Damn it. Beaten to the punch, by my own people.
Months ago, I got a hold of an insane video of the walking, four-legged BigDog robot. But I had been holding off on showing it, until the magazine article about the ‘bot came out.
While I was twiddling my thumbs, Defense Tech contributor David Hambling talked to BigDog’s masters, and checked out an updated version of the video for himself. In the latest New Scientist, he’s written about this machine so “surefooted it can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick.“
Check out how the BigDog stumbles, and then gets its footing back. It’s the most natural motion I’ve ever seen a robot make.
Internal force sensors detect the ground variations and compensate for them, says company president and project manager Marc Raibert. And BigDog’s active balance allows it to maintain stability when we disturb it.“
This active balance is maintained by four legs, each with three joints powered by actuators and a fourth “springy” joint. All the joints are controlled by an onboard PC processor…
The legs on the next version of BigDog, V3, will each have an additional powered joint and will be able to take on even steeper slopes and rougher terrain at higher speed, its makers say.
“Half of the earth’s surface is inaccessible to wheels and tracks. But people and animals can walk anywhere,” Raibert told me a while back. “We wanted a vehicle that could do the same.“
UPDATE 03/04/06 10:40 PM: Robot schmobot, says RC. New Scientist says that “the latest version of BigDog can handle slopes of 35… The hydraulics are driven by a two-stroke single-cylinder petrol engine, and it can carry over 40 kg, about 30% of its bodyweight. The robot can follow a simple path on its own, or can be remotely controlled.“
“Compare this to the llama,” notes RC, “which has the following characteristics:”
Life span: About 20 years
Average height:45″ at shoulder, 5–6′ at the head
Average weight:250–400 lbs.
A conditioned llama can carry approximately 25% to 30% of its body weight.
I’ll take the llama because:
1. It doesn’t require gas or batteries.
2. Service life of 15 years+.
3. No maintenance or spare parts required!
4. It’s self aware.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Did anybody else find that thing kind of creepy to watch?
Totally!
Oh, we are headed in a bad direction. As is the case with so much of the technology appearing with increasing speed and frequency in our society, this is a really bad idea.
Particularly with modern technology, there is no public input and no accountability, and preatty much the only people thinking about its long-term effects are the military and capitalists who fund the research. And I wonder even how many of them have really thought it through beyond the power they expect to derive from it.
Whenever scientific “progress” comes into question (which it rarely does), scientists are fond of saying that, whatever the consequences, we can’t go back. Even they may one day see the irony in that defense.
Robo-Dog!
“Oh, we are headed in a bad direction. As is the case with so much of the technology appearing with increasing speed and frequency in our society, this is a really bad idea.”
Hahahaha
Yea, this is just terrible. I’m sure this amazing and remarkable technology will benefit no-one. Not the soldiers in the field, not ethnobotanists, not archeologists, not the elderly, not the parapalegic, not the double or quadruple amputee.
In the fullness of time, when this matures from a creepy, wheezing monstrosity of a prototype to a slick, quiet and unbelievably useful product… I’m sure its only the evil Bushies and their Big Oil buddies who will get any value out of this kind of research.
Yup. Yawn.
“Oh, we are headed in a bad direction.”
Well surely we have been heading in a bad direction since the start? Ever since humans started creating tools and weapons? It seems to be human nature to first create these tools, then abuse their uses.
The question is:
Whether or not we are better off now, with our wheels and IC engines and telcoms, than we were with nothing but our hands and loin cloths? How do you measure that?
But how weird was that video, made me feel very uneasy. Love the slo-mos too :)
Yes it is creepy. Because it protects itself. Remember that video that went around the net some years ago of a guy getting frustrated with his office PC. He attacks and destroys it. Very funny. Poor silly computer. Not any more. This thing also is a chimera of animals it immitates. You can see horse-like movements, chicken-like movements and dog-like movements. It reminds you of all these animals… but it isn’t one.
But it is beautiful. Elegant. Delicate, Graceful.
