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"Bear" Robot to Rescue Wounded Troops
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.'"
Park rangers report a rash of picnic basket thefts by large robotic creatures with teddy bear heads.
Aye, Boo Boo?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I can see the news headline now.
... what! ... no! get away! ... AAAARRRRRRGGGGH!! (splat) (rend) (growl) ...
So long as it works with the new Hello Kitty Laptop to run it remotely, sounds like a plan.
I for one welcome our
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...it's just so cute! Forget more bullets, we'll just disarm our opponents with cuteness from now on.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
...Bears are evil killing machines. I can't want to see Stephen Colbert's take on this story.
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.
Full Metal Panic Fumoffu time.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
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.
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...
Or make it look like a wheeled upside down trashcan with a gun ... and have it yell "Exterminate!".
[Insert pithy quote here]
Make sure and use Imperial kilograms in your conversion.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
Obviously, NASA did the metric to English units conversion for this.
With all their armor and equipment, each lb of a wounded soldier weighs about 1.7 lbs.
They should use real bears.
That was meant to be funny, not as a critique on your comment. Well done on the comment, BTW.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...to maintain that human touch. so they made it a bear.Great, then it turns on us and goes back in time to kill Sarah Conner.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'd be more at ease having the Hot Looking Nurse Robot with big knockers carrying me away...
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Not that I'm compelled to nitpick, but how does a man with no legs kick?
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
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.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
3 laws safe!
No kidding. If a cutesy bear came to rescue me in the middle of a firefight, I'd just assume I'd gone into shock already and death is imminent.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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 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.
The obvious solution, and the one that will put soldiers the most at ease, is to build a robot with an ample set of breasts.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
Jesus Fucking Christ on laxatives! Didn't you see Monty Python and the Holy Grail???
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.
To hell with reassuring looks... Give it a mask that looks like Angelina Jolie. Now THAT'S REASSURING.... And even if the soldier die. At least the last thing he sees is a HOT girl. Better still makes the robot say something "reassuring" like... "Oh, baby.. plz dun die. I need you"... I bet you the chances of survival of wounded soldier will increase 10 fold. Well... either tht or u be seing more soldier get "injured" just to ride her. Hahahaha
I can just imagine fields of robots, far as the eye can see, mining gold and trying to hawk their ebay merchant site to anyone within earshot.