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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 30 2015, @12:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the silence-is-golden dept.

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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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:00PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:00PM (#282475) Journal

    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!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @01:07PM (#282478)

    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.