Kevin Spiess - Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 | 10:02AM (PT)
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From the makers of BigDog, Boston Dynamics
Last year, you might have come across the amazing footage of BigDog: a cargo-bearing military robot looking like it was straight out of a concept sketch for Half Life 2. Well the makers of BigDog have shown off what they've been working on lately, and it is just as (or arguably almost) impressive as BigDog.
The PETMAN robot is another example of how robotics is the field that we are going to see increasing leaps and bounds from, over the next few decades. If there is one thing that Boston Dynamics knows well, it is how to enable a robot to walk: in the video below, you can see that PETMAN has fantastic bipedal motion. And even like BigDog, PETMAN has a sense of balance; the robot can right itself if it has been pushed, or if it has slipped.
The obvious question here is: will they be mounting machine guns on the torso and sending this device to Iraq? The answer is nope -- not yet anyways. PETMAN was ordered by the one of the great benefactors of robotics science, the U.S military, to be delivered to a lab in 2011 for the advanced testing of a next generation of chemical-protective suits. These legs will be fitted with a torso, arms, and dummy head over the next year, and the robot will eventually gain a full spectrum of lifelike movement, including crawling and running. PETMAN will even be able to sweat when things get hot, in order to test humidity levels in the suit.
Sure it would be cheaper to use a human test model, but it would not nearly be as much fun (or nearly as safe, of course).
I quote, The obvious question here is: will they be mounting machine guns on the torso and sending this device to Iraq? The answer is nope -- not yet anyways, unquote.
Yes, not at the moment... but nothing stays the same forever, this applies to war and love too...
Having watched Terminator 1, 2, 3, and 4, I've a sixth sense that someday the United States will use some forms of robots in modern warfare to reduce casualties of U.S. troops thereby eliminating gratuitous public outcry for lost of young soldiers as a consequence of foreign policy failure....
Well, in the next 100-300 years, advanced robots will surely take over road patrol duties just like routine patrolling procedures which are currently carried out by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghan, and offensive vanguard positions in modern warfare and of course, in the next 2000-8000 years, there will also be, believe it or not, big inter-galactic warfare totally run by ingenious robots.....
Actually, I think military historians will see the massive use of battlefield robots in the current Iraq war as one of the most important milestones of the entire conflict.
At the start of the war, there were a few here and there. But the growth has been incredible. Battle-bots and drone craft are now seeing incredible amounts of use in Iraq. There are now specific divisions that are sorta 'robotic forces'. The SWORDS bots have been tearing stuff up, and the use of robots for finding and detonating bombs has been huge.
Drones are arguably the most effective tool in the entire arsenal of the US in Afghanistan. They were only intended for use as surveillance, but once someone stuck a Hellfire missile on them, they began transforming into a vital asset, because they can just stay in the sky for so many hours.
I'm with THM on the robots. But it won't take 100-300 years. It'll be less than 100 years before we see automated tanks out the Terminator, and anthropomorphic robots with guns. It'll happen a lot sooner than you might think !
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Yes, not at the moment... but nothing stays the same forever, this applies to war and love too...
Having watched Terminator 1, 2, 3, and 4, I've a sixth sense that someday the United States will use some forms of robots in modern warfare to reduce casualties of U.S. troops thereby eliminating gratuitous public outcry for lost of young soldiers as a consequence of foreign policy failure....
Well, in the next 100-300 years, advanced robots will surely take over road patrol duties just like routine patrolling procedures which are currently carried out by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghan, and offensive vanguard positions in modern warfare and of course, in the next 2000-8000 years, there will also be, believe it or not, big inter-galactic warfare totally run by ingenious robots.....
At the start of the war, there were a few here and there. But the growth has been incredible. Battle-bots and drone craft are now seeing incredible amounts of use in Iraq. There are now specific divisions that are sorta 'robotic forces'. The SWORDS bots have been tearing stuff up, and the use of robots for finding and detonating bombs has been huge.
Drones are arguably the most effective tool in the entire arsenal of the US in Afghanistan. They were only intended for use as surveillance, but once someone stuck a Hellfire missile on them, they began transforming into a vital asset, because they can just stay in the sky for so many hours.
I'm with THM on the robots. But it won't take 100-300 years. It'll be less than 100 years before we see automated tanks out the Terminator, and anthropomorphic robots with guns. It'll happen a lot sooner than you might think !