GIANT SPIDERBOT STEPS OUT

No one at the Pentagon has plans to stick G.I.s in giant, six-​​legged, super-​​strong robots. Yet. But you’ve got to fig­ure it’s only a mat­ter of time, now that a Finnish sub­sidiary of John Deere is build­ing the machines for new-​​jack lum­ber­jacks.
In the works for a decade and a half, the Plustech Oy Walking Machine is sup­posed to be an eco-​​friendly, log-​​hauling mon­stros­ity; its six mas­sive legs spreads the weight of the machine evenly, the com­pany claims, to min­i­mize any impact on the for­est soil.
“Depending on the ter­rain, the ground pres­sure can be adjusted by chang­ing the machines six ‘shoes,’” accord­ing to Plustech Oy. “When the machine con­fronts obsta­cles, it sim­ply steps over them… avoid[ing] sig­nif­i­cant ground dis­tur­bance and minimiz[ing] dam­age to tree roots.
The company’s web­site doesn’t have much detail on the machine. But, in pic­tures and videos, the spider-​​like Walker seems to be able to toss around logs and step through the for­est with ease. And for a Defense Department keyed up to build walk­ing robots, that would seem like a mighty tempt­ing target.

March 15th, 2005 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.