The Shape of Things to Come

[andygates]

Take the walking robot technology of the utterly awesome robot mule BigDog (video, it's impressive).  Add the navigational brain of a DARPA Grand Challenge winner.  Season with a dash of Japanese helper-robot behaviour and wrap it all in a cuddly skin from the Pleo guys.  What do you get?  You get kids riding to school on Chocobos and baby dragons and Pokémon.

War tech can be fun!

(Darker minds among you may look at BigDog being kicked, and be thinking that Robot Wars might be about to come of age.  My Klingon dog will take your velociraptor, any day.  Bring it on.)

Comments

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

BigDog's amazing! The first 20 seconds of video are impressive enough, but stopping itself from falling over, getting over snow and ice and running and jumping. Blimey.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God. You know that, in a couple of years, they'll have one that can gallop flat-out over only moderately flat ground.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Can we apply Moore's Law to robotic capability? And the gallop isn't the scary bit - the scary bit is when it can gallop at a hundred kilometres an hour.

What you're looking at is the primal ancestor of the Rat Thing.

[jonnycowbells.livejournal.com]

Is it too early to put a bet on him for next year's grand national?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

They shoot robots, don't they?

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

[sniff] I don't see why the chocobo riding should be left to the kids.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Nor do I! BigDog is carrying 340lbs in that video - each of those bags is a standard Army pack, about the same as a big hiking rucksack full of cans of tomatoes (I speak from experience). So you can even go tandem!