Robotic "pack mule" for Army - Impressive

[John Masterson]

Watching this thing recover from stumbles on ice and snow, and when you try to push it off balance was very impressive.

I wasn't expecting to see much, but I was surprised. Yeah, it's loud, but so's a tank.

Big Dog from Boston Dynamics demo


Thanks to pm4hire for the AllTop.com link...good site for finding interesting stuff!

[Rastus P Shagnasty]

That's amazing!  And a little scary.  I'm sure glad skynet isn't up yet.

[The Gorn]

It would have been kind of funny if that thing had kicked that guy in the jimmy when he knocked it over.

It looks nightmarish, like a big ugly bug.

[TRexx]

Very cool, but when you're lost in the desert, you can't eat your robot.

[John Masterson]

Quote:It looks nightmarish, like a big ugly bug.

Yeah can you imagine a few hundred of these advancing with infantry? Ugh. Creepy!

Bugs!

[David Cressey]

Some 35 years ago,  there was a robot named "shakey"  that performed surprisingly well.  Its brain was not on board, because computers were too large and heavy back then.

www.sri.com/about/timeline/shakey.html

It stands to reason that a lot of progress would have been made since then.  One big change is legs versus wheels.  I wonder why they chose four legs rather than six?

What I want is a fairly cheap robot that can walk over to the suspected bomb,  pick it up,  and carry it to the safe detonation site, and put it down.

After that,  I want a robot on wheels that can roll down the highway in Iraq,  and cause all the IED's in the way to self detonate by sending spurious signals.  

I can think of other uses for robots,  but that'll do for starters.

[ilconsiglliere]

That Big Dog robot is wild. Its like something out of a science fiction movie. Crazy stuff.

[The Gorn]

Similar cultural reference: ED-209 from Robocop.