DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3)

Robots may soon become a reality for the US military. Gigantic robots. These babies, according to DARPA's wesite, are meant to carry the troops gear to lighten the soldiers load. The LS3 will follow the squad or way-points can be set (just like a RTS game!) via voice commands and is even be a mobile power station but no talk of it being armed with weapons, but we'll see. First drones and now these monsters? Mech Assault is coming and I think Japan will become a super power when it happens.

How soon before Israel gets a bunch donated to them? This robot may single handily end terrorism

This video depicts field testing of the DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3). The goal of the LS3 program is to demonstrate that a legged robot can unburden dismounted squad members by carrying their gear, autonomously following them through rugged terrain, and interpreting verbal and visual commands.

Legged Squad Support System (LS3)

www.darpa.mil...

Today’s dismounted warfighter can be saddled with more than 100 pounds of gear, resulting in physical strain, fatigue and degraded performance. Reducing the load on dismounted warfighters has become a major point of emphasis for defense research and development, because the increasing weight of individual equipment has a negative impact on warfighter readiness. The Army has identified physical overburden as one of its top five science and technology challenges. To help alleviate physical weight on troops, DARPA is developing a four-legged robot, the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), to integrate with a squad of Marines or Soldiers.

LS3 seeks to demonstrate that a highly mobile, semi-autonomous legged robot can carry 400 lbs of a squad’s load, follow squad members through rugged terrain and interact with troops in a natural way, similar to a trained animal and its handler.

The LS3 program goal is to develop a robot that will go through the same terrain the squad goes through without hindering the squad’s mission. The robot could also serve as a mobile auxiliary power source to the squad, so troops can recharge batteries for radios and handheld devices while on patrol.

Leader-follower tight: LS3 attempts to follow as close as possible to the path its leader takes Leader-follower corridor: LS3 sticks to the leader but has freedom to make local path decisions, so the leader doesn’t need to think about LS3’s mobility capabilities Go-to-waypoint: LS3 uses its local perception to avoid obstacles on its way to a designated GPS coordinate

Big dog? Is that you? My... how you've grown...

reply to post by Swills


I think this thing
is as awesome
as it is scary...

but one RPG/IED round
and its scrap bits

Yep, militarized version of big dog. Just one step closer to mechs

You think they'd be concerned about the disadvantage of having something that sounds like a chainsaw following them around....

bwaaaaar....."funny, thats the 5th day in a row we've been ambushed" bwaaaar.

I think what they're doing is basically trying to create the "new covert delta force". The way that will work is that when they go in on the ground they could have these types of robots. Now imagine a robot that looks like a horse or a moose or any type of animal you can think of. Even including insects or swarms of insects. They would fly in do there damage and complete there mission. no one would think twice as there soldiers are not trained to be on guard for horses, moose, monkeys, cats, dogs, mice, wasps, snakes, flies. etc etc. They could fly one in, take someone out with it and leave. Even as simple as flying in a remote control house fly. It flies into the chambers of some key target. The fly lands on the victim who maybe is sleeping. It leaves a tiny amount of poison on the victim and the target is dead in minutes. And all the people surrounding them would know is it seemed like a heart attack.

Or say in north korea, the people start seeing a lot of deer, a lot of water buffalo and other animals trudging threw the country side. Along with a lot of strange flocks of birds. meanwhile these all could be ground and air attack droawns headed for the capital going to take out the regiem. I think the new secret weapons could be hidden in the form of regular animals and insects and locals would never even realize it. They'd fly right under the radar!

reply to post by justwokeup


yeah I think that was going thru all of our minds. Although, this is just a test version and if they were to actually produce these babies for military I'd hope they'd make them a little more quieter.

Pardon my typing. Sending this from a cell phone..

They were displayed in this stripped-down sort of manner purposefully. It shows the chosen audience the work put into it (investors included) and it enables quick access for repairs.

It also hides the the future ways in which it will be utilized; one spec is for carrying equipment, yes. Another is a more heavily armored (not so quiet) version which will have a soldier recognition system onboard, as well as defensive and offensive capabilities. The big draw was that even with continuous small arms fire or concussive detonations, it will be able to remain on Target and reach its objective points even if others around might get injured. They can even haul injured soldiers to sick bay if that's ever required, too.

Depending on the cargo, they can also be easily fitted with a self-healing skin so that any holes made into it will not become exposed to the outside elements. The same type of skin used on a handful of our fuel tankers that, when shot, needed a way to seal the hole automatically to keep the fuel from pouring out. Only difference here, of course, being the chemical mixture used.. the tanker one works using a chemical reaction, this one simply from impact, with chemical layer possibly to fit under for this purpose. All tests though.. weight is still an issue despite what it's able to haul around with/on it.

Sounds like the Robotic Hound from Fahrenheit 451.