Jim Hall writes "The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear head to help carry injured soldiers out of combat. The "friendly appearance" of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease. The 6ft tall Bear can cross bumpy ground without toppling thanks to a combination of gyroscopes and computer controlled motors to maintain balance. It is expected to be ready for testing within five years. 'It is also narrow enough to squeeze through doorways, but can lift 135kg (500 lbs.) with its hydraulic arms in a single smooth movement, to avoid causing pain to wounded soldiers. While the existing prototype slides its arms under its burden like a forklift, future versions will be fitted with manoeuvrable hands to gently scoop up casualties. The Bear is controlled remotely and has cameras and microphones through which an operator sees and hears. It can even tackle stairs while carrying a human-sized dummy.'"
Give the robot a menacing look with red eyes, a gun, 500 pounds of Ammo
That's the other one. The one they're not telling you about. This one is the one they use to get funding.
What we need now is for some enterprising journalist to break into the lab, find the other one, be hunted down and killed by it. Then we have an episode of the X files in the making.
That's the other one. The one they're not telling you about. This one is the one they use to get funding.
Will they use this one to go collect the other one if it's damaged? I wonder what the evil one looks like...I hope it has, like, a bunny head with red glowing eyes.
The bear is actually Mark III. Their first version, the Tinky-winky, was a failure in tests, because its purse kept getting shot off. The Mark II was given the head of Hillary Clinton, but in tests the rescued soldiers chewed their own arms off in fright rather than be rescued by her.
Heck, even fit the medic-bots with menacing red eyes and 500 pounds of ammo.
If you find yourself wounded in the middle of a firefight, which will make you feel more comfortable - being carried out by a carebear that wouldn't hurt a fly, or being carried out by something that looks like it will decimate any opposition in its path?
If I see am wounded in battle and see something that looks like Nemesis from RE:Apocolypse coming at me, I'm gonna have a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest if its on MY side...and a warm, squishy feeling in my pants if it isn't.
If you find yourself wounded in the middle of a firefight, which will make you feel more comfortable - being carried out by a carebear that wouldn't hurt a fly, or being carried out by something that looks like it will decimate any opposition in its path?
Actually, I'd rather be carried out of the battle by something with a big Red Cross or Red Crescent symbol on the side, with no offensive armaments at all. While certainly some foes ignore the conventions of war, any foe is justified in shooting an armed piece of technology with an RPG.
If you find yourself wounded in the middle of a firefight, which will make you feel more comfortable - being carried out by a carebear that wouldn't hurt a fly, or being carried out by something that looks like it will decimate any opposition in its path?
I'd, personally, feel much more comfortable being carried by a 'carebear' - because carrying me is it's sole job. Stopping to fight means a longer time before I get to safety and medical attention.
This is also why combat medics (for years) have be
I think the military is at least twice as worried as the average civilian about the concept of putting guns on machines that can think "for themselves" (I know this is an inaccurate way of phrasing artificial cognition in its current stage, so all picky whining will be ignored).
I wonder what Stephen Colbert would say about robot bears.. Somebody needs to ask him.
You want to hit the insurgency where it hurts... in their religion. Send robot devil in after them.
Absolutely. I bet sectarian violence would end in a heart beat if they were united against a common enemy. Right now, the only candidate is US soldiers, which sucks for us, but wouldn't it be great if they were instead united against our army of robot devils? After all, we are the Great Satan [wikipedia.org] to their neighbors.
For bonus points, make the robots look like the Horde from WoW, and get the Dept. of Defense to release a WoW "expansion" in which the players unwittingly control the robot army, a la Ender's Game. Use the profits to fund the war.
Alternative: make the robots enact Wii tennis, with grenade-balls that explode on the second bounce. Threaten to send them into Sadr City or wherever the latest hotspot is unless the locals work things out for themselves.
One more thing: instead of making robotic kill-bears, why not just breed actual bears for combat? Black bears aren't particularly scary, but grizzlies are terrifying. Put some body armor and a control mechanism on them, and away you go.
