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Google's Noisy "BigDog" Robot Fails to Impress U.S. Marine Corps

Accepted submission by takyon at 2015-12-29 22:09:18
Hardware

Google bought robotics company Boston Dynamics [wikipedia.org] a little over two years ago. Now, a potential customer for the hulking "BigDog" quadruped pack mule is balking due to noise concerns [theregister.co.uk]:

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 [theregister.co.uk], has been under development [theregister.co.uk] 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] 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 [youtube.com] videos [youtube.com] accompanying the article.

Related: Pentagon Scientists Show Off Robot And Prosthetics [soylentnews.org]
Marines give Google's latest robot a tryout as "working dog" [arstechnica.com]


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