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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.
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Marines give Google's latest robot a tryout as "working dog"
(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".