If everybody is going to hate us anyway, we might as well do something really cool to deserve their animosity.
Yeah, because if I'm wounded, in pain, drifting in and out of consciousness, being picked up by a 6-ft robot bear with hydraulic arms will be so soothing. The teddy-bear head is just the thing.
Hmmm, I was just thinking that cute little teddy bear from the sci-fi movie Screamers (1995). Then again, if I were wounded, I'm not sure I'd want some big, obvious "lifesaving" robotic bear lifting me up anyway. Sometimes being dragged painfully along the ground by guys who know how to hide, and when to duck is a better option, IMO. Sure, the guy controlling the bear wants you to make it back safely, but I think that another person out there has a lot more invested in (both of) your safety. And then ther
It is expected to be ready for testing within five years.
I'm glad they settled on the "bear" look then. Now that that hurdle has been overcome, the only other matter, of designing and building a functional, reliable semi-autonomous bipedal robot, should be trivial.
It's the new exchange rate. The US pound has been greatly devalued in relation to the European kilogram.
Anyway, I see a lot of skepticism about this design, but I think it's great. TFS makes it sound like the robot is designed with a furry brown teddy bear head, but it's more just a friendly robot face. Having been rescued from death (although not the battlefield kind) before, I would say that it's a great idea to have something like that when the people it will be picking up are not thinking clearly.
If the thing is so sophisticated that can navigate rough terrain in a hostile arena and carry someone back, why not give it a gun and let it do the fighting? Then there would be no wounded to carry back.
All we'd need then would be a well-trained team of people to recover damaged robots. If only we could think of a way to make them look non-threatening, so that enemy robots would know not to shoot at them...
You've hit upon it. That's exactly what they're gonna do. Give that giant teddy bear (how can you call it a Teddy Bear if it don't have fake fur?) a gun and send it out to shoot the wounded. Much easier to program than carry them back. Plus, nobody would ever suspect the teddy bear.
In all honesty, humans are extremely effective at recovering wounded from hostile zones. They only cases where they are not effective, a giant white Robot with no situational awareness and an inviting teddy bear look would be even less useful, and the support and maintenance would be a PITA. Someone's gonna look at the cost and complexity of this, and decide it's got no battle value.
Then someone will have lunch with the constructor, and a budget line will mysteriously materialize.
But, let's be serious: if we ever have an army of hairless teddy bears, then militarism has truly gone mad.
i would have figured this thing would have needed a massive battery pack, judging by the description of its functions, but the picture shows only a slight slender thing
How comforting to know that the robot will be able to pick up my limbs or whatever is left of me carefully....but id rather see that budget spent promoting world peace
I worked as a life guard for almost eight years. Most of the injuries were thankfully mundane but there were a few horrific ones that I was witness to.
You can be as cool or as macho as you want but when you're bleeding out and close to death... all that swagger goes away and you will most likely do anything you can to get away from the pain and your own mortality. This doesn't mean that you'd be sobbing or hysterical but *any* comfort you can find you will cling onto.
It's also been proven, time and again, that a patients survival rate is influenced by their state of mind.
So... a "teddy bear" head may seem stupid or silly but it is actually a very well conceived and valid idea. Beyond the patient's needs, there is the very real likely possibility that a "friendly" looking robot is less likely to be attacked by the enemy.
In WWII it was commonplace for medics to ditch their emblems so that they wouldn't be such a high profile target.
There is no chivalry in modern warfare.
Think about it: Injured soldier on field, medic coming to rescue. Hmm, let him perform the rescue: Enemy has 2 soldiers. Shoot the medic: Enemy down 2 soldiers, and maybe they'll send another.
The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear head to help carry injured soldiers out of combat. The "friendly appearance" of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease.
Damn! That is SO much better than the prototype my startup has been working on for five years, which has a metal skull for a head and wears grim reaper robes. Teddy bears! Why didn't we think of that?? I mean, we should have realized we were on the wrong path since our prototypes weren't testing well (lots of heart attacks in the focus groups)... boy is my face red.
