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Boston Dynamics Wildcat Can Gallop — No Strings Attached
Boston Dynamics has been making eye-catching (and sort of creepy) military-oriented robots for several years, and we've noted several times the Big Dog utility robot. The newest creation is the untethered, gas-powered Wildcat; this is definitely not something I want chasing after me. (Not as fast as the previous, tethered version — yet.)
You can't order a horse to carry gear to specified coordinates unattended. Horses don't climb rough terrain particularly well either.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Because if you strap a bomb to it, and then blow it up, someone will complain...
...really smart people creating things - "war machines" to be blunt - that will wind up killing someone on some battlefield somewhere (probably the Middle East and North Africa). If BD were creating robotic devices for peaceful purposes - a "dog" for the blind, a robot that can do some old lady's shopping for her - then I would be applauding the effort/brilliance on display here. But building clever war machines? Sorry, but this isn't something intelligent, conscientious people would even dream of working on. So its "boo combat robots" for Boston Dynamics from me, rather than "yay cool robots"... My 2 Cents. Feel free to disagree...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
there is no nuclear reactor design that could power that thing like a gas engine can.
If there was we could have nuclear powered electric cars.
I really wish people could understand that. the small nuclear reactors could power a laptop or two for 30 years but could never produce enough electricity fast enough to run a clothes dryer for one run.
Second,
people see horse or mule and can't conceive of a horse or mule getting scared of bullets flying by and or getting shot. using a horse to carry your gear only works until the horse gets shot. then the horse runs away with your gear.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Horses were better than early cars. So they shouldn't have developed cars?
I could see advanced legged robots being useful in search & rescue in rough terrain, unexploded ordinance disposal (think IEDs), and several other applications. I'd like to take some of this company's robots and engineers out to our training area, Disaster City.
Surprisingly, horses are not very good at running long distances. In fact, people can run long distances faster than horses. The switchover point in that contest is around the length of a marathon. This robot can run a sub-4-minute-mile, but more importantly, there is every reason to think it could be made to sustain that pace all day.
I really wish people could understand that. the small nuclear reactors could power a laptop or two for 30 years but could never produce enough electricity fast enough to run a clothes dryer for one run.
You know, people would be more likely to understand that if we could stop this business of calling RTGs "reactors". The concept of a "reactor" (whether chemical, biological, or nuclear) is usually that it provides some form of support for a reaction to take place which otherwise would not take place, or would only take place in a different, less useful/safe/something way.
Radioactive decay is not in any meaningful sense a "reaction", and would be happening to the Pu (or other "fuel", if you're using something different) whether or not it's in the RTG, at essentially the same rate, generating the same amount of heat. The only thing the RTG does is feed the decay heat through a heat engine (typically a Seebeck device, but there's some work using a Stirling engine), to extract some work from the heat flow -- no reaction, so it's no reactor.
Ordinarily, I'd call such a distinction as this useless pedantry, and not engage in it, but you're correct that there's a problem with people being ignorant about RTGs and thinking they have capabilities they don't -- and since I'm convinced the general habit of calling RTGs "nuclear reactors" contributes to this, I think it's a distinction worth making.
This. Horses are a real PITA in the field. Fuel is bulky, they're heavy. Hard to drop out of planes (successfully anyway). They don't always do what you want them to do (Whoa Nelly!). They resent being shot at or blown up.
Of course, these aren't all that practical yet. It's basically electronic animal 101. But BD has some impressively cool tech. Their big problem is the energy source. Internal combustion engines are just so 20th century.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!