Google bought robotics company Boston Dynamics a little over two years ago. Now, a potential customer for the hulking "BigDog" quadruped pack mule is balking due to noise concerns:
The US military's flirtation with robotic pack animals looks set to end: the Marine Corps has halted further testing of the BigDog contrivance from Google stablemate Boston Dynamics.
BigDog, aka the Legged Squad Support System, has been under development at a cost of $32m, with the goal of making a four-legged machine capable of carrying 400lb (181kg) of supplies. The final design did just that, but painted a target on the troops it was supporting.
"As Marines were using it, there was the challenge of seeing the potential possibility because of the limitations of the robot itself. They took it as it was: a loud robot that's going to give away their position," Kyle Olson, a spokesman for the Marine's Warfighting Lab, told Military.com.
BigDog's carrying power wasn't disputed, and the robot dealt well with clambering over rough terrain without a human controlling it during the 2014 Rim of the Pacific war games. But the power needed to do all this required a petrol engine, which was so loud that the enemy could hear soldiers approaching before they saw them.
Boston Dynamics did develop a smaller, electric-powered robotic dog called Spot. This was also tried out by the Marines at its massive Quantico base in Virginia, but Spot could only carry 40lb (18kg) of equipment and needed a human to guide it.
Two YouTube videos accompanying the article.
Related: Pentagon Scientists Show Off Robot And Prosthetics
Marines give Google's latest robot a tryout as "working dog"
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The "Replicant" division responsible for Google's robotics buying spree seemed to have hit a snag after its founder Andy Rubin left Google, and when it was reported that Google was interested in selling Boston Dynamics, the maker of the loud and noisy "BigDog". However, the division is still chugging along, and Japan-based subsidiary Schaft just showed off a new bipedal robot at the 2016 New Economic Summit:
There's a new bot in town (Tokyo, specifically), and while it might not be as cute as Nao, as creepy as Spot and BigDog or as anthropomorphic as Atlas, it might be more practical than all of them. It walks on two legs, but not like a man, or even a bear. This one, designed by Alphabet-owned Schaft Inc., has its own uniquely robotic form of locomotion.
The nameless robot strutted onstage at the New Economic Summit in Japan, joining Schaft co-founder Yuto Nakanishi and facing a delighted crowd. A video then played showing robots like the one on stage, but different — but all with a few things in common. Most important has to be the walking system. Rather than imitate a human gait, which is a remarkably complex controlled-falling affair, these robots have rigid legs that slide up and down like rails. This allows them to lift without bending, while joints at the top allow them to be canted in or out and "ankles" at the bottom provide stability on uneven terrain. Batteries and motors are suspended between the legs, creating a naturally low center of gravity.
It can go up and down stairs.
Boston Dynamics has produced a hybrid wheeled-legged robot called "Handle":
The company's new wheeled, upright robot is named Handle ("because it's supposed to handle objects") and looks like a cross between a Segway and the two-legged Atlas bot. Handle hasn't been officially unveiled, but was shown off by company founder Marc Raibert in a presentation to investors. Footage of the presentation was uploaded to YouTube by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson.
Raibert describes Handle as an "experiment in combining wheels with legs, with a very dynamic system that is balancing itself all the time and has a lot of knowledge of how to throw its weight around." He adds that using wheels is more efficient than legs, although there's obviously a trade-off in terms of maneuvering over uneven ground. "This is the debut presentation of what I think will be a nightmare-inducing robot," says Raibert
Boston Dynamics has yet to become profitable, and the Alphabet/Google complex looks to distance itself from "terrifying" and "nightmare-inducing" robots that may ultimately end up being sold to military customers (as long as they forget past disappointments):
While the robot's extreme sports skills were impressive, it's unlikely that Raibert's "nightmare-inducing" comment will be well-received at Alphabet. The company has been looking for a buyer for Boston Dynamics for months, reportedly after its last robot launch video went viral, and amid what Alphabet perceived to be "some negative threads about it being terrifying." The company was apparently in talks with Toyota about a takeover, but that has not as of yet materialized. Boston Dynamics is reportedly struggling to make money, especially after the US Navy said it would not be purchasing its robots.
So this is what Ethanol-fueled has been up to. Also at TechCrunch.
Last week at the Army Aviation Symposium, in Arlington, Va., a U.S. Army officer announced that the Army is looking to slim down its personnel numbers and adopt more robots over the coming years. The biggest surprise, though, is the scale of the downsizing the Army might aim for.
