MIT takes battery-powered robot cheetah for a gallop Fast, agile robots for reconnaissance and rescue have been under development for half a decade or more, but they all have needed to be tethered to a power cable. Now MIT thinks it has cut the leash with a battery powered "cheetah" capable of outrunning a human. The design, showed off at the International Conference on Robotics …
Seems very odd, is it entire system power including everything or just the energy they feed through a cable to the motors, and the comparisions how did they equate the energy organic systems used compared to a coal fired power station feeding their robot.
The only reason I say this is how close the human/robot/animal power is on the graph shown which is very unusual as either they made a massive breakthrough which would overshadow anything else or it's really badly off.
But I still want an ice cold dog house to store my nuclear corporate pet.
Yes, the entire purpose of a pack robot, scout robot etc is to basically go everywhere a human soldier goes, whereas wheeled robots would perforce be limited to flat areas, making them and the humans with them vulnerable to attack, basically suitable only for logistics transport. Tracked would work better, except seeing a bleeding great set of steel track marks from where the scout robot was by spying on you might be a givaway, with legs they can put fake animal pads on the bottom, dress it up like a feral dog and go spy all they want.
They would make good sentry units at large open sites like Area 51 where they could either sit stationary and recharge by solar panels or provide mobile patrol over rough terrain.Weponizing them wouldn't be a problem with small projectile devices much akin to those used by air drones.
For the same reason that "real" animals (including humans) do: it's the most efficient form of locomotion. If there were a better way to get around, something would have evolved it.
The reason tha NASA (for example) uses tracks or wheels on its robotic craft is not that they're better in a general sense, but that they're a lot easier to balance, which is critical when the craft is too far away to be rescued if it falls over.
"If there were a better way to get around, something would have evolved it."
That doesn't stand to reason. Animals have evolved dozens of ways to get around. Flying, bouncing, jumping, slithering, jet propulsion(-ing), swimming, wading, squirming, crawling, hitchhiking...
Some animals that have evolved "wheel" type mechanisms for use during escapes, as it's the quickest way to get down a hill, with zero energy use.
However the reason it hasn't evolved as a means of movement is that, in situations other than these gravity propelled systems (where the entire animal rotates), the wheels would have to turn independent of the body of the animal. That would mean the animals evolving a completely different anatomy, and the intermediate stages of this evolution would not offer any advantages to the animal, and instead huge disadvantages.
"If there were a better way to get around, something would have evolved it."
Evolution only works if it benefits an individual - the problem with wheels is that they need roads, it's hard to evolve a gene for building roads that other individuals use. Social insects might manage it
Two big game hunters become lost and separated from their vehicle whilst hunting in the veldt. On seeing a large and ferocious looking lion, the hunters take refuge behind a clump of bushes - but the lion sees them and starts to run towards them. One hunter panics, but the other calmly sits down, takes off his hunting boots and starts to put on a pair of sneakers.
The other hunter looks at him in amazement; "What the hell are you doing? You can't outrun a lion!"
The first hunter replies; "I don't need to; I just need to outrun you."
I have always thought the same thing. I imagine that wars would not last very long if armies of AMEEs were roaming about, even just the threat of deployment should be enough.
Have you seen LittleDog, it doesn't even have a face, and scares the crap out of me.
http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_littledog.html
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
