Mon 17 Mar 2008
BigDog
Posted by Mikkei under Internet Videos, Technology, rants
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If I saw this coming at me in the darkness of night (or even in broad daylight) I would be utterly terrified. If I didn’t know better I would say this was a demon machine sent from hell. This is the creepiest thing I’ve seen since the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth. It looks as if the lower-halves of two people have been attached to a machine and somehow the legs have retained life and are forced to stumble around together. There’s also something sinister and malevolent about it. Maybe it’s the fear of the unknown. I mean, this is incredibly new to me. It could also be that it moves in such a human way.
All my fears aside, this is absolutely incredible. BigDog is the creation of Boston Dynamics, a company that developed out of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The BigDog project is funded by the U.S. Military in the hopes of creating an all-terrain gear transporter. (Lerner 2008)
It’s awesome how quickly robotic technology is developing and I mean awesome in the sense that BigDog inspires fear. One person commented on BigDog by saying “I almost feel bad when they hit it to demonstrate how it regains balance on its own.” Robots don’t need our sympathy. That’s how it begins, “Aw, poor robot”. That’s just one card they’ll have to use against us in the take-over. Watch out.