If the government goes rotten, there will be no more running to the hills with these babies around.
It looks like two guys wrestling who really need to take a pee
Phoenix Insurgent
I agree with most of what you said. Right now what gets called spiritiuality is a passive state. Most people rely on that old book that every one says disproves evolution. This is not a very spiritually imaginative or inspired time. A scientist is like Marco Polo. He comes back from China and people either believe him or not. It doesn’t change the fact of China’s existence.
People’s relationship with thier bodies, minds and the universe are not places of hard fought realization, these days as they were say during the enlightenment. Most people drift along and get into the “ideological feedback loop” as you call it. A machine can present you with a continually improving image of what you passively have accepted ( the recieved notion) of yourself to be. So as one descends into the introverted narcissistic feedback loop, the machine will only confirm the rightness of this recieved notion of self, more and more completely with every passing cycle.
To paraphrase the immortal Oscar Wilde, ( not sure if I have absolutely right) “The late nineteenth century disgust with realism is the rage of Caliban at seeing himself in the mirror”. Machine are going to help us with that disgust.
In a sense the technology that made the B Empire possible also created the spiritual ( and I am beginning to hate that word ) passivity possible that rules us today.
Off Topic
Just checking this blog out
really nice work Mr. Noah Shachtman
Psst, the IDF has decided to go with llamas in a competition against donkeys and horses. I think it was that they carried 40kg and only needed food every other day.
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:H_dl6KcTf7MJ:www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002455428+Israel+llamas&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
CNN states “The military tried using mules for similar tasks, but although they could carry heavier loads than the llamas, they behaved badly — at one point, staging a “mutiny” and fleeing, the newspaper said.
According to Brig. Gen. Itzik Ben-Tov, llamas are well-disciplined and move quickly.
They also have highly developed senses of smell and hearing, are nimble, and only eat once every two days.”
“Technology improves life for everyone. I don’t live in a cave, like my ancestors did. The Ford F-150 that sits in my driveway allows me to travel at speeds unimagined just over a century ago. I’m sending data across the world at a billion bits a second, communicating with people all over the world, reading the insane ramblings of a lunatic at my whim. Hooray, internet. Thanks, US military, for linking together defense computers!”
When you say, improves life, what do you mean? How do you measure quality of life? Live longer? Die Richer?
Do you mean you can travel faster, transer bilions of bits faster, etc etc? What happens when you can travel at the speed of light and transfer data instantly? How do you imporve your life then?
All I was trying to say in my earlier post is, how can we say we are better off now, than we were with just stone tools and apples? (sans ipod)
And also anything we develop that can be used to do good things, like lasers and roads. Can also be used to do bad things, like taking down planes and car accidents. Its not the technology at fault, but us as human beings. Now im starting to get a bit pesimistic, and I don’t like it.
So maybe il go watch the men fighting over who gets to take a leak first
Of course, Tom. Whether we’re clubbing someone with a rock, or shooting them with a gun, it’s ultimately our responsibility. Technology doesn’t take away our choice to be as good, or as bad, as we want. All it does is give us more freedom to act, and make our lives easier. Technology is empowering. How we choose to use it is our decision.
Is that good or bad? Well, that’s for philosophers to discuss. That’s a question of spirituality. What is “good”? Please ask Socrates that one, because it’s a bit outside the bounds of this discussion. But I’m pretty sure a robot dog isn’t going to call down the wrath of the Almighty. I don’t remember the Commandment that said “Thou shalt not build a shopping cart with legs.”
Of course, the point is that technology doesn’t offer equal amounts of good and bad. Very often, it offers almost all bad. Nor does it level the playing field, either, despite what Samuel Colt’s boosters may suggest. Nor does it make our lives necessarily easier, better or give us more freedom to act. Does a surveillance state give us more freedom? Does a nuclear weapon enhance everyone’s life? Does the rifle I own make me equal to a SWAT team barging into my house? Even if we all have the SAME rifle it doesn’t do that!
