Carl Klutzke ([info]sirvalence) wrote,
@ 2008-03-22 16:53:00
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Big Dog
I know I told all of you that I would no longer link to etre's Reaction blog, because you should all be subscribing yourselves, but this is so shiny that I can't help myself.

This video demonstrates Boston Dynamics' Big Dog, a robot that can "traverse uneven slopes, ice, snow banks and piles of bricks and can even withstand the occasional kick in the side to boot."


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[info]maerson
2008-03-23 02:04 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I love that stuff. I think back to my Controls course in college, the calculations, creating the code to interpret the information coming in to figure out how the device needed to respond...

The amount and types of information going in to that BigDog are phenomenally complex, and the way in which it is being processed and responded to so quickly is really impressive. Catching it on ice? Recovering from a kick? Seriously, that's awesome. It would be really exciting to be in that industry - a part of me wishes I'd stayed in engineering... :\

Not a big part, mind you. I kinda like having a steady job. ;)

And I don't blame you for posting this one: it was cool enough to get a nod on /.! :D

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[info]arenson9
2008-03-23 05:55 am UTC (link)
Wow. If I hadn't seen it, I'm not sure I would have believed it.

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[info]mazlynn
2008-03-25 08:48 pm UTC (link)
Wow. One of the interesting things for me - when it was recovering from the kick or the ice, there was a part of me that wanted to help it up, repsonding to the video as I would have to a dog or deer falling because the movement was so similar to what you would see in an animal of that body type. It always fascinates me how, often, all the robotics work comes right back to the same point evolution reached as the best design.

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[info]sirvalence
2008-03-26 09:45 am UTC (link)
I felt some of that myself. Artificial and bizarre-looking though it was, it still had a strong semblance of life, to which I felt both attraction and repulsion. Robotics offers a lot of sound practical advantages, but our emotional reaction to robots is going to have a big effect on people, possibly both for good and ill.

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