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Lex Fridman Podcast / episode intelligence

#412 – Marc Raibert: Boston Dynamics and the Future of Robotics

16 Feb 2024 32 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Marc RaibertLex Fridman

Claim mix

belief 18evaluation 5uncertainty 4preference 2prediction 2recommendation 1

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Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

32 published records

01 / uncertainty

I don’t know if you know my friend Matt Mason, who is the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, and we go back to graduate school together, but he analyzed a movie of Julia Child’s doing a cooking thing, and she did, I think he said something like there were 40 different ways that she handled a thing and none of them was grasping.

“I don’t know if you know my friend Matt Mason, who is the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon, and we go back to graduate school together, but he analyzed a movie of Julia Child’s doing a cooking thing, and she did, I think he said something like there were 40 different ways that she handled a thing and none of them was grasping.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

03 / uncertainty

Meaning a Spot type robot in the home and there’s tens of millions of them in the home and they’re, I don’t know, how many dogs there are in the United States as pets.

“Meaning a Spot type robot in the home and there’s tens of millions of them in the home and they’re, I don’t know, how many dogs there are in the United States as pets.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

04 / belief

I think a technical scientist could appreciate that we were capturing some of the things that are important in human locomotion without it looking like it, without having a knee, an ankle.

“I think a technical scientist could appreciate that we were capturing some of the things that are important in human locomotion without it looking like it, without having a knee, an ankle.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

06 / belief

If you show it falling over a couple of times, and you can see how easily and fast it falls over, then you appreciate what the robot’s doing when it’s doing its thing. So I think the reaction you just gave to the robot getting interfered with or tested while it’s going through the door, it’s showing you the scope of the solution.

“If you show it falling over a couple of times, and you can see how easily and fast it falls over, then you appreciate what the robot’s doing when it’s doing its thing. So I think the reaction you just gave to the robot getting interfered with or tested while it’s going through the door, it’s showing you the scope of the solution.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

11 / belief

I think one of the things, maybe you can tell me the big vision for what’s going on, but one of the things is this idea that hardware still matters with organic design and so on.

“I think one of the things, maybe you can tell me the big vision for what’s going on, but one of the things is this idea that hardware still matters with organic design and so on.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / belief

Otherwise, it would have to really forcefully move everything around all the time which probably some solutions do, but I think you end up with a more efficient and more graceful thing if you’re taking into account what the machine wants to do.

“Otherwise, it would have to really forcefully move everything around all the time which probably some solutions do, but I think you end up with a more efficient and more graceful thing if you’re taking into account what the machine wants to do.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

15 / belief

BigDog was the result of Alan Rudolph at DARPA starting a biodynamics program. And he put out a request for proposals and I think there were 42 proposals written and three got funded.

“BigDog was the result of Alan Rudolph at DARPA starting a biodynamics program. And he put out a request for proposals and I think there were 42 proposals written and three got funded.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

17 / belief

If you watch a human do a robot animation, which is a dance style where you jerk around and you pop and lock and all that stuff, I think the robots could show up the humans by doing unstable oscillations and things that are faster than a person could.

“If you watch a human do a robot animation, which is a dance style where you jerk around and you pop and lock and all that stuff, I think the robots could show up the humans by doing unstable oscillations and things that are faster than a person could.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / belief

There’s this idea called passive dynamics, which says that although you can use computers and actuators to make a motion, a mechanical system can make a motion just by itself if it gets stimulated the right way. So Tad McGeer, I think in the mid 80s, maybe it was in the late 80s, started to work on that.

“There’s this idea called passive dynamics, which says that although you can use computers and actuators to make a motion, a mechanical system can make a motion just by itself if it gets stimulated the right way. So Tad McGeer, I think in the mid 80s, maybe it was in the late 80s, started to work on that.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

19 / belief

I think that Boston Dynamics is owned primarily by Hyundai now, and I think that the skills of Hyundai in making cars can be brought to bear in making robots that are less expensive and more reliable and those kinds of things.

