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New BigDog Robot Video

Posted by kdawson on from the now-to-work-on-the-muffler dept.

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."

3 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Simply Amazing. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you "don't see any actual use in war, besides transporting things", you're really not trying.

    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.

  2. Re:Simply Amazing. by Rainer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...the dog could be destroyed with something like a bomb or a mine ...
    Soldiers can be killed/wounded with the same weapons.
    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.
  3. Re:Cool, yes. Useful? by stiller · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a pretty cool tech demo, but at the moment, its battlefield utility is zero. That two-stroke engine buzz is going to alert every bad guy for miles around. You assume that they'll use it for stealth operations. Not everything on the battlefield needs to be stealth. A tank is pretty noisy, still, it has it's place. For example, in a forrest situation, you might be able to hear it, but you won't see it until it's in a line of sight. And then it's a matter of your reaction speed versus that of a robot. Also, you could simply flood a battlefield with these things - think thousands - and give them all an explosive payload. You just got yourself a thousand kamikaze dogs (or more accurately, locomotive claymores).