Sure, there are some benefits, but the view that it all comes down to the individual is naive and, I think, ideological. The evidence is quite to the contrary. Just where is this individual participation and choice that you are talking about. If tech enhances choices, then it would be obvious. And yet, the people who really make the choices about technological research and applications are hardly accountable at all.
One needs to take a wider view of technology’s effects and who has control over it to understand how it works. Just because DoD made the highways doesn’t mean that the highways are universally good. After all, tens of thousands of people die every year on them and the shit they pump into the air causes cancers and global warming.
And that’s not to mention the fact that moving armies and weapons around the country may not, in fact, be a good thing, no matter how easy it makes it for the rest of us to move around the country. Said another way, the freedom to drive 85 miles per hour from New York to Phoenix might not, in the end, balance out the oppressive power of a more flexible military apparatus.
Plus, the resources to build those highways came because the US had the power to extract wealth from other countries. The existence of state subsidized highways in the US is directly related to the lack of them elsewhere. So, are highways in the US good for people in Africa, for instance?
Also, if I may quickly offer one more example from the past, consider the patrol wagon and signal system instituted between the 1880′s and 1900. Initially, this system, which utilized telegraph technology, was only available to police and rich people (who could rent them for their homes and shops, interestingly). Through it, police patrols could really call for back up for the first time (before this police had to use whistles or bells, which had obvious limitations in terms of range and the number of other officers that could potentially deploy in response). And with the combination of the patrol wagon, they could deploy forces quickly and make mass arrests easily and routinely for the first time. Interestingly, this technology didn’t reduce the need for police – in fact police force size jumped as a result because the new technology required more police to operate and maintain it.
As an aside, we’re seeing the same thing now with surveillance cameras, which are not reducing police ranks the slightest while definitely (and exponentially) increasing the power of the police to enforce and deter crime.
Returning to the main point, the political context of this development (again, subsidized by the state), was the rising labor movement of the time. Following on the Great Upheaval of 1877, labor, which had been violently put down, rose up again during the economic collapses of the 1880′s. These technologies were used to great effect to attack the mobilized working class in Chicago, for instance, but many other places as well.
And, so now, yes telephones are everywhere. And wi-fi (like the municipal kind sweeping the nation) vastly increases the investigative, response and surveillance powers of the police. So not just rich people can call the police these days. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? For a workers movement, it is a bad thing because more police power means more power for the capitalists. And more power for the capitalist means more exploitation for workers.
Relevent in the news today:
‘The lab is also, Moss boasts, “clearly the coolest place on the planet” to work, for those interested in how technology can change society. Its 30-plus research groups have names like Biomechatronics (how technology can enhance physical abilities), Lifelong Kindergarten (creative ways to learn), and Smart Cities (how buildings can respond more intelligently to inhabitants). Most of the lab’s $32 million yearly budget comes from corporate sponsors ranging from the expected – tech giants such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Intel, and Cisco Systems – to the less obvious, such as Campbell Soup, Philip Morris, and The LEGO Group, maker of LEGO toys.
One of Moss’s top priorities is to make sure these 80 or so corporate sponsors feel they benefit from the work of the lab. In the go-go days of the late 1990s tech boom, companies could simply decide, “This is cool. We’re going to put money behind it,” Moss says. But today, “You have to be able to justify that [spending] as a good investment that has a return.”‘
300 geniuses call him boss
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0306/p13s01-stct.html
Impressive, can’t wait until weaponary, small nuclear generator and a program to identify friend from foe is installed. It could actually be made to hunt down terrorist. Made in the thousands this would save a lot of US lives and would be a force to deal with.
very interested
I remember that in the Cronous, I had a good friend, because he did not have enough money to buy cronous gold, so his level was lower, but after when I met him, I often help him, he was very thank me.
I know that I already deeply love this game, before I do not know how to play the FF11, when my classmate talk about the FF11 and the FFXI Gil, I often do not know what they talked until I played the game, I know all things.