That is awesome! The bit on the ice was incredible and I felt sorry for the thing when the bloke gave it a kick!
I thought it was amazing that they could get it to react that quickly and correctly to changes. Walking over the pile of concrete blocks, that was impressive too. My wife was trying to say at first it was two people, but there is no way two people could slide around like that on ice and recover.
I'm thinking about applications for paraplegics and such, they could go anywhere with that thing, truly amazing! Stefan, I felt bad for it when it was falling on the ice, it does have human-like characteristics doesn't it!
When I saw the slip on the ice I wondered how much money I was about to watch go down the drain, but it caught itself. I too thought that it could be two people but the synchronization was to perfect. What is the thing supposed to be used for?
Neat Soon enough it will be a lot smaller/bigger, and there will be a lot more of them. Let imagination be your guide. Uses are endless, vacuum of space, poison/hostile environments, under water, total darkness, recon, survey, spying, delivery, rescue, perhaps (with improvements), but those tend to come in short order after a working model exists. It was only a matter of time.
I'm not sure help is exactly what the designers had in mind. :evil2: This robot is a DARPA initiative, the US governments' way of getting absolutely cutting edge tech by funding all sorts of odd contests and projects. The projects they ask for are right out of comic books; robotic battle suits, attempting to enable soldiers to function for weeks without food or sleep, aircraft that can stay in flight for 5 years, even insect battle drones! This has obvious military applications and future terrorist will see these sort of robots in combat eventually. Incidentally, DARPA has been fodder for conspiracy theorists for a years, but it is a very real organization.
That's actually quite creepy. The movement's so fluid as to be far more animal than machine. Incredible stuff, the jump at the end where it adjusts it's 'hooves' in mid-air to fall in exactly the right spot really impressed me...and this is what we're getting to see, wonder what stage they're at by now. Cheers, Adam.
They have some pretty cool stuff listed on the projects page of their web site: DARPA Office Programs
