“Big Dog”: An agile quadruped robot
Climbing a hill. Slipping on ice.
Climbing down. The leap.
(See potentially disturbing video)
Brought to you by Boston Dynamics and DARPA
A fast, dexterous robotic hand
The hand. Motion blur.
The toss. The catch.
(See potentially disturbing video)
Brought to you by the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory
at the University of Tokyo
Forget about clumsy, lumbering robots.
Think fast, precise, and acrobatic.
[Update: only potentially disturbing videos.]
See also the series on High-Throughput Nanomanufacturing —
- — Small Parts (with videos, no robots)
- — Assembly (with videos, no robots)
- — Assembling larger products (with video of a very fast robot)
And…
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Why do you think these robots are “disturbing”?
I called the Big Dog video “disturbing” because I’ve shown it to a few people, and they were disturbed. The robotic hand video might not be as deserving of that description, but has some of that effect.
This is probably culturally specific to a substantial extent. It seems that in the U.S., blurring the line between animate an inanimate bothers people more than it does in Japan, and I suspect that this is one of the reasons that Japan has excelled in robotics. They like them more.
Note that Big Dog is sponsored by DARPA, and its descendants are intended for use on the battlefield; Big Dog itself is intended to be an early prototype of a mechanized ‘pack animal’ to carry supplies over rough terrain. Looking forward though, weaponization of ground robots looks inevitable, and this could develop in directions that are very unpleasant.
Big Dog has already been weaponized (warning: silly video).