Comments on: Cheetah robot runs 28.3 mph

By: Jem Sweeney

Jem Sweeney — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Does Sharkey have a car or a microwave? Those are used to kill people too. It’s unfortunate that he’s enjoying military technology.

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:26:00 +0000

Its strange that Gibson’s early books are coming true.

By: hadlockk

hadlockk — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:23:00 +0000

It goes twice as fast as a similarly sized dog? 28mph is faster than most people will ever ride their bicycle, and faster than a human can sprint. They’ve achieved this speed sustained. As long as it’s faster than the rate of urban traffic, it’s fast enough for most military convoys.

By: hadlockk

hadlockk — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 09:19:00 +0000

Probably just rejigger the layout of the plutonium in Curiosity’s RTG radioisotope thermoelectric generator power plant so it’s running quite a bit bit more hot (but needs to be replaced more often – like say, every 18 months instead of 24 years) and you’ve got something that can scoot around the battlefield all day long. Actually Neil Stephenson suggests something very similar in his book Snow Crash.

By: timquinn

timquinn — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 07:45:00 +0000

Complaining about the stabilizing arm is the same as saying I wish they had not shown this to me until it was further along. Not much of a complaint really. Just don’t look if you can’t stand unfinished.

By: Senor Schaffer

Senor Schaffer — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:56:00 +0000

All I was thinking the whole time was “ME WANT COOKIE CRISP!”

WTF?!?

By: Jem Sweeney

Jem Sweeney — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:07:00 +0000

Getting paid is pretty important.

By: Jem Sweeney

Jem Sweeney — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:05:00 +0000

The goals of the project are more or less “run at cheetah speeds”. They’ll need years of work for unconstrained movement even after it achieves that speed.

Also, i seem to recall that like Big Dog, if it tried to stand still it would topple over.

By: Jem Sweeney

Jem Sweeney — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:02:00 +0000

The point of the project is just to achieve those speeds, not get there gracefully. I don’t think there’s a robot the size of LS3 (that’s Big Dog) that can walk on non-static surfaces. Even if it were just trying to stay upright on the treadmill, this is no small feat. It looks slightly unimpressive to the lay audience because the sophistication of the underlying tech is taken for granted.

By: Jem Sweeney

Jem Sweeney — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Further validating the below comment for Rat Things.

By: Jem Sweeney

Jem Sweeney — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 04:58:00 +0000

Tethering is pretty standard when you’re designing a platform that’s super dynamic, i.e. huge power draw for whatever action. tethers also let you reduce the weight of the robot by obviating the need for a huge, heavy battery. which, for a lightweight robot like this, is crucial.

Safety’s less of an issue. The stabilizing bar keeps the engineers from heartattacks as a 4 million $ platform steps onto a treadmill. Most research projects for mobile robots (particularly legged ones) require some sort of gantry support because the engineers are more concerned with proving the concept and then making it the slickest thing that runs on electricity. You don’t build a good ‘bot by trying to design the finished model right away. Give it a year or two and it’ll be more impressive.

Also, MIT got funding for the same project. Their cheetah is a little sexier.

By: CommieNeko

CommieNeko — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 04:51:00 +0000

The development of the MENSCHENJÄGER MARK ELF continues apace …

By: Ernest Valdemar

Ernest Valdemar — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 02:00:00 +0000

Genuine, non-sarcastic question: Has anyone created a quadrupedal robot that can switch gaits from walk to canter to trot to gallop?

The issue I see with the cheetah-bot is that it can only gallop.

I could live with the brainless, harnessed bot if they could show me an autonomous gait change as the treadmill speed changes.

By: Petzl

Petzl — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:26:00 +0000

Great video. The way it self-corrected when given a huge shove seemed so familiar, and non-machine-like.

I for one welcome our BigDog overlords.

By: Petzl

Petzl — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:21:00 +0000

I don’t think the power source is too bad of a kludge. So, they’ve omitted the 10-20 pounds a lawn mower engine would add. Does that absence of weight interfere with their proof of concept?

With the boom arm kludge, they’re essentially only showing that they can make it run in 1 dimension. The complexity of mastering movement in the other 2 is still yet to be demonstrated.

I’ll bet there’s a wealth of complex fine-tuned servos in just keeping it from falling over when not moving. Which would interfere with, or tend to get damaged, when it’s in full-out sprint mode. (Just my uneducated guess.)

By: lhl

lhl — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 00:05:00 +0000

I think this quote from the BBC News writeup sums it up nicely:

Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, said the robot was "an incredible technical achievement, but it's unfortunate that it's going to be used to kill people".

By: sudoLoki

sudoLoki — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:12:00 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcOi6npIsVc

By: KBert

KBert — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:03:00 +0000

Why Mitt dreams of cold fusion conducted electricity, or whatever?

By: drongo

drongo — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:51:00 +0000

“They sent a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires.”

By: plyx

plyx — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 22:30:00 +0000

It times like this that remind me that we really ARE living in the future. Truly amazing.

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:48:00 +0000

Shoot it in the ass (“Texas heart shot”)

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 21:21:00 +0000

Somehow I don’t think this video will help me sleep any easier at night.

Well, it’s not as insomniogenic as that little face Mitt video.

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 20:47:00 +0000

For some reason that makes me think of Dick Cheney.

By: bardfinn

bardfinn — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 20:20:00 +0000

You’re missing the reality – those cables are not the power source, they’re the heat sink.

By: Egypt Urnash

Egypt Urnash — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 20:13:00 +0000

It used to only go about a third as fast as a cheetah. Baby steps.

Or not, given that it’s gotten that much faster in less than a year – how long did it take for the ancestral cat to evolve into something that could go 70mph on bursts?

Imagine how much faster this will be when it actually flexes its knees…

By: huskerdont

huskerdont — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:28:00 +0000

And real cheethahs don’t need stabilizer bars either.

By: lectroid

lectroid — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:20:00 +0000

Stephenson directly credited the hounds from 451 as inspiration for the Rat Thing

By: Mike Perkowitz

Mike Perkowitz — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:16:00 +0000

SKYNET IS COMING FOR YOU as long as you remain within range of its 6′ stabilizing arm and 10′ power cord. And as long as we keep extension cord technology out of its hands.

By: royaltrux

royaltrux — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Urban swerve. via Phil Hendrie

By: jerwin

jerwin — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Here’s their Big Dog

It’s not fast, but it seems pretty stable.

My guess is that until they get it running up to its design speed, the engineers aren’t even going to think about letting it run untethered– too much of a safety hazard. As for internal power– it’s a lot of wasted effort if the engineers decide that the ballast, which would be in the form of fuel tanks, generators, etc) needs to be adjusted.

Once the gait is perfected, then the engineers can think about autonomy.