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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.'"
Give the robot a menacing look with red eyes, a gun, 500 pounds of Ammo, and leave the troop home; Also embed an explosive.
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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
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...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.
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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.
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.
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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
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Seriously, there's a reason Pedo-bear is such a popular meme. It's extrememly creepy to see something so supposedly cute doing bizarrly out of context things. Especially when you've got the whole 'uncanny valley' coming into play, with both the robotics and the fixed, glassy stare.
A much better idea would be to structure the robot as clearly not humanoid, but just as clearly not intimidating. Something like a walking stretcher or the robotic donkey they recently tested. Preferably not with a less-than-useless face; robot movies show that video cameras can be just as cute.
ceci n'est pas une
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
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
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
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.
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.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
They should use real bears.
I think a large breasted womanbot would be far more comforting than an evil robot bear, considering they are the number one threat to America...
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That was meant to be funny, not as a critique on your comment. Well done on the comment, BTW.
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I'd be more at ease having the Hot Looking Nurse Robot with big knockers carrying me away...
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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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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We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
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.
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.
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But, if you regard hope as a myth then you are most certainly depressed.
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This project seems ignorant of current first-response medical practice. The soldier in the rendering would choke, injure neck vertebra, and exacerbate internal injuries by the time the MediTeddy brought him to safety. If they are going to automate the recovery of wounded, they need to immobilize the patient. This looks like low-end science-fiction mashed-up with an old hollywood war-movie.
If the robots could figth aproximately as effectively as the humans, there'd be no reason to put human beings on the battlefield at all.