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Home » Drones » Robo-Doggie’s New Pal

Robo-Doggie’s New Pal

Defense Tech loves robots, of course. But our favorite of ‘bot of all is the four-​​legged mechan­i­cal pack mules known as the BigDog. We’ve been bark­ing about the robo-​​fido, ever since it was a sketch on a draw­ing pad.
bigdogs2.jpgSo imag­ine the joy at Defense Tech HQ when we learned that there was a new puppy in the mechan­i­cal lit­ter — a sec­ond BigDog. The two bots were run­ning around Marine Corps Air Station New River recently — along with an exoskeleton-​​clad marine and a new trauma pod.
The robo­t­eers at Boston Dynamics have been train­ing the 165-​​pound, two-​​and-​​a-​​half foot-​​tall BigDogs to carry gear for sol­diers and marines over uneven ter­rain. So far, they’ve got­ten the pooches to “run at a rate of 3.3 mph, climb a 35 degree slope and carry a 120 pound load,” accord­ing to Marine Corps News. The bots have proved sturdy enough to take a big kick, and keep on walkin’.
Maybe it’s this stur­di­ness that’s inspir­ing some to think about the BigDogs are most than just mechan­i­cal beasts of bur­den. This arti­cle — and take this a can of salty Alpo — says Darpa “is con­sid­er­ing plans such as weaponiz­ing the BigDog robots.“
Down, boy. Down.
(Big ups: BB)

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June 28th, 2006 | Drones | 198248 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/06/28/robo-doggies-new-pal/Robo-Doggie%27s+New+Pal2006-06-28+16%3A48%3A48david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

« « Hoax Watch, Day 10: No Nork Launch, After All | Rapid Fire 06/​28/​06 (Updated) » »

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  1. Moose says:
    June 28, 2006 at 3:33 pm

    How about some images of the Exoskeleton?

    Reply
  2. Tod Glenn says:
    June 28, 2006 at 7:05 pm

    What about the GunDog? Such a plat­form would be great for car­ry­ing heav­ier sup­port weapons, giv­ing even an infantry fire team self pro­pelled weaponry like heavy machine­guns, grenade and miis­sile launch­ers, etc.

    Reply
  3. JS says:
    June 29, 2006 at 11:16 am

    There is no exoskele­ton, that’s the author being sen­sa­tion­al­ist. The guy in the back­ground has on what’s called a “wear­able OCU”, OCU = Operator Control Unit. It’s just a fancy word for ‘remote con­trol’ and they are usu­ally quite heavy due to the pro­cess­ing com­po­nents, machined metal fea­tures for rugged­ness, and large (~4 lb) mil­i­tary lithium bat­ter­ies. It’s no more of an exoskele­ton than the metal har­ness a snare drum player wears in a march­ing band. Also I work on the Talon Robots deployed in Iraq so yeah, I do have an idea of what I’m talk­ing about. ;)

    Reply
  4. JS says:
    June 29, 2006 at 11:18 am

    doh, posted too soon, ignore that bit, didn’t real­ize they were talk­ing about a dif­fer­ent device entirely, sorry!

    Reply
  5. Ellen Weber says:
    June 29, 2006 at 12:12 pm

    What an inter­est­ing look at the robots now avail­able. I hope there is one com­ing out for peace mis­sions with sim­i­lar vigor! great post — thanks for the new look in what can be done in comouters with hum­nanity in mind

    Reply
  6. maxhead says:
    June 29, 2006 at 12:21 pm

    Mr Smarty-​​pants JS…from TFA:
    The Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation Program is a wear­able robot that gives its wearer mechan­i­cal arms and legs, said Main.
    It gives him the abil­ity to carry up to 200 pounds with­out feel­ing the load. The exoskele­ton gives the Marine the abil­ity to carry a lot more sup­plies, body armor, ammu­ni­tion or any­thing that he would need to take with him in a place a vehi­cle can­not go, he explained.

    Reply
  7. GK1 says:
    June 30, 2006 at 4:05 am

    A real don­key can carry twice as much and doesnt need pre­cious fuel either. It also does not fall over when it is kicked and might even bite back!
    Stupid effin yanks, its the clas­sic story of the space pen vs Russia’s pen­cil all over again!

    Reply
  8. Blackbird says:
    June 30, 2006 at 8:39 am

    Actually, the exoskele­ton is not “sens­sa­tion­al­ist” it does exist, and has even been pho­tographed, it’s just not in the pic­ture above.
    I too hope some­one is con­sid­er­ing th pos­si­bil­i­ties of using these ideas for paeace. Imagine a group of aid work­ers in the exoskele­tons and lead­ing a group of the bog dogs into a dis­as­ter area that is oth­er­wise inac­cess­able… cool.

    Reply
  9. mythbuster says:
    June 30, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    @GK1:
    Stupid effin yanks? That’s clever. And about the space pen..http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp says it all.
    NEXT!

    Reply
  10. Bakunin says:
    July 3, 2006 at 4:05 am

    Donkeys have this prob­lem. It’s called stub­born­ness.
    These devices will be able to carry and fire heavy sup­port weapons in sit­u­a­tions that would be too dan­ger­ous for sol­diers. They’ll be proof against small arms fire, so they’ll be able to charge into enemy areas and lay down death.
    Stupid effin yanks? Look in the mir­ror. If it wasn’t for us, you’d be wear­ing leder­ho­sen right now, so shut your bad teeth.

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