At the current rate, the Army is expected to shrink from 540,000 people down to 420,000 by 2019. But at last week's event, Gen. Robert Cone, head of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, offered some surprising details about the slim-down plans. As Defense News put it, he "quietly dropped a bomb," saying the Army is studying the possibility of reducing the size of a brigade from 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 in the coming years. To keep things just as effective while reducing manpower, the Army will bring in more unmanned power, in the form of robots.
Related: Google's Noisy "BigDog" Robot Fails to Impress U.S. Marine Corps
Over a year after signalling its intentions to dump the robotics demonstration company Boston Dynamics, Alphabet/Google has finally found a buyer: SoftBank. SoftBank acquired ARM Holdings for around $32 billion in 2016. Google also offloaded another robotics company, Schaft:
Google's ambitions for Boston Dynamics were never really clear. Before being acquired, the robotics company was mostly funded by DARPA—the US military's research division—with the express purpose of creating militarised robots. Within a year of being picked up, though, Google announced that it would no longer pursue any DARPA contracts, presumably to focus on possible commercial uses for the bots. No commercial robots ever emerged.
SoftBank, however, has had success with commercialising robots—specifically the small humanoid robot Pepper.
Also at The Verge, The Guardian, TNW, CNN, CNBC, and TechCrunch.
Previously: Pentagon Scientists Show Off Robot And Prosthetics
Google's Noisy "BigDog" Robot Fails to Impress U.S. Marine Corps
Google's Latest Boston Dynamics Robot Takes a Stand
Boston Dynamics Produces a Wheeled Terror as Google Watches Nervously
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports on the US Defense Secretary being briefed on the latest from DARPA.
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel got a first-hand look at a life-size robot Tuesday, the latest experiment by the Pentagon's hi-tech researchers. The hulking Atlas robot (developed by Boston Dynamics) is designed not as a warrior but as a humanitarian machine that would rescue victims in the rubble of a natural disaster, officials said.
Scientists also showed Hagel the latest technology for prosthetics, including a mechanical hand that responds to brain impulses and a prosthetic arm controlled by foot movements.
Let's all give a big welcome to our new robotic and cyborg overlords.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @12:42PM
I thought Google promised to end Boston Dynamics military contracts when they bought the company. What happened to "Don't be evil"?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:05PM
http://www.army-technology.com/features/featuredont-be-evil-inside-googles-acquisition-of-boston-dynamics-4167064/ [army-technology.com]
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185570-google-finally-proves-it-wont-pursue-military-contacts-pulls-leading-robot-from-darpa-competition [extremetech.com] (cache [googleusercontent.com])
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/16/google_acquires_boston_dynamics_maker_of_bigdog_atlas_and_petman_darpa_robots.html [slate.com]
This probably falls under "existing contracts". Perhaps they are angels and they kept it noisy crap on purpose?
Here is some info about how Google tries to keep military/govt/NSA contracts at arm's length. [pando.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:33PM
I predict they'll welsh on that promise. The US military is by far the best customer for many applications of robotics and autonomous vehicle technology. They won't insist on a polished product for under $5K with outsourced phone support.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:50PM
What happened to "Don't be evil"?
The cutest part is you actually believed they were committed to that.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:53PM
This just in: Corporations lie. Film at 10.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @03:13PM
This just in: Contract law is pretty binding and they had existing commitments. Wait and see if they take up any new government contracts before talking out of your ass.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Wednesday December 30 2015, @03:37PM
This just in: Contract law is pretty binding and they had existing commitments.
Almost all contracts have clauses that allow one or both parties to cancel it.
(Score: 2) by SanityCheck on Wednesday December 30 2015, @06:03PM
Unless you have shitty lawyers.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday December 30 2015, @05:03PM
Maybe that new Alphabet company doesn't commit to such unprofitable social conventions?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @06:56PM
How is a mule evil?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:00PM
They are progressing, but at this rate, anything useful on the battlefield is going to be 15 years away. Spot is much quieter than anything I've seen to date, but FFS, it's still to noisy! It might sneak up on a bunch of rowdy kids at play, or a soldier sleeping on duty.
It probably doesn't need to be any bigger, but it needs some muscle. I expect a combat robot to carry at least as much as a human. When it can carry as much a flesh and blood mule, they'll have something. Of course, the military is going to want it to carry and use weapons, which will cut into it's load carrying capacity. I can see it now, minigun mounted on it's back, and ten thousand rounds stored inside. Maybe they could build one with a mortar mounted, and a hundred or more rounds. That would sure take a load off of some grunts!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:07PM
In 15 years weapons should be nanometer scaled, spread by the wind, and conquering a place should be like "you have been infected by nanotech agent X, come out in the open, stay away from weapons and wait for the disinfection drones to get you and imprison you, failure to comply will result in sure, and painful, death."
