IANAL but I think internal prototype names can be anything - it's only if they bring it to market that there could be some chance of consumer "confusion".
I'm still waiting to see the lawsuit from Microsoft, who has owned the "X" trademark for many years.
Also, Elon has been promising such a robot for years - at least it's not a human in a robot costume this time... but could easily be CG. I'll believe it when I see some 3rd party people putting it through its paces. (yes, I was skeptical of the Boston Dynamics videos as well until they let others in to film)

I thought by comparing itself to existing technologies, it was being up front that it’s just moving from purely theoretical to prototype. Maybe that’s not as clear to others?

I’m fairly certain every single point there was made about the Wankel when it was prototyped…look at it now! Edit: in fact, wankel side seals are the likely solution…it has the same rotary “side bleed” issue and they do ok.
Same for reciprocating piston engines and more.

Sure, it’s not ready for prime time, and no, it is no where near it’s theoretical potentials. What engine has been at this point? They got it to run, I’m pretty impressed with that as it’s much farther than most theoretical motor designs ever get.

Covfeffe. Let's look at the oranges of that.

You are such a ridiculous idiot. Biden's brain is exponentially better than yours. He speaks FAR more clearly and without flubs despite a diagnosed severe speech impediment than you can even write.

Compared to Trump's drug addled sub par dementia riddled brain, Biden is an Einstein in his prime. Trump couldn't even speak in complete sentences, much less drive a golf cart, Biden safely hot rods million dollar prototypes while making jokes that are actually funny, not just nasty ignorant personal attacks beneath children while sitting in the truck seat pretending to drive like a two year old on the ride in front of the grocery store.

Funny, when he speaks publicly you've been forced to admit he spoke well, intelligently, intelligibly, and was totally rational while Trump fumbled, complained, stumbled over simple words, stumbled over simple concepts, and wasn't honest... then within days forget what you said and revert back to "Trump smart, Biden has dementia".

What you cannot grasp is America saw them both non stop for 6 months then chose and, despite numerous Republican voter frauds, serious postal interference, and a purported billion dollar war chest, trump lost in a MASSIVE landslide in the most secure election ever according to Trump's election anti fraud department....and you decided to listen to his little tantrums instead of the millions of professionals his administration hired to safeguard the election, or the dozens of Republican judges who heard the "evidence" and tossed the cases, or every single republican governor, or his own people who eventually admitted there really was no fraud, it was all pure hyperbole, and you had to be a braying moron to believe it.

I say, based on what's been said and claimed, your brain is gone, was gone well over 5 years ago.

It had to be mush to support a clinically narcissistic repeatedly convicted con man, fraud, and self described rapist, incestuous father, tax cheat, mob tied, hard core long time certified racist, white nationalist, and pedophile as the best Republicans have to offer. Seeing what you idiots have elected since him, you may have been right, he might be YOUR best, he certainly is one of America's worst citizens.

So sad and delusional you are, little Bobby. Cry us some more delicious tears over your messaih's MASSIVE failures across the board....then send Broke Donny more money, he needs it for criminal defense attorneys.

LMFAHS!!!!!

Um.....what? You think Biden owns planes and helicopters?

Are you claiming Trump has a pilot's licence? He's never produced or used one. I doubt he has a driver's license.

What does that have to do with Biden driving and Trump's instabilities? Nothing.

Biden can drive, well enough to put million dollar prototypes in his hands, dementia Trump can't properly operate a golf cart.

It's nice to have a functioning adult brain in office again.

Funny, we never saw Trump drive anything but a personal golf cart (seems no club he didn't own wanted to rent him a cart), and he sucked ass at driving them and never followed the rules for them, always drove onto the green. He was allowed to sit in the driver's seat in trucks like a big boy, but no one trusted him behind the wheel so he never had the keys.
Biden is trusted to drive prototype vehicles that cost millions to build.
And you still say Trump doesn't have dementia but Biden does. Your delusional thoughts are rapidly becoming a super minority of two....you and Trump.
Here's proof.
https://videosift.com/video/Watch-Biden-Floor-It-Driving-An-Electric-Truck

Oh yes I take ITER as good news, but it still leaves us 20 - 40 years from a... well I wanted to write a commercial fusion plant, however that might be a trifle optimistic.

Lets say we are at best 20-40 years from a functional prototype of a commercialy viable plant.

