Tag: abuse

Fragility Robotics

ExTwitter post from Agility Robotics includes a video of a bipedal robot performing a task of moving boxes in a simulated factory setup in what looks like a trade show. The robot crashes on itself at the end in what appears to be a failure of its legs.

So many things happening in this ExTwitter post, let’s unpack.

It’s quite interesting for a robotics company to put up a social media message of its own product failures, especially when that failure happens in a product demo setting at a trade fair. Knowing the price per square footage of these trade shows, a setup with a conveyor belt and box shelf is no small marketing budget. Failures in the lab are ok, and there’s a history of robodog video bloopers, but failures when you’re trying to convince a large crowd to buy your tech, maybe much less so.

So, marketing probably thought, Well, that’s a million dollar fuckup, so let’s change strategy and use this to our advantage. We’ll make it a viral social media event. And while we are at it, let’s make our own metrics: “99% success rate over 20 hours“.

That robot was not going to get back to work without serious repairs, so forget having it moving boxes for the rest of the day. Since we’re talking about human-looking robots replacing humans doing machine jobs, might as well expect robothings to do the work 24/7, as metric of success, not 20/6 or 20/4, in that particular context. So let’s rewrite that as “82.5% success rate over 24 hours” if robothing gets repaired in a few hours. “20.7% success rate over 4 days”, if you forgot to bring a set of “quick change limbs” to the show.

Lastly, I can’t stop looking at the crowd standing on the other side of the conveyor belt, witnessing the scene. The lack of response or interest in what just unfolded is palpable. No one seems surprised, amused or alarmed. Even what looks like members of the sales team from [Fr-]Agility Robotics barely turned around to see what was happening behind their back and then just ignored their flagship robotic product having a melt-down.

Staging robots in manufacturing settings is boring. Breaking a leg is no way to impress.

Crashing at scale

Waymo is voluntarily recalling the software that powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck

Waymo recalls and updates robotaxi software after two cars crashed into the same towed truck

Let’s first look at this curious choice of word “recall” to speak about a software reversion, as it’s more generally used in the industry. It sounds like Waymo had to take out of the street their whole fleet because some software update went wrong, like Tesla had to recall all their cars sold in the US because of non-compliant emergency light design. Waymo didn’t do that. They just reverted the software update and uploaded a patched version. Calling it a recall is a bit of a misnomer and here to make them look compliant with some security practices that exist with regular consumer cars. But that framework is clearly not adapted to this new software-defined vehicle ownership model.

The second most interesting bit here, which to me seems overlooked by the journalist reporting this incident, is a “minor” (according to Waymo) software failure that created two consecutive identical accidents between Waymo cars and the same pickup truck. Read that again. One unfortunate pickup truck was hit by 2 different Waymo cars within the time frame of a couple minutes because it looked weird. Imagine if that pickup truck had crossed the path of more vehicles with that particular faulty software update. How many crashes would that have generated?

The robotaxi’s vision model had not taken into account a certain pattern of pickup truck, thus none of these robotaxis were able to behave correctly around it, resulting in multiple crashes. Which brings the question, should a fleet of hundreds or even thousands of robotaxis run on the same software version (with potentially the same bugs)? If you happen to drive a vehicle or wear a piece of garment that makes a robotaxi behave dangerously, every robotaxi suddenly is out there to get you.

Robotaxis are on fire

San Franciscans celebrate Chinese new year by setting Waymo’s robotaxi on fire.

More than meets the vision sensor

Waymo, the robotaxi company from Alphabet/Google, broke the first law of Asimov.

Way more interesting is to read how the robocompany describes the incident:

“The cyclist was occluded by the truck and quickly followed behind it, crossing into the Waymo vehicle’s path. When they became unoccluded, our vehicle applied heavy braking but was not able to avoid the collision,” Waymo said.

https://boingboing.net/2024/02/07/waymo-autonomous-car-hit-bicyclist.html

Let me emphasize that: “the cyclist crossed into the Waymo vehicle’s path“. That’s such an engineering thing to say. It’s your 2 tons metal box on wheels that does not have a small moving vehicle hidden by a larger one in its computation vision model. Your software calculates a trajectory to pass behind that truck. Oops, there was a cyclist there. But it’s the cyclist who crosses your path? How convenient.

Robots put you to sleep… forever

Product shot of Philips DreamStation device.

Philips DreamStation, a robot to help you breath at night, turned out to be a killing machine.

Since April 2021, the FDA has received more than 116,000 MDRs [Medical Device Reports], including 561 reports of death, reportedly associated with the PE-PUR foam breakdown or suspected foam breakdown.

Problems Reported with Recalled Philips Ventilators, BiPAP Machines, and CPAP Machines

Manufacturers […] are required to submit medical device reports (MDRs) when they become aware of an event that reasonably suggests that one of their devices may have caused or contributed to a death or serious injury, or has malfunctioned and that device or a similar device marketed by the manufacturer would be likely to cause or contribute to a death or serious injury if the malfunction were to recur.

ibid.

Philips recalled the machines and stop selling them in the US. Where else are those still on sale?

/ht @boingboing

…but safe

Not sure if it’s intentional, but agile and safe in the same sentence is sure to hit high on search engine confusion, especially with a github website to promote your paper. You’re going to get a ton of hits from webshits with 99 problems but robotdog obstacle-avoidance ain’t gonna be one.

Also, calling something “but safe” is, how do I say it clearly but nicely, shooting yourself in the bearing balls. You’re not going to make me think for one sec that this noisy cocaine high articulated pet is inoffensive.

Looks like you know your classics though. The “robotdog kicking bloopers” are always welcome. You seemed a little too careful though not to hurt the animal, a little too safe?

No driver, no fines

Driverless cars have been documented running red lights, blocking emergency responders and swerving into construction zones.

[…] When driverless cars break the rules of the road, there’s not much law enforcement can do. In California, traffic tickets can be written only if there is an actual driver in the car.

Driverless cars immune from traffic tickets in California under current laws

Promobot self-destructs (reputation) with help of self-driving Tesla

A meme doing the rounds on social media sent me down a rabbit hole of clickbait articles strangely all converging to this ice-cream truck shaped android called Promobot.

Grey surveillance video showing a strange looking android robot standing still on the side of a road. A Tesla passes by and the robot tips over. A person runs across the street to bring assistance to the robot.

The meme mainly emphasized how Promobot made the news in 2019 when their inventor claimed a self-driving Tesla ran over it and “killed” it.

A robot doing seppuku with the help of another robot has quite a bit of meme power, I agree.

It gets strange when you read that Promobot is that same proud Russian droid that recognized and shook hands with Vladimir Putin a few months earlier.

Maybe those two events are related.

But it does not stop here. Promobot was also “arrested” at a political rally and, according to the company recount of the events, the “police tried to handcuff” it. Sure.

It’s that same robot that is sooooo intelligent, it “escaped form its lab” and blocked traffic for a few hours while its creators were busy taking photos of the incident.

You can’t make up this shit.