But I fear that even when having such tech, the superpowers will keep faking old school wars because global peace doesn't make much money.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:13PM
If "old school wars" = indefinite wars against insurgencies, they can fight their battles conveniently on home soil.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:38PM
forwardbases are problem because the real supply lines a are crucial but become a problem
for you if you lose the base.
basically you just built a superhighway back into your own terretory.
if you dont have to build round wheel supporting supply lines then your retreat will also hamper the foe.
also helicopters are louder ...
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:55PM
also helicopters are louder ...
Which is why if helicopters are used for a stealthy mission they are used to drop off the soldiers well outside of earshot of the enemy so as to not alert them.
(Score: 2) by seeprime on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:39PM
Meet the specifications and the military wants more. No one in the military thought of putting it in the specs that a combat robot meet a specified acoustic noise level, along with carrying a specified mass ? This is why US military spending is out of hand. These guys are killers, not deep thinkers.
(Score: 2) by Lunix Nutcase on Wednesday December 30 2015, @02:52PM
How would this possibly meet specifications unless one of the specifications was "Make sure this can alert any enemy within firing distance"?
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:01PM
Specifications would have included carry capacity and having legs. Specifications did NOT include a maximum noise level. You can only "meet specifications" that are actually specified. Everything else is an engineering decision - and in this case, the engineering decision was that a noisy engine was going to be needed to that meet power requirements.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @03:21PM
You mean that for developmental technology, particularly for something that has never been built before and is under active development, that the only thing holding it back is a well-written requirements document? All they had to do was put in a spec for acoustic noise and it would have been magically met? The only reason we don't have Star Trek teleporters and tri-corders and shit is because a contracts person isn't prescient enough to put in all the necessary requirements, and that it is Contracts that is holding back tech development?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:17PM
The post you've replied to didn't imply that. However, there are ways (besides magic) of quieting internal combustion engines. A sound-deadening enclosure for the engine is one method. Another is to pass the exhaust through a chamber containing baffles or glass fiber, commonly called a "muffler".
(Score: 1) by Spamalope on Wednesday December 30 2015, @03:22PM
As long as you can send it to a location, or some sort of homing target it could still be useful.
Troops pinned down on a mountainside in Afghanistan and running out of supplies? You can send a few of these to rush the exposed hillside. As long as they aren't easy to disable they could be lifesavers.
Also, if they're no louder than a truck running a mule train of them could be used where a convoy of trucks can't go but is otherwise secured enough to send a supply truck column.
Still useful, just not all the time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:19PM
That's a big If. Now you want to send them unaccompanied by humans, or only via a "secure" route without a road.
The big version of this robot couldn't carry the load a sufficient distance using electric power. Maybe 5-10 years of battery improvements makes the concept feasible. Or an arc reactor or BigDog cavity sized fusion reactor.
There's also the suggestion that Google just won't renew or make new contracts with the military (at least publicly). That may have been a factor.
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(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:26PM
I'm pretty sure Alphabet won't keep Boston Dynamics inside Google.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 31 2015, @12:32AM
What's the difference? Google was run by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt. Now Alphabet Inc. is run by those same people.
It's not like the "stay away from being a military contractor" promise came with a guarantee that needs to be sidelined using the new holding company. So either nothing has changed, or the attitude at top will change.
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(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Monday January 04 2016, @03:16PM
Or maybe Google was never meant to be a military contractor because it's an information business and they don't want to weaponize your search history for the government. A different division of a parent company building robots for the military may not trigger the same alarms for the founders, especially if those robots are just carrying supplies and not firing weapons.
As far as shareholders are concerned, the strategic statements made by a company do carry weight. If you tell people you definitively will or won't be in a certain business, people make major financial decisions based on that.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @03:33PM
Back when the USA was the good guys before we became the bad guys, there were endless stories about "the bad guys" training dogs with mines strapped to the vests to run and hide under tanks. Well obviously you trained with disarmed mines, and deployed with real mines, but whatever. Kinda inhumane, but I suppose when it went off it was a quicker death than they'd get at the pound or even a natural death. Anyway you could avoid all the (g-rated, or I suppose X too) man-dog love bond by strapping dogmines to the bigdog robot.
Assuming you could fit an electric starter to the big dog robot you could scare the unliving hell out of tankers by mixing a minefield with old fashioned mines and when a dogmine hears an old fashioned mine go off (or sees a tank) it starts its engine and runs like hell to the closest still operating tank. So you get one bang on the ambush road, and then 20 dogmines claw out of the dirt along the road and start chasing the remaining tanks or convoy vehicles.
