Humanoid Robots and walking machines have always had a rigid appearance. Characterized by their static movements they struggle to deal with complexity.
Their limited operations perform fine on a simple surface without wind or surprising objects.
Designers want their robots to not fall over and try to build ways to prevent errors for each new type of problem the robot might encounter. They add more and more “if this, then that” instructions to their code. They add new physical capacities to their machines.
Yet historically this approach didn’t really work.
The insight that the CEO of Boston Dynamics was that you shouldn’t program to prevent mistakes. Instead, you should teach robots to fix things for themselves.
Boston Dynamics accepted that there is no perfect environment. Teaching resilience needed a different fundamental approach from the start.
They built robots from the ground up for the ability to catch themselves. You can see it in the way they move and the fluidity that defines them.
The dynamic approach towards movement allows them to naturally adapt to slight changes to create a more resilient and capable robot.
It not only radically improved results but created a more lifelike robot to go with it. So much so that people feel an emotional reaction watching them get kicked.
Success is about recovery
When we focus on not failing, we don’t equip ourselves to recover.
The perfect diet is rigid and inflexible. But it fails because we aren’t a robot and we need flexibility in our life. We don’t live in a perfect environment.
If you can’t start a healthy diet during a month when you have a hectic work schedule with travel, a birthday party, and a few day’s holiday. You can’t maintain a healthy diet anyway.
Your life permanently has all these difficult things to navigate.
The battle isn’t the 2-month diet, it is being healthy for the rest of your life.
To solve a problem you cannot rely on creating a perfect environment and only existing within it. You need to be able to leave that environment and still catch yourself.
Brakes are cool
A recovering addict who believes that once they start they cannot stop is setting themselves up to fail. They still hold the core belief that they are an addict without any personal control over themselves.
They are completely fragile.
If they keep this belief and resolutely focus on never starting again they avoid social situations and live a sheltered life they don’t enjoy. Until one wedding or party or hard day pushes them over the edge.
The problem comes back worse and they don’t have any brakes.
They can’t stop because they haven’t created any adaption systems to stop themself. There is no inbuilt course correction.
There is no resilience.
Expose yourself
By constantly focussing on not failing we treat ourselves like robots that can only perform under perfect conditions.
We forget that perfect situations are only fleeting. Chaos and change are permanent.
If you stop the first time there is a problem then you will always fail at everything. Learn to deal with problems as they come up and you will keep going.
We neglect that we are humans who are adaptable and that failure is only temporary IF you get back up.
Steady hands
When we panic, we spiral headlong into disaster.
We can embrace failure as a teacher, we are unstoppable.
The world changes. Whatever distraction, vice, or adversity appears, we can learn new ways to deal with it.
Resilience can be built to transcend whatever life throws at us.
Instead of developing a phobia of falling, we must learn the art of catching ourselves.
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”― Jim Morrison
If you’re interested here is the 30-year evolution of Boston Dynamics