Couldn't the fine motor balance be figured out beforehand?
Right. Motor variability, material elasticity, environmental changes, etc. all make that nearly impossible.
Think of it like balancing a pole (broom, etc.) vertically on your hand. You can do this because you have real time feedback systems. Close your eyes and you can't. You still have tactile feedback, but that isn't enough. This is what they are catching up to with the machines - gyroscopes, vision/range sensors, pressure sensors, etc. all create feedback loops that allow the robot to respond in near real time.
If you notice - there are LOTS of rubber skid marks on the boxes where the robot hit the box and pushed off at a different angle. I'm sure they ran that course many 100's of times. You can see how there are slight deviations in where the rubber feet hit the boxes. Lots of imperfections in the "real world" and the robot must respond and hold the path.
gyro's and firmware all working together. You put a problem it hasn't been programmed to deal with like slippery then the shit hits the robot brain. No AI just tons of scripting. Just humans are clever and sneaky and will find the one thing the nerds overlooked or found to hard to fix or were told was to expensive or time consuming to worry about like pit trap looking like solid surface would fuck one of them or marbles that was suggested before or better ball bearing so unless it's been programmed to drag it's feet units it's fucked.
Pitfall trap is an easy one.
right, that was one of my other suggestions in the comments, quite easy to pull off also since a robot doesn't suspect it just does so it walks or hops right into it.
Hell fill it with oily water and the thing is fucked never getting out and likely fries it's circuitry and if you put bungy sticks at the bottom definitely ripping insulation off the wiring or puncture the pneumatic lines in some way.
Also just drop an extension cord plugged in into the water and bye bye robot. If controlled remotely then arrow into the person even a non lethal area will make them hurt so bad they cannot concentrate enough to do shit correctly.
Hell the old aerosol can and a bic lighter will fuck with it's brain to no end especially if it has heat sensors.
They whole point of these demonstrations is to show they can make a robot that won't fall over when subjected to different stress.
It's like a really fancy Segway. Useless but an interesting proof of concept.
Sure, if you're God.
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