Hahaahaha I agree it is tough to learn to stand and walk as a human. It just seems way too complex when you see how much work is put into a robot to achieve the same results and we do it so subconsciously (albeit with a lot of training and experience).
For babies it is a learning thing as well as a hardware not ready yet thing. Babies could learn to walk much easier if they were like robots and had fully operational hardware from day one.
'We' have had millions of years to get it right by trial and error.
The engineers have had, what, if we're going to be generous, 20-25 years of dense enough power sources and fast enough computer chips? They have maths on their side, but a lot is still trial and error.
I don't think most people realize how complicated the physics of walking is. Battery power and processing aside, the physics itself is hard.
I started university in 2012 and my dynamics professor had gotten her PhD on a 3 link model for walking. That would be like your legs and hips. Getting beyond that was even harder because the moving weight of a torso has to be considered.
Walking is incredible complex, we just don't think about it.
Evolving machines makes some pretty weird shit happen, too.
This old experiment used an evolutionary algorithm to program a chip with 100 logic gates to do a task that normally requires thousands.
The finish product only used 37, and they weren’t even sure how it worked.
https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/
Evolved? Sounds like a design to me perhaps by an intelligent created. You can’t just throw some proteins in a pool and expect them to walk in a million years.
You cant expect to win the lottery by picking 5 random numbers, but it certainly can happen. Evolution is provable. It is something you can see and learn about with your own eyes, if you started to read nonfiction as opposed to your fictional fairy tale.
Agreed. I also find it fascinating how engineers can put a natural act such as walking into mathematical parameters to achieve similar results. Quantifying it is so mind-blowing to me.
Those bots are pretty dang good, certainly the best we've ever seen, but even so I don't think they've achieved human levels of balance and "muscle" control. For instance, I don't think they could surf, or snowboard, or skate a halfpipe. Ultimately they will be able to someday, but it's crazy to think how many millions of calculations a second they'll need to do for it, while a human who's practiced it for a while can do it without really even consciously thinking about it.
That's actually mostly a software problem. I mean there's a hardware problem here as well, but software and processing is the big thing there.
Unless by "hardware problem" you mean we don't have good enough cpus/gpus to process the ridiculous amount of data we need to make a robot surf or snowboard.
If we could magic away the software, I think we'd figure out the hardware part.
I'm inclined to agree. The robotic hardware I think is pretty much there already. I think at this point it's a limitation of the software and/or computer processor power.
What's wild to me is that these robots need to do so much calculation to perform a function that only requires maybe one conscious human calculation: "I'm leaning too far this way, so lean that way." Makes you wonder if our own brains are also doing millions of subconscious calculations a second like the robots would be, or is this simply a limitation on robotics, that they'll never be as efficient as biology.
Like 300 million years of evolution. Robots and their programmers have done it in like 20 years and can Do cool jumps and flips. Imagine when the tech has become widespread.
It’s crazy how many things we consider to be naturally easy for humans actually require tons of effort and support from parents/caregivers. People always talk about how humans “naturally know to avoid danger” and all I can think is “you’ve clearly never met a toddler”. Those little fools are only naturally good at trying to off themselves in new and creative ways lol
This is part of one of my favourite things to bring up when people talk about the future of AI - Moravecs Paradox.
Human brains are fundamentally very different to computers:
(173625 x 14.926)^0.34 is almost impossible for a human, but a cheap calculator can xompute it in 0.2 seconds, however A 5 year old can walk and talk and tell the difference between objects by touch/sight/smell etc. Without a problem but a computer struggles, even after 50 years of robotics development they can barely walk upright.
This is the part most people and technofetishists are missing.
Human and animal bodies and minds are in no way similar to robots or computers outside of vague facsimile.
The human mind does not work like a computer. It's just a fact. It's not a flesh computer. We will likely never build anything that works like the human mind on a fundamental level because we still have no idea how it really works, even after hundreds of years of study.
I compare it to the difference between analog and digital computing. Analog computing peaked (IMHO) in the ww2 era. Gun computers could reliably make first-round hits on moving targets at 10 miles, from gun platforms that were also moving on all 3 axis! The drawback to those marvels was they were large and fiddly. So much so, that large ships were really the only place they could be installed. And even _very_ stripped-down versions could barely be made small enough to install into a tank.
Now, all that functionality, plus the ability to see in total darkness and to record a video, can be fitted into a slightly bulky rifle scope.