Notice how all the tenses used in the summary and article are present tense? Except the prototype doesn't do most of the things the article so glowingly describes. The only hint is the "ready for testing in 5 years." And even that is about as weak an assertion as one can make - not production, not deployment, not evaluation, but testing in FIVE years.
I build military bots, and I love this concept, I've even seen the current prototype. This is something we need and I wholly support the effort but this press release is pure marketing. The current prototype can't walk, and as far as I could tell it can't even stand yet, the prototype has large wheels where the 'knees' are currently.
I'm sure this story is a calculated attempt to get development money, and that's good, but it's couched in terms that make it sound like the technology is ready to go, which it's not. Five years is a long time, expect lots of program and design changes between now and then, and depending on politics (i.e. military funding) it may get scrapped entirely.
errr (Score:5, Insightful)
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Forgot to add... (Score:3, Funny)
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Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
What we need now is for some enterprising journalist to break into the lab, find the other one, be hunted down and killed by it. Then we have an episode of the X files in the making.
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Will they use this one to go collect the other one if it's damaged? I wonder what the evil one looks like...I hope it has, like, a bunny head with red glowing eyes.
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why make it menacing? (Score:4, Funny)
Give the robot a menacing look with red eyes ...
Why make it look menacing? Imagine:
RRRRR RRRRRR RRRRR
Gomer Pile looks up to see what the noise is.
"Oh look, a panda bear. How cute."
Bang!
Poor Gomer.
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Re:errr (Score:5, Interesting)
If you find yourself wounded in the middle of a firefight, which will make you feel more comfortable - being carried out by a carebear that wouldn't hurt a fly, or being carried out by something that looks like it will decimate any opposition in its path?
If I see am wounded in battle and see something that looks like Nemesis from RE:Apocolypse coming at me, I'm gonna have a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest if its on MY side...and a warm, squishy feeling in my pants if it isn't.
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Re:errr (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:errr (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:errr (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'd rather be carried out of the battle by something with a big Red Cross or Red Crescent symbol on the side, with no offensive armaments at all. While certainly some foes ignore the conventions of war, any foe is justified in shooting an armed piece of technology with an RPG.
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Re:Nobody the US military will every fight again.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'd, personally, feel much more comfortable being carried by a 'carebear' - because carrying me is it's sole job. Stopping to fight means a longer time before I get to safety and medical attention.
This is also why combat medics (for years) have be
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Wow. But the last time I checked, 135kg * 2.205 lb./kg ~= 298 lbs.
Where'd the extra 202 lbs. come from?
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I think the military is at least twice as worried as the average civilian about the concept of putting guns on machines that can think "for themselves" (I know this is an inaccurate way of phrasing artificial cognition in its current stage, so all picky whining will be ignored).
Re:errr (Score:4, Funny)
You want to hit the insurgency where it hurts... in their religion. Send robot devil in after them.
Absolutely. I bet sectarian violence would end in a heart beat if they were united against a common enemy. Right now, the only candidate is US soldiers, which sucks for us, but wouldn't it be great if they were instead united against our army of robot devils? After all, we are the Great Satan [wikipedia.org] to their neighbors.
For bonus points, make the robots look like the Horde from WoW, and get the Dept. of Defense to release a WoW "expansion" in which the players unwittingly control the robot army, a la Ender's Game. Use the profits to fund the war.
Alternative: make the robots enact Wii tennis, with grenade-balls that explode on the second bounce. Threaten to send them into Sadr City or wherever the latest hotspot is unless the locals work things out for themselves.
One more thing: instead of making robotic kill-bears, why not just breed actual bears for combat? Black bears aren't particularly scary, but grizzlies are terrifying. Put some body armor and a control mechanism on them, and away you go.
If everybody is going to hate us anyway, we might as well do something really cool to deserve their animosity.
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Re:errr (Score:4, Funny)
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In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Park rangers report a rash of picnic basket thefts by large robotic creatures with teddy bear heads.