ITER is very much a test, any way you bend it. DEMO is waiting for ITERs outcome. Of course ITER will work, tokamaks have operated since the 1960s, that is like claiming a rocket will almost certainly fly. Yet we still stand in awe when it does.

It took 50 years from Einsteins nearly blind-guess prediction of a physical phenomenon to fission power plants. 50 years from the Orvilles hops to jet passenger planes. 58 years from Ciolkovskys crazy drawings to a man in space. In my grandfathers lifetime we went from horse-drawn carriages to the SR-71.
In my lifetime we have gone from landing on the moon to almost maybe landing there again some time.

We are slowing down or the going is getting more difficult.

There are a series of these vids on YT. When you get to the one that has the guy introduce himself as "Larry aka The Prototype", try not to puke on your keyboard. It's hard to have sympathy for a practicing douchebag.

I have to agree. It still looks like a prototype. On the other hand, it will probably attract preppers.

He got the idea from the Blade Runner car.

*promote some *quality tech, but that's a silly application.
Roll up screens are best used on mobile devices not ridiculous high end TV gimmicks, imo.
Show me the prototype iPhone 15 that is the size and weight of a fountain pen until you unroll it to full tablet size, or a laptop that rolls up to the size of a large cigar....then I'll feel like it's the future.

Fair points, but this is obviously a prototype.

Ultimately, the price of these will come down and even if you need to swap out the batteries, there's no reason that can't be automated too. Hell, a roomba basically does that now. The point is it doesn't need sleep or meal breaks and it doesn't care about working hours. Or you just leave it connected to a permanent power source (if you can teach it to drywall, you can teach it to avoid the cable).

And yeah, my numbers are obviously estimates, since this isn't commercially available yet, and you'd need to factor in capital investment, maintenance, etc. But you don't have to pay it a salary, it doesn't need medical and it doesn't have to comply with health and safety regs (at least, not for the robots H&S).

I find it difficult to believe that something like this could ever be less cost-effective than a human.

Of course, that's assuming a steady rate of improvement. Bipedal robots (like self-driving cars) have been "90% there" for many years now. It might be that the last 10% is REALLY, REALLY difficult.

My gut feeling is that we will see a tipping point. There will be some really challenging engineering/programming obstacle that stops these going mainstream, but eventually, someone will solve it and then the rate of progress will be exponential.

But you're right in that, that's certainly a few years away yet. I'm fascinated as to how we as a society/civilisation deal with mass automation.

Its a cute prototype that stretches the imagination but is a wholly improbable design to find its way to Mars.

The weight and dimensions alone would make it very, very difficult to de-orbit onto the surface of mars. This thing weighs: 5,500 lbs. (2,500 kilograms).

Its not going to be very economical to get it out of earths gravity and into orbit just to start, forget about the energy it will require to get it moving towards Mars.

Not just you. Also looks like a prototype being lifted by a crane in some shots. The propellers look too small to lift that mass.
I was also suspicious that they had so much footage under various lighting conditions. The twilight shots especially, which are dangerous conditions to fly under. Could be we're wrong, and just be artful CG for the sake of a fundraising video?

Japan is planning to film the 2020 Olympics in 8k@120fps and the cameras have been around for 3-4 years now. Multiple companies are working on 16k VR prototypes. 4k is generally pointless unless as I said you simply want "productive" realestate, or sit very close to the display. Because VR displays are so close to your eye the required resolution to match visual acuity is around 16k. My point wasn't anything to do with VR or games but rather the effective viewing distance from the screen(s).

"At 6 meters or 20 feet, a human eye with that performance is able to separate contours that are approximately 1.75 mm apart"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity
6meters isn't a particular helpful distance for this argument but I'm sure you can do the math. 65" 4k display with 0.37mm pixel pitch would require a much closer distance to resolve the image properly. There is an advantage over 1080p but at normal viewing distances you won't be seeing all the detail of 4k.

Neural Network Prototyping On the Go has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine on that post.

Very cool.

I sure would have thought that it would be a platform with hundreds of partially inset mouse/trackballs, rather than treadmills on axes 90 degrees apart. I mean ... sure, any 2D vector can be split into a sum of two orthogonal components. But with redundant inset trackballs you could get stuff like spot pivots that are much finer scale than the scale of the 2-3 inch wide secondary axis treads...

On the other hand, these guys actually have a working prototype, so they clearly thought things through and decided that the orthogonal treadmill solution was better. Rubber meats road trumps off-the-cuff theoretical any day!