“I think that Boston Dynamics is owned primarily by Hyundai now, and I think that the skills of Hyundai in making cars can be brought to bear in making robots that are less expensive and more reliable and those kinds of things.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / belief

I think the basic paradigm for navigating a space is to get some kind of sensor that tells you where an obstacle is and what’s open, build a map and then go through the space.

“I think the basic paradigm for navigating a space is to get some kind of sensor that tells you where an obstacle is and what’s open, build a map and then go through the space.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

21 / belief

Technical fearlessness means being willing to take on a problem that you don’t know how to solve, and study it, figure out an entry point, maybe a simplified version, or a simplified solution or something, learn from the stepping stone, and go back and eventually make a solution that meets your goals. I think that’s really important.

“Technical fearlessness means being willing to take on a problem that you don’t know how to solve, and study it, figure out an entry point, maybe a simplified version, or a simplified solution or something, learn from the stepping stone, and go back and eventually make a solution that meets your goals. I think that’s really important.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

22 / belief

I think that intelligence is a lot of different things and I think some things, computers are already smarter than people, and some things they’re not even close.

“I think that intelligence is a lot of different things and I think some things, computers are already smarter than people, and some things they’re not even close.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

23 / evaluation

So there’s a calculation about where to put the foot, and we did something relatively simple. And then there’s a third part to keep the body at an attitude that’s upright, because if it gets too far, you could hop and just keep rotating around.

“So there’s a calculation about where to put the foot, and we did something relatively simple. And then there’s a third part to keep the body at an attitude that’s upright, because if it gets too far, you could hop and just keep rotating around.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

24 / preference

I think in the quadruped space, having other people selling quadruped’s is a great thing for Boston Dynamics because I believe the question in the user’s minds is, “Which quadruped do I want?

“I think in the quadruped space, having other people selling quadruped’s is a great thing for Boston Dynamics because I believe the question in the user’s minds is, “Which quadruped do I want?”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

25 / evaluation

Obviously, with 10 humanoid companies out there, 10 or 12, I mean there’s probably others that I don’t know about, they’re definitely in competition, will be in competition.

“Obviously, with 10 humanoid companies out there, 10 or 12, I mean there’s probably others that I don’t know about, they’re definitely in competition, will be in competition.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

28 / preference

As challenging as the woods were, working inside of a home or in an office is really harder because when you’re in the woods, you can actually take any path up the hill.

“As challenging as the woods were, working inside of a home or in an office is really harder because when you’re in the woods, you can actually take any path up the hill.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

29 / prediction

I think that there’s a lot of things that that kind of machine learning, now of course there’s lots of different kinds of machine learning, I think there’s a lot of interest and optimism about it.

“I think that there’s a lot of things that that kind of machine learning, now of course there’s lots of different kinds of machine learning, I think there’s a lot of interest and optimism about it.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

30 / prediction

I think the fear is that they would be 10x or 100x smarter and operating under different morals and ethical codes than humans naturally do, and so almost become misaligned in unintended ways and therefore harm humans in ways we just can’t predict.

“I think the fear is that they would be 10x or 100x smarter and operating under different morals and ethical codes than humans naturally do, and so almost become misaligned in unintended ways and therefore harm humans in ways we just can’t predict.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

31 / recommendation

I think if you go more than a year without seeing a tangible status report of where you are, which is the stepping stone, and it could be a simplification, you don’t necessarily have to solve all the problems of your target goal, even though your target goal is going to take several years, those stepping stone results give you feedback, give motivation, because usually there’s some success in there.

“I think if you go more than a year without seeing a tangible status report of where you are, which is the stepping stone, and it could be a simplification, you don’t necessarily have to solve all the problems of your target goal, even though your target goal is going to take several years, those stepping stone results give you feedback, give motivation, because usually there’s some success in there.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

32 / evaluation

In fact, when we started, although I had the experience of building things in the leg lab, both at CMU and at MIT, we weren’t that sophisticated an engineering thing compared to what Boston Dynamics is now, but it was our ambition to do that.

“In fact, when we started, although I had the experience of building things in the leg lab, both at CMU and at MIT, we weren’t that sophisticated an engineering thing compared to what Boston Dynamics is now, but it was our ambition to do that.”
Speaker
Marc Raibert
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast
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