New BigDog Robot Video 193
John860 writes "The US company Boston Dynamics has released an amazing new video of its quadruped robot BigDog. The highlight of the video (at 1:24) shows how the robot starts slipping on ice, almost falls several times, but finally regains its balance and continues walking. The video also shows the robot's ability to cope with different types of terrains, climb and descend steep slopes, and jump. Two years ago, the older version of BigDog was already able to climb slopes, keep its balance after a strong kick, and walk on rough terrain like stones, mud, and snow. The new version weighs 235 lbs and can carry a payload of up to 340 lbs, a factor of 4 better than its predecessor."
Re:Somewhere deep in the caves of Tora Bora (Score:3, Insightful)
My favourite part was where some scientist enthused that "you can fit quite an arsenal inside a 500lb boar". What an awesome job. I reckon animals are quite redundantly engineered, so you could take quite a lot of guts out of them and still have them able to stagger a few miles to enemy lines. Boars are unclean animals for Muslims, so presumably be drenched with bits of exploding boar milliseconds before you die would stop you getting into paradise if you believe in that sort of thing.
That would be culturally insensitive of course, so we shouldn't do that. But you could turn a herd of goats into a living cluster bomb. Can I has DARPA funding now?
Re:Simply Amazing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Add a turret, a video camera, and a remote control -- presto, a soldier that can march 24/7 across the desert, across the ice, through tear gas clouds, through radioactive fallout, and arrive somewhere all fresh and ready to shoot people, or drop bombs.
They're not going to "make toy versions", at least not any time soon. Why try to make a $100-1000 toy, and compete on the free market, when you can keep everything secret and sell them to the military for orders of magnitude more?
I'm an American, and these things scare me. Robert E. Lee once said "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it". Our government is making it significantly less terrible (for its own soldiers) all the time, and they also seem to be growing rather fond of it. When you can run a robotic war (in the air and on the ground) by remote control, what's to stop you from attacking everybody you don't like?
I predict we'll have robot infantry on the ground inside of 5 years, and within 2 years of that, they'll be back here patrolling American soil. And no, it's not a partisan issue, either: even Obama, the democratic frontrunner, wants to *increase* military spending, even though America's military budget is already larger than the military budgets of every other country in the world, combined.
Re:Simply Amazing. (Score:5, Insightful)
If a robot is cheaper than a dead/wounded soldier the robot might be a better option.
Also consider that robots need no training and (almost?) no supplies when they are in storage.
Re:Cool, yes. Useful? (Score:5, Insightful)
No tactical need for anti-tank or self-detonating (Score:3, Insightful)
* Best Dubya line ever. http://www.snopes.com/rumors/bush.asp [snopes.com]
Re:Cool, yes. Useful? (Score:3, Insightful)
Livestock needs to be taken care of every day, is much more maintenance-intensive than anything mechanical. It also can't be stowed in a container for easy long-range transport.
Career regrets (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simply Amazing. (Score:4, Insightful)
And this could be likely achieved with other conventional robotic conveyance mechanisms. If you just need to deliver a mobile land-mine, adaptation of simple RC cars could probably serve. As for dropping bombs and shooting people - there are plenty of airborne weapons that would be difficult to surpass in terms of "efficiency". Cheaper and simpler will win.
About the only military use I can see for this might be urban alley crawls, where terrain could be difficult, cramped, and dangerous, and possibly IED detection/detonation. I agree with parent about this being mostly a pack mule.
Re:Simply Amazing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Simply Amazing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simply Amazing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Reaction time (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder why the reaction time is about the same. Does the dynamics planner take that long to figure out what to do? Are the actuators slow enough so that it can't recover in a blur of leg motion? Or is that just the minimum amount of time stabilization can physically take?