This can't be a new idea, must exist in sci fi mil fic somewhere. Probably in a B. V. Larson book.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @04:44PM
Spider drones [wikia.com]
It seems there are a lot of ideas that could complicate a combat environment if a suitable power source can be found.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @05:20PM
Or even if not.
That's what makes the press release weird, like its false to keep a project quiet.
So the big dog is useless for stealth assaults and stealth recon. So? Its not like the US military only has those two missions.
Its not a stretch to analogize it to the US Army denied working on a new sniper rifle because its not terribly useful in ultra close quarters like clearing buildings and can't be fired from a tank, so I'm sure they'd never buy a new sniper rifle. Sure.
The most interesting application I can think of for the big dog isn't infantry anyway. Armor people think drones are useless because their tank rolls at 30 and the stereotypical unclassified drone rolls at like 5 and can't handle obstacles and has short range, but a small pack of big dogs could drink from the giant tank's gas tank without affecting range much and suddenly your tank is literally un-ambush-able because every time you drive around a street corner the pack runs ahead first and sniffs paws and looks in every 55 gallon drum, pile of refuse, building window, cardboard box, digs up all the suspicious dirt piles with their paws, etc. Imagine the effect on logistics of "convoys can no longer be ambushed" at least not by anything smaller than mortars or air. The Rhodesians used to toss mines in water puddles, and a pack of big dogs, if big enough, could literally run a mine detector over every rain puddle if the pack is big enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:41PM
The idea comes from the USSR and was first used against the Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @05:08PM
This has bugged me for some time. Big engines (think cars) get all the attention. They are generally clean, efficient, and quiet (compared to decades ago). However, the lawn mowers, outboard motors and so on are still loud, dirty and inefficient. Honda and others have improved them a lot over the years, but they still don't have the level of improvement that the auto engines have received.
Obviously the problem is money and "will." Auto companies have been forced to improve the auto engine. No one wants to force the small engines to be clean, quiet and efficient. Those companies won't spend the money without the pressure to do so. As a result, when you need a small engine with these sorts of specs, they are not available. DoD has the bucks to change this; do they have the will?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @09:46PM
yeah.
personally I find it hilarious that so many people spend 12 hours working for shitty bosses, missing out on family life, for getting enough money to live in a neighbourhood where every weekend you wake up to loud engines from various people making their green stuff prettier.
I also find it offensive that the claim is that "we want pretty green stuff around the house", but they actually burn gasoline to do everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:01PM
No worries. I'll take the extra, now useless robots. I can think of something fun to do, even if it's too loud.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday December 30 2015, @09:17PM
Soldiers have no business stalking about at night. When defending you're not hiding. When attacking you're not hiding.
Only thieves and murderers care to stay silent.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @10:15AM
yes, and proper soldiers should have shiny coats, each army with its own colors, and officers should have some extra decoration so that you can see them when you look at the mural paintings of battles.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday January 01 2016, @02:53PM
It's not about properness. It's about the circumstances. Infantry should never be placed in situations where silence is necessary. They shouldn't be sneaking around in city quarters at night. They shouldn't be walking around unaccompanied by tanks, heavy machine gun fire, air support and a shit load of other noisy stuff.
The people who want them to, want to use the army for immoral means. They have political and financial reasons not to apply artillery and burn the enemy's cities before entering the infantry in there. They want to snatch and grab people from their beds. They want to assassinate "prime targets" using snipers. They want to takeover local regimens while keeping factories and infrastructure running since they're stealing it rather then fighting them as a military threat.
Understand, this is not what infantry should be doing. Infantry is meant to hold grounds and advance in mass to take already mostly destroyed cities. This ninja\PMC para-military bullshit where politicians don't have the public support or justifiable reasons to open wars so they try using hammers to pry bolts in silence is the reason Vietnam onwards have been such disasters. They can't deploy enough people to get the job done right since it's illegal and immoral, so they're try doing it wrong. It's as simple as that.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday December 30 2015, @09:40PM
BigDog's carrying power wasn't disputed, and the robot dealt well with clambering over rough terrain without a human controlling it during the 2014 Rim of the Pacific war games. But the power needed to do all this required a petrol engine, which was so loud that the enemy could hear soldiers approaching before they saw them.
I see how it is -- they always blame it on the dog.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:49AM
A noisy robot isn't much use on a stealth mission, but it could be effective on a charge. History records that the Rebel Yell had a psychological effect on Union soldiers. And I could imagine a noisy, screaming machine (or horde of machines) drawing quickly near would rattle my nerves as an enemy infantryman. If you make the thing heat-seeking or able to be guided in with tele-presence it could be effective, too.
Washington DC delenda est.