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.

[flitljm.livejournal.com]

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