Posted on 03/03/2011 7:24:09 AM PST by Immerito
A Massachusetts engineering firm known for creating futuristic military robots has received multimillion dollar contracts to develop two more battlefield bots for the Department of Defense.
Boston Dynamics, which in 2008 unveiled a four-legged robot called BigDog, has been tapped by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development arm of the DOD, to create a human-like robot and an agile, robotic Cheetah that developers said will eventually be able to run 70 mph.
WATCH VIDEO OF THE BIGDOG BELOW
The human-like bot, Atlas, will have two arms and legs, but no head, and be able to walk and jog upright, climb, squeeze through narrow alleyways and use its hands, Boston Dynamics said.
The Terminator-like droid would represent a step forward from Boston Dynamic's current anthropomorphic robot, known at PETMAN, which is used to test chemical weapons protection suits for the Army.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Will they name one Amee?
Sorry, had to do it.
If all we needed was Soldiers without brains, we could draft college professors.
Okay, it can run faster than I can. How does it hold up to five rounds of ‘00’ Buck from a Browning 3” magnum semi-auto 12 gauage?
I’m thinking you need a rifle with armor piercing ammo. Why take chances? That thing has to have a battery compartment or fuel cell that couldn’t handle heavy duty ventilation created by small fast moving objects.
Now that I think about it, that’s another reason to buy a Barrett .50 cal.
Probably as well as you do, or possibly better.
No kidding, spending millions of dollars to reproduce something that already exists in abundance. The benefit? You don’t have to feed it (but you need to plug it in).
But as long as we have these, let’s just greatly reduce our missile defenses. No one will attack us if we have these.
The headless robot was interesting. copying the human gait is not so easy and maintaining balance even more difficult hence it could not be done until sufficient compact computing power and sensors became available.
I was thinking the poor robot with no arms or head gets pushed around by some technician. Soon as it has a head it will sue somebody! Do robots have rights?
Only Robin Williams.
He does have arms...what he uses the head for...I can’t tell..
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