Boston Dynamics has made a really awesome robotic pack mule. The New Scientist article, with a link to the video, is here.
It’s way cool, but the advertised purpose is hauling stuff. For that, how is a gasoline-powered mule better than a grain-powered one?
Depending on the application, a gas powered mule won’t “tire” (you’d need to add gas, and whatever ongoing maint. is needed).
When that thing develops sentience, it’s going to remember those dudes who kicked it. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes when that happens.
-Tom
hurries off to patent chrystite mining attachment
Damn it, now I’ve got that song going through my head.
Of course, now you do too, so it’s not all wasted.
Geoff
Ahh how nice. It can carry 40kg and proabbly costs like half a million bucks and would be outragiously expensive to maintain. Instead they could just tuck for 25,000 bucks and haul half a tun of gear.
Other then that, it does look rather neat. This kind of mobile robotic tech has a lot of applications. I remember as a kid seeing shows about quadraped (and 6 legged) robots. However that was a long time ago and its a bit sad in all this time not much has been done. I suppose were still a long long way from giant bi-ped robots.