Aye, Boo Boo?
Robot Bear Tackles Stairs, Leaves Soldier Behind (Score:5, Funny)
So long as it works with the new Hello Kitty Laptop to run it remotely, sounds like a plan.
I for one welcome our
Re:Robot Bear Tackles Stairs, Leaves Soldier Behin (Score:3, Informative)
Awww... (Score:5, Funny)
Other uses? (Score:2)
Everyone knows that... (Score:5, Funny)
Ohkaayy... (Score:5, Funny)
Full Metal Panic Fumoffu time.
Re:Ohkaayy... (Score:4, Interesting)
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And then ther
*holds breath* (Score:5, Funny)
I'm glad they settled on the "bear" look then. Now that that hurdle has been overcome, the only other matter, of designing and building a functional, reliable semi-autonomous bipedal robot, should be trivial.
Re:*holds human* (Score:5, Funny)
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One lacking feature (Score:2)
lbs to kg? (Score:2)
Re:lbs to kg? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I see a lot of skepticism about this design, but I think it's great. TFS makes it sound like the robot is designed with a furry brown teddy bear head, but it's more just a friendly robot face. Having been rescued from death (although not the battlefield kind) before, I would say that it's a great idea to have something like that when the people it will be picking up are not thinking clearly.
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No need for soldiers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No need for soldiers (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No need for soldiers (Score:5, Insightful)
In all honesty, humans are extremely effective at recovering wounded from hostile zones. They only cases where they are not effective, a giant white Robot with no situational awareness and an inviting teddy bear look would be even less useful, and the support and maintenance would be a PITA. Someone's gonna look at the cost and complexity of this, and decide it's got no battle value.
Then someone will have lunch with the constructor, and a budget line will mysteriously materialize.
But, let's be serious: if we ever have an army of hairless teddy bears, then militarism has truly gone mad.
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Re:No need for soldiers (Score:4, Insightful)
pfft, that old thing?
That's pre-9/11 thinking.
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Master (Score:2)
where do the batteries go? (Score:3, Insightful)
how comforting (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally.. (Score:3, Funny)
This seems silly, but it's not. (Score:5, Informative)
You can be as cool or as macho as you want but when you're bleeding out and close to death... all that swagger goes away and you will most likely do anything you can to get away from the pain and your own mortality. This doesn't mean that you'd be sobbing or hysterical but *any* comfort you can find you will cling onto.
It's also been proven, time and again, that a patients survival rate is influenced by their state of mind.
So... a "teddy bear" head may seem stupid or silly but it is actually a very well conceived and valid idea. Beyond the patient's needs, there is the very real likely possibility that a "friendly" looking robot is less likely to be attacked by the enemy.
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There is no chivalry in modern warfare.
Think about it: Injured soldier on field, medic coming to rescue. Hmm, let him perform the rescue: Enemy has 2 soldiers. Shoot the medic: Enemy down 2 soldiers, and maybe they'll send another.
It's morally deplorable, but so is war.
I'm sorry... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Stole my thunder (Score:3, Funny)
Damn! That is SO much better than the prototype my startup has been working on for five years, which has a metal skull for a head and wears grim reaper robes. Teddy bears! Why didn't we think of that?? I mean, we should have realized we were on the wrong path since our prototypes weren't testing well (lots of heart attacks in the focus groups)... boy is my face red.
One problem: it doesn't walk (Score:3, Insightful)
I build military bots, and I love this concept, I've even seen the current prototype. This is something we need and I wholly support the effort but this press release is pure marketing. The current prototype can't walk, and as far as I could tell it can't even stand yet, the prototype has large wheels where the 'knees' are currently.
I'm sure this story is a calculated attempt to get development money, and that's good, but it's couched in terms that make it sound like the technology is ready to go, which it's not. Five years is a long time, expect lots of program and design changes between now and then, and depending on politics (i.e. military funding) it may get scrapped entirely.
Re:135kg = 500 lbs? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously, NASA did the metric to English units conversion for this.
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