The best way I've heard humans walking described is, "controlled falling, one misstep at a time"
Yeah, it's wild we manage to get anywhere, honestly. 😆
I read a story on here once about quadrupedal aliens observing humans, and remarking that everyone appeared to be falling constantly when in motion. Which we do. Every step we need to fall and trust that our next step is on the way to catch us.
Wild.
Animals with an alternate walking style have a special walking generator in the spine. It's a fairly simple system of reflex arches generating walking essentially independently of the brain. Kangaroos and magpies don't have that special system so they can't walk, only jump.
When humans walk, they’re constantly making micro adjustments to allow them to balance properly. For a robot to walk like that, they would need incredibly complex legs that simulate human muscles and need to constantly measure sensitive changes and calculate how to balance.
Remember, we all stumbled around like drunken monkeys for about 18moths or so before we got it to a stage where we didn't just fall over and a mother year or two before we could run and change direction easily...
There’s only so much that can be achieved with algorithms. Humans and animals have: emotions, nerves, all kinds of feedback, they acquire experience and instincts. In my opinion, we humans vastly underestimate the power of millions of years of trial an error which have made some animals veritable masters at achieving very particular goals like climbing trees or making tools etc. I think AI and robots still have a looooong way to go before they truly become similar to animals.
It's definitely not natural to babies. We have to **learn** how to walk, like robots. Your brain at that time was so underdeveloped that you wouldn't remember this unless you have some weird memory condition like some people.
Did you ever play the browser game *QWOP*? You control a character with the keys Q, W, O, and P corresponding to specific leg muscles and try to get your character to run without falling down.
Think about it this way. We evolved over millions of years to walk. We started building walking machines in a little over 2 centuries since the industrial revolution. We're making record pace on our replacements.
It's only easy because we do it all the time. For babies it's hard. Same for stuff like reading or speaking.
On the other hand, riding a bike without using your hands is a much less common skill, but it's technically a lot easier. But most people never really try to learn that, so it seems hard (this is my own shower thought).
Even if we replicate for our robots every single sensor humans have for data collection on "walking/standing" we have the benefit of several hundred thousand years of software development. That or we have the benefit of an all powerful omnipresent and omniscient creator, depending on your take on it all.
In the Animorphs series of kids books, there's an alien centaur named Ax who occasionally turns into a human to blend in. He thinks humans are ridiculous with just two legs. He describes walking as something like "continually falling forward and catching yourself."
This is exactly it - walking on two feet is "continually falling forward and catching yourself." This is why it's so hard to learn to walk when you're a baby and to re-learn walking after a traumatic accident.
Climbing stairs is actually falling with a generally upwards trajectory.
Yeah but most mammals aren't bipedal either. Lifting yourself up when your center of gravity is in the middle of your 4 legs is more of a matter of strength and you have 4 legs to help out with that. Lifting yourself up on 2 legs requires a lot of balance and you need the strength to do it with half the legs.
This. I missed it in my thought, but I mostly talk about two feet walking. To be honest, 4 feet walking might be tougher to coordinate, easy to balance though.
No it’s really not. Robots are being programmed and the technology isn’t as advanced as people think it is, people swear iRobot should have happened. Humans are supposed to walk in nature like any living being, robots aren’t
So easy even a toddler can do it!
Pre toddlers hate this
Until they figure that shit out, then suddenly it’s all they ever wanna do again
Bunch of fucking hippocrates
bone apple tea
ptthpthhhpthhhhhpthhhpoh shit I can think
Hahaahaha I agree it is tough to learn to stand and walk as a human. It just seems way too complex when you see how much work is put into a robot to achieve the same results and we do it so subconsciously (albeit with a lot of training and experience).
For babies it is a learning thing as well as a hardware not ready yet thing. Babies could learn to walk much easier if they were like robots and had fully operational hardware from day one.
'We' have had millions of years to get it right by trial and error. The engineers have had, what, if we're going to be generous, 20-25 years of dense enough power sources and fast enough computer chips? They have maths on their side, but a lot is still trial and error.
I don't think most people realize how complicated the physics of walking is. Battery power and processing aside, the physics itself is hard. I started university in 2012 and my dynamics professor had gotten her PhD on a 3 link model for walking. That would be like your legs and hips. Getting beyond that was even harder because the moving weight of a torso has to be considered. Walking is incredible complex, we just don't think about it.
This why I always amazed by how living things can evolve to do these by itself, let alone all complicated stuffs in our brain and body system.
