Marc Raibert: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, exactly. Don’t sweat the small stuff. As opposed to fixing the dishwasher, it’ll convince you that it’s okay that the dishwasher’s broken. It’s a different approach. Diligence. Why is diligence important? Well, if you want a real robot solution, it can’t be a very narrow solution that’s going to break at the first variation in what the robot does, or the environment if it wasn’t exactly as you expected it. So how do you get there? I think having an approach that leaves you unsatisfied until you’ve embraced the bigger problem is the diligence I’m talking about. Again, I’ll point at Boston Dynamics, some of the videos that we had showing the engineer making it hard for the robot to do its task. Spot opening a door and then the guy gets there and pushes on the door so it doesn’t open the way it’s supposed to. Pulling on the rope that’s attached to the robot, so its navigation has been screwed up. We have one where the robot’s climbing stairs and an engineer is tugging on a rope that’s pulling it back down the stairs. That’s totally different than just the robot seeing the stairs, making a model, putting its feet carefully on each step. But that’s what probably robotics needs to succeed, and having that broader idea that you want to come with a robust solution is what I meant by diligence. So really testing it in all conditions, perturbing the system in all kinds of ways, and as a result, creating some epic videos. The legendary-…

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