"Big Dog" Quadraped Robot

I have seen this before and every time I watch it I am left with the same sort of mixture between unease and pity? Now I know how crazy it is to pity a robot but when the guy kicks it in the side it evokes the same sort of response in me that I would feel at watching somebody do that to a dog or horse. How insane is that?? I guess there must be something deep rooted mentally that equates walking on legs with some level of consciousness in the walker. Or maybe I'm just wierd?
 
I like it.

Of course, if I'd been on the design team, it would have had twice as many legs, and the optical sensors on the front would be the size of soccer balls. :eek::eek::eek:

Probably make people a bit less likely to try to kick it. :thumb:
 
Maybe I'll get laughed at here :rofl::rofl::rofl:, but don't you think the guy kicked the robot to show how stabile the machine is? I thought so and was amazed at its ability to recover and not go down. :thumb:

Such things are a comin' in our future.

Thanks Vaughn.

Aloha, Tony
 
Tony, I'm sure you're right about them kicking the robot to show its stability. (They do it in other videos, too.) Pretty amazing programming to enable it to stay upright. But, like the other guys mentioned, I get an irrational feeling of pity seeing it get kicked, and general creepiness seeing it walk. :huh:
 
I'd laugh my tukuss off if the dog after being kicked
would come back and kick the crap out of the guy that
kicked him! :thumb:

That guy better hope that that dog never gets a fang upgrade!
:rofl:
 
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Maybe I'll get laughed at here :rofl::rofl::rofl:, but don't you think the guy kicked the robot to show how stabile the machine is? I thought so and was amazed at its ability to recover and not go down. :thumb:
I'm pretty sure that was the point. What I want to know is, when (not if) it does get knocked over, can it get back up on its own, especially when fully loaded?
 
That things agility is surely AMAZING. Absolutely amazing!

I watched the video after reading the comments about the "kick" expecting meanness or violence. After I saw it it was very apparent to me that it was a shove as opposed to a kick. I took it as a shove rather than a kick so that the guy could stay out of the way of the flailing feet/legs.

BUT, what did really creep me out was the similarity it had to a fly. With the packs on and the shape and articulation of the legs, it reminded me of the original version of "The Fly". Those legs on the robot were SO similar to the legs of a fly and the front packs as eyes, ugh.....(shudder, shudder).:D

On another note however, did that machine evoke in anyone else the images of the futuristic war machines in Sci-Fi movies? Among other movies, the AT-AT walkers, AT-ST walkers and such from Star Wars?

Hmmmmm.............
 
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Me too - looks like a walking animal

I thought I was the only one who instinctly felt that way Ian. I am speculating, but the engineers look like they did recorded motion studies of 4 legged animals to get the control system design. If they dressed that machine up in some scary looking acessories, that buzzing engine and animal looking gait, it would scare the life out of someone in the woods.
 
That things agility is surely AMAZING. Absolutely amazing!


BUT, what did really creep me out was the similarity it had to a fly. With the packs on and the shape and articulation of the legs, it reminded me of the original version of "The Fly". Those legs on the robot were SO similar to the legs of a fly and the front packs as eyes, ugh.....(shudder, shudder).:D

Hmmmmm.............

The same happened to me; and analizing it it is for several reasons:
First the noise, as it is powered by a gasoline engine most problaby a two stroke one at full throttle it makes that noise.

The black legs, bent opposite ways, and with no feet or claws that would suggest a different animal.

The load it had. It resembles very much the fly's eyes.

But overall I think it has to do with the efforts that our brain makes in order identify and catalogue what we are seeing.

On the other hand when the guy kicks it and when it is steping on iced ground the reactions are almost from the mammals reign not insect like.

When I see that, I can't avoid thinking " well if this is being made public at what level will be the ultrasecret projects? Honestly it scares me.

And the worst thing is that we are all losing the faculty of being surprised by those things. Technology can make almost anything nowadays
 
...But overall I think it has to do with the efforts that our brain makes in order identify and catalogue what we are seeing....

That's what I find so interesting. I know it is a machine. I know that "sympathising" with a machine is completely irrational. But - I have an instinctive reaction - feeling if you like - that must be triggered by something in the sight of this machine and the way that my head is processing the information. I would guess that it is a bit like the way that our brains can construct faces from glimpses of parts of faces or possible parts of faces. We are pattern finders by nature and there must, for at least some of us, be some trigger in the pattern of autonomous movement on legs which sets off that reaction.

I thought also about the scene on the ice. If I watch a car skidding on ice I don't get the same reaction even when I know that there is a human inside the car but when this machine is floundering about on the ice I am just thinking "Can't someblody help it out?". The most obvious difference is the car is moving on an obviously mechanical device , wheels, but this robots legs appear less obviously mechanical.

Ain't the human mind a fascinating thing?
 
Hmmm,

Seems to me you folks that felt sorry for the robot are rooting for our evil computerized overlords to be! :eek:

Hasn't anyone SEEN the terminator movies! :D
 
It kinda cool to think that this technology could help those that have become disabled become mobile again, perhaps in a way that makes them almost non-disabled.
 
I have seen some prototyp exo-skeleton type devices that look very cool.

Some of them to help the disabled, some to 'boost' the ability of the wearer to carry heavy loads, etc..
 
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