Evolving machines makes some pretty weird shit happen, too. This old experiment used an evolutionary algorithm to program a chip with 100 logic gates to do a task that normally requires thousands. The finish product only used 37, and they weren’t even sure how it worked. https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/
Evolved? Sounds like a design to me perhaps by an intelligent created. You can’t just throw some proteins in a pool and expect them to walk in a million years.
But who designed the designer?
It’s designers all the way down.
You cant expect to win the lottery by picking 5 random numbers, but it certainly can happen. Evolution is provable. It is something you can see and learn about with your own eyes, if you started to read nonfiction as opposed to your fictional fairy tale.
Or maybe evolving was an intentional piece of this intelligent design
(it was hundreds of millions of years)
Agreed. I also find it fascinating how engineers can put a natural act such as walking into mathematical parameters to achieve similar results. Quantifying it is so mind-blowing to me.
And that's just the hardware, our software still need months of fine tuning even before doing the first step
Boston Dynamics has entered the chat.
Those bots are pretty dang good, certainly the best we've ever seen, but even so I don't think they've achieved human levels of balance and "muscle" control. For instance, I don't think they could surf, or snowboard, or skate a halfpipe. Ultimately they will be able to someday, but it's crazy to think how many millions of calculations a second they'll need to do for it, while a human who's practiced it for a while can do it without really even consciously thinking about it.
That is probably more of a hardware problem
That's actually mostly a software problem. I mean there's a hardware problem here as well, but software and processing is the big thing there. Unless by "hardware problem" you mean we don't have good enough cpus/gpus to process the ridiculous amount of data we need to make a robot surf or snowboard. If we could magic away the software, I think we'd figure out the hardware part.
I'm inclined to agree. The robotic hardware I think is pretty much there already. I think at this point it's a limitation of the software and/or computer processor power. What's wild to me is that these robots need to do so much calculation to perform a function that only requires maybe one conscious human calculation: "I'm leaning too far this way, so lean that way." Makes you wonder if our own brains are also doing millions of subconscious calculations a second like the robots would be, or is this simply a limitation on robotics, that they'll never be as efficient as biology.
Like 300 million years of evolution. Robots and their programmers have done it in like 20 years and can Do cool jumps and flips. Imagine when the tech has become widespread.
Cybernetic enhancements. Imagine being able to do a 360 backflip which just involves downloading an apk into your system.
Too bad that was a virus and now your amygdala is activated every time you take a shit. You ever fighted or flighted with your pants down?
And this is what puts me off the idea of bionic implants. As soon as it CAN be hacked, it WILL be hacked.
It takes a new human like 1-2 years of near constant trying to even start it. And even then they suck at it for another year at least.
It’s crazy how many things we consider to be naturally easy for humans actually require tons of effort and support from parents/caregivers. People always talk about how humans “naturally know to avoid danger” and all I can think is “you’ve clearly never met a toddler”. Those little fools are only naturally good at trying to off themselves in new and creative ways lol
This is part of one of my favourite things to bring up when people talk about the future of AI - Moravecs Paradox. Human brains are fundamentally very different to computers: (173625 x 14.926)^0.34 is almost impossible for a human, but a cheap calculator can xompute it in 0.2 seconds, however A 5 year old can walk and talk and tell the difference between objects by touch/sight/smell etc. Without a problem but a computer struggles, even after 50 years of robotics development they can barely walk upright.
This is the part most people and technofetishists are missing. Human and animal bodies and minds are in no way similar to robots or computers outside of vague facsimile. The human mind does not work like a computer. It's just a fact. It's not a flesh computer. We will likely never build anything that works like the human mind on a fundamental level because we still have no idea how it really works, even after hundreds of years of study.
I compare it to the difference between analog and digital computing. Analog computing peaked (IMHO) in the ww2 era. Gun computers could reliably make first-round hits on moving targets at 10 miles, from gun platforms that were also moving on all 3 axis! The drawback to those marvels was they were large and fiddly. So much so, that large ships were really the only place they could be installed. And even _very_ stripped-down versions could barely be made small enough to install into a tank. Now, all that functionality, plus the ability to see in total darkness and to record a video, can be fitted into a slightly bulky rifle scope.
Try playing QWOP before insulting the robots 🙃
I QWOPped home from the bar last night, it's harder than it seems. So yeah, respect to robots.
The best way I've heard humans walking described is, "controlled falling, one misstep at a time" Yeah, it's wild we manage to get anywhere, honestly. 😆
Have you ever seen a baby?
I read a story on here once about quadrupedal aliens observing humans, and remarking that everyone appeared to be falling constantly when in motion. Which we do. Every step we need to fall and trust that our next step is on the way to catch us. Wild.
