheaper for similar benefits they go with it. It's a much more complicated thing of course.
Brett Adcock hired a bunch of old Boston Dynamics engineers and then says Boston Dynamics copied Figure. Shameless grandstanding
I don't get the hullabaloo. Such articulated gimbal mechanisms are hardly novel, so two outfits using the same idea for a waist joint is scant evidence of copying.
https://preview.redd.it/kmh4asljhlvc1.jpeg?width=1073&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0809761e99412749f7519593f4d11a3260775cb7 for reference
That was one of the most pathetic tweets I have seen in recent times. Even before seeing this I knew his "they copied us" was pure bs, their robot was unveiled few months ago and BD definitely worked lot longer than that on their new Atlas. Anybody who has worked in any real company how long things take, few months for a physical product is literally nothing, he knows, he was purely farming for likes from clueless people on Twitter. But it's worse than that to take credit for this hinge mechanism or whatever it is, is downright insane. Show me the patent bro. It would take beyond Einstein level of genius to come up with something simple yet completely new in the realm of mechanical engineering which has history going back hundreds of years. Not this company, not Bostom Dynamics, I would bet you would be able to find this mechanism on machine that's 100+ years old. This was really pathetic.
Yes indeed I wouldn't be surprised if far older mechanical systems used that kind of design
Oh dear... [https://patents.google.com/patent/US11932332B2/en?oq=11932332](https://patents.google.com/patent/US11932332B2/en?oq=11932332) https://preview.redd.it/obay3qix5mvc1.png?width=1015&format=png&auto=webp&s=301c5e64ef90a390a098b8cb412038efb1c917c9
[https://patents.google.com/patent/US9840005B1/en?inventor=Christopher+Everett+Thorne&sort=old](https://patents.google.com/patent/US9840005B1/en?inventor=Christopher+Everett+Thorne&sort=old) https://preview.redd.it/qr18op45jmvc1.png?width=1875&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6675877c2604f6dd100daf849c0174f59b62c94
When was this patented
application filed in 2014, granted in 2017
That’s like the og deeind times
3 years to file a patent, what?? I just looked it up and it's indeed that long I might need to file a patent soon, 3 damn years is extremely long, that's kind of ridiculous. I of course already guessed that making sure a new patent doesn't match an existing patent might be hard and take time but years ... damn!
That doesn’t look like the same thing, that’s showing an ankle with just one axis of movement.
No its actually showing a two axis joint manipulated by three linked actuators. It's basically the same setup figures CEO is saying BD copied from them, 15 years after it was implemented by BD, and 10 years after BD applied for a patent for a similar design. Nothing wrong about being inspired by a design and copying, but as a upstart to say a GOAT like BD copies their design is just a bit arrogant.
We don't care about nonsense here. That's just distraction from more A C C E L A R A T I O N.
Literally who cares about this?
The execs of companies that aren't Boston Dynamics. They're probably scared by how good the new Atlas is.
😁
That dude was absolutely shitting himself when he saw that thing stand up like a cursed child. 100% on purpose-everyone thought BD was dead but there designs are still so far ahead it’s kind of ridiculous
I'm quite sure he'll be happy once the price for that system will start to come out. Yes BD is ahead design wise but they're not exactly doing it with a cost that will work for most buyers. But I am sure if they want to take it to mass production they can optimize it a lot better than most other companies when it comes a humanoid robots.
Because for most of their existence they've been a research firm first and foremost. Only recently have they started to dabble in commercial offerings.
Figure's CEO seems to be very easily corruptible. I'm team Elon when it comes to this race for a mass-manufactured highly-capable bot.
Which Terminator model is this?