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Boston Dynamics is well known for its robot creations, but its latest effort shows how close we are getting to human-like machines. You may remember the dog-like robot called BigDog the company created back in 2007. It was capable of navigating rough terrain and could walk, run, climb, and carry heavy loads with its four legs. BD has built upon the BigDog technology and has now created a two-legged robot called PETMAN which you can see in the video above. PETMAN has been developed for use by the US Army to help test chemical protection clothing. It performs realistic human-like...

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A new video of the Army's BigDog 'bot highlights its eery abilities Two years ago we showed you Boston Dynamics' incredible BigDog—one of the world's most ambitious legged robots—being developed for DARPA and the U.S. Army. With its advanced system of hyper-responsive hydraulic joints and a suite of sensors, accelerometers and gyroscopes, the BigDog's most stunning achievement is it's ability to walk, climb and maintain its balance on diverse terrain, even after slipping on ice or receiving a kick to one side. All while carrying several hundreds of pounds of supplies on its "back." In this new video, we see...

Meet the Incredible Hulk of Hounds By REBECCA CAMBER Maybe they should call her a whoppet - after all, she's a whopper of a whippet. This is Wendy, the dog whose appearance is a long way from the usual long, lean and sleek look of her breed. Scroll down for more... She was born with a genetic defect which has left her looking like the Incredible Hulk of Hounds. While her head, heart, lungs and legs are the size of those of a normal whippet, her gene defect means she is "double muscled". She weighs 4st4lb - twice as much...

Mayor vetoes dog-food settlement BY KERRY CAVANAUGH Staff Writer LA Daily News Article Last Updated:11/20/2006 05:28:52 PM PST Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today vetoed the controversial $2.7 million settlement with a Los Angeles firefighter tricked into eating dog food, after reviewing photos that showed the firefighter had engaged in hazing and pranks himself. The mayor's veto - his first in office - sends the settlement back to the City Council, which had approved the payout Nov. 8. "The behavior underlying this case must be eliminated in our city workforce," Villaraigosa said this afternoon. "At the same time, settlements of this magnitude...

A few weeks ago, Bill Clinton invited a group of left-wing bloggers to his offices in Harlem. Over chicken and cornbread, he spent a couple of hours listening to their concerns and giving them his views on today’s politics.The bloggers were impressed, to say the least. Well, maybe star-struck would be a better word. Or ga-ga. “He’s got beautiful blue eyes (this isn’t something I normally notice, but in his case I did, and he does, and I suspect he uses it to good effect),” wrote John Aravosis of Americablog.“The blue [in Clinton’s shirt] was the exact color of his eyes,”...

Big Dog - The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight. BigDog has an...

MINNEAPOLIS - America's security in the future depends on how it acts today — while it's still the only global superpower, former President Bill Clinton told a crowd Saturday at the University of Minnesota. "We should be trying to build a world now that we want to live in when we're not the only big dog on the block," Clinton said. But he said recent actions at home and abroad have undermined that goal. A unilateral foreign policy that alienates allies is creating global resentment, and large tax cuts during a time of war are creating an economic mess and...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The battle for the identity of the Democratic Party began in earnest Thursday, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Martin Frost of Texas presented themselves as new faces on the national political scene in a contest to succeed Dick Gephardt as House minority leader.</p>