“Right now, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have to lug around a huge amount of equipment, sometimes weighing over 100 pounds. But the soldiers of the near future may followed by a pack bot that can carry all their gear while gracefully stepping over obstacles. As for giving the robot the ability to lay down some suppressive fire, that’s something the military is understandably skittish about…You know, worldwide robot apocalypse when they inevitably turn on their fleshy masters.“
With a word of warning from The Prospect‘s Paul Waldman, Popular Science takes a gander at Boston Dynamics’ LittleDog. “LittleDog doesn’t just traverse the terrain; it learns as it goes, noting what works and what doesn’t and incorporating that knowledge into its foothold scoring system.“
Oh c’mon, Kevin. You know very well the iRoach would only come in white and you’d have to buy each route separately from the App Store.
That said, I watched this video the other day and was astounded. If it ran on Android I’d start to think all those Skynet jokes were too close to home.
Heh, well put. That’s also why I can’t take all the “Apple is now eclipsing Microsoft” talk seriously right now. Because, just like 30 years ago, PCs will be doing iPads better and cheaper in very short order. Such is the downside of a closed-source, proprietary-tech business-model — The Hive Mind will always beat you in the end.