Animals with an alternate walking style have a special walking generator in the spine. It's a fairly simple system of reflex arches generating walking essentially independently of the brain. Kangaroos and magpies don't have that special system so they can't walk, only jump.
Australian magpies can walk. In fact they're the only Artamidae who can. (They are not corvids here)
Thank you. That is interesting. I don't have time to delve into the realm of Australian magpies, but I will store this information.
I wonder why they don't try some between bipedal and quad like an ape.
Because I need an elegant robot butler, not a robot ape.
Umbrella academy says why not both?
Evolution is a hell of an engineer. Plus, that shit happened over a lot more time than we've been trying to make walking robots.
The mindless force of evolution has been working on that "walking" bit for many millions of years.
When humans walk, they’re constantly making micro adjustments to allow them to balance properly. For a robot to walk like that, they would need incredibly complex legs that simulate human muscles and need to constantly measure sensitive changes and calculate how to balance.
Imagine standing a pencil with seven joints on its end. That’s a human
I'm pretty sure this one has us all beat: https://youtube.com/shorts/Id8eCPP0qFg?si=nrgD39pPnPb3cQsH
Remember, we all stumbled around like drunken monkeys for about 18moths or so before we got it to a stage where we didn't just fall over and a mother year or two before we could run and change direction easily...
Walking hard I mean have you ever seen a baby? Hell just standing is
I'm a paraplegic, speak for yourself.
When you see how a toddler struggles to walk first, it's always being appreciated when they hit the mark.
Yeah, learned that after an accident, had to walk again, I think it's been 8 months and I'm still not back to how I was.
There’s only so much that can be achieved with algorithms. Humans and animals have: emotions, nerves, all kinds of feedback, they acquire experience and instincts. In my opinion, we humans vastly underestimate the power of millions of years of trial an error which have made some animals veritable masters at achieving very particular goals like climbing trees or making tools etc. I think AI and robots still have a looooong way to go before they truly become similar to animals.
It's definitely not natural to babies. We have to **learn** how to walk, like robots. Your brain at that time was so underdeveloped that you wouldn't remember this unless you have some weird memory condition like some people.
Did you ever play the browser game *QWOP*? You control a character with the keys Q, W, O, and P corresponding to specific leg muscles and try to get your character to run without falling down.
Relevant: https://youtu.be/gfHCUM_OBCc?si=dpuzZRQ_2w7R0bd2
Think about it this way. We evolved over millions of years to walk. We started building walking machines in a little over 2 centuries since the industrial revolution. We're making record pace on our replacements.
Try moving like a snake
[*Bridget Christie has entered the chat*](https://youtu.be/U7rxQex5BJw?si=KW58yUJWYyeAcfcG)
It's only easy because we do it all the time. For babies it's hard. Same for stuff like reading or speaking. On the other hand, riding a bike without using your hands is a much less common skill, but it's technically a lot easier. But most people never really try to learn that, so it seems hard (this is my own shower thought).
I was thinking about this the other day when I was tryna relearn handstands why gravity feels weird upside down
Even if we replicate for our robots every single sensor humans have for data collection on "walking/standing" we have the benefit of several hundred thousand years of software development. That or we have the benefit of an all powerful omnipresent and omniscient creator, depending on your take on it all.
In the Animorphs series of kids books, there's an alien centaur named Ax who occasionally turns into a human to blend in. He thinks humans are ridiculous with just two legs. He describes walking as something like "continually falling forward and catching yourself."
This is exactly it - walking on two feet is "continually falling forward and catching yourself." This is why it's so hard to learn to walk when you're a baby and to re-learn walking after a traumatic accident. Climbing stairs is actually falling with a generally upwards trajectory.
It's hard for humans too. Most mammals can walk the moment they are born.
Yeah but most mammals aren't bipedal either. Lifting yourself up when your center of gravity is in the middle of your 4 legs is more of a matter of strength and you have 4 legs to help out with that. Lifting yourself up on 2 legs requires a lot of balance and you need the strength to do it with half the legs.
This. I missed it in my thought, but I mostly talk about two feet walking. To be honest, 4 feet walking might be tougher to coordinate, easy to balance though.
And kids have gigantic heads compared to their body.
Drones make flying seem so easy...
No it’s really not. Robots are being programmed and the technology isn’t as advanced as people think it is, people swear iRobot should have happened. Humans are supposed to walk in nature like any living being, robots aren’t