Robot Dogs - Sherpa

Popular Science

Why War?

A friend of mine is a roboticist working for the US Military on a grant. He team is one of a handful across the country (MIT, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Harvard, etc.). The idea is for the 5 teams to compete to create the best set of programming to get the dog to walk/trot over difficult terrain. Apparently my friend's team is in last place right now... just barely walking, while the others are trotting.

The "dog" is headless and four legged with rubber balls for paws. The robots cost about $30,000 each and currently require a supercomputer to program. The plan is to use the robotic dogs as a companion for each soldier. The bot would increase the payload of the individual soldier, allowing for him to carry increased weapons/munitions on the battlefield; gear that carries its own weight over any terrain.

sri oracle

could they not design something better then that?

looks like if theres little weed bushes, that thing is going to definately get stuck in there