Some people might want to call Boston Dynamics crazy for creating robo-dogs that can open doors, but that would be a bit dismissive to the technology and not respectful enough to the idea that they could come in handy someday. Honestly I don’t know how yet since I still prefer a living, breathing dog that doesn’t need to be programmed, but there has to be some practical function for these things that we haven’t really seen yet. So far all I’m getting is creeped out by watching these things, I don’t know about anyone else. Having watched a few videos about them there are obviously a lot of people that feel this technology is useful for something, but unless they’re going to be paired up with veterans as helpers I still don’t see it.
Thus far when it comes to robotics Boston Dynamics has truly come up with some strange and sometimes insane ideas as to what constitutes a modern marvel. They’ve made some truly impressive robots and had them do some amazing things that are obviously superior to humans in many ways but are still enough to set some people on edge when it comes to the idea of just how far they’re trying to go. All the movies and stories of machines attacking humans aside, the idea of creating machines for any purpose other than convenience makes it almost feel like mankind is trying to phase itself out of the picture eventually. Many people would scoff and claim that this isn’t so but at the same time they would speak of how these robots could somehow revolutionize the world in various ways that might see the end of certain jobs that human beings now occupy.
From a safety standpoint that makes a lot of sense considering the fact that machines could perform functions that human beings can with the right programming and wouldn’t tense up or freeze at inopportune moments on the job. That alone would be enough of a reason why to employ machines to do dangerous jobs that could cost humans their lives. But then again, those jobs tend to pay more on average and still benefit from the inclusion of human instinct and the sense of touch and intuition that humans possess. In other words the robots could get the job done, but they still aren’t capable of getting a ‘feel’ of the job they’re performing.
I get it, that kind of thinking is old-fashioned and outdated. But the truth of it is that such thinking is the only reason why places like Boston Dynamics even exists. If the old ways of thinking had never existed and pushed forward then the world as we know it now would be a much different place. Robots might be a wonderful bit of technology that will do as they’re programmed and not deviate more than once in a thousand times or more, but by making them autonomous it would seem that mankind is attempting to hand the robots the keys to their own programming. All we can do at this point is wait and see.
