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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: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:49AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:49AM (#282848) Journal

    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.

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