This is something that my co-worker showed me at work today. The article is nice, but the video in the link is amazing. http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight. BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others. In separate trials, BigDog runs at 4 mph, climbs slopes up to 35 degrees, walks across rubble, and carries a 340 lb load. BigDog is being developed by Boston Dynamics with the goal of creating robots that have rough-terrain mobility that can take them anywhere on Earth that people and animals can go. The program is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).
That was so freakin’ awesome that it was creepy to watch! That thing has the unsmooth, ungraceful, truly biological manner of an actual living thing. When I say unsmooth and ungraceful, I mean the way that the early CGI interpretations of living things were just too smooth, the movements just not real the way living things are. Wicked!
This is very interesting and very cool. Thanks for sharing. I may have to go on the internet and look up some more for this project.
