BigDog throwing cinder blocks

bigdog-throwing-cinder-blocks

It's as if giving cheetah-like speed to an advanced robot wasn't good enough. The engineers over at Boston Dynamics must have been thinking to themselves, how can we make this thing even more menacing? The answer seems to be adding a highly dexterous articulated arm that gives the robot the ability to chuck objects as heavy as cinder blocks. We're not kidding, look at the image above and you'll … [Read more...]

Cheetah robot can run down even the fastest of us

world-record-robot-speed

It's a blur, but you really don't want to seen this thing coming for you anyway. It's the latest look at what the folks at Boston Dynamics have been working on under a DARPA contract. They call it the Cheetah robot as it's the fastest four-legged bot ever developed. The clip after the break shows it breaking the world record over 100 meters... for a human. This isn't really legitimate since the … [Read more...]

New BigDog video doesn’t fail to impress

new-big-dog-video

Those following the evolution of quadrupedal assist robots will recognize the specimen seen above as a relative of BigDog. This is AlphaDog, one of the latest prototypes in Boston Dynamics' Legged Squadron Support Systems program. It's designed to carry 400 pounds of payload, which explains the disc weights seen on either side of the torso. Like its diminutive sibling, LittleDog, it's able to … [Read more...]

BigDog’s bipedal brother

Boston Dynamics is at it again. This time, they've created a creepy biped with a natural gait. It may look very similar to BigDog, because it really is almost the same system. Named PETMAN, this biped system is being designed to help test chemical protection suits. This bot can stress the suit by walking, running, and even crawling in a room filled with poison gas. Not only can PETMAN walk, run, … [Read more...]

Poor exhausted littledog

This video of littledog doing some terrain navigaion excersizes is just hilarious. We really don't have any technological updates since last time we mentioned him, but you should watch the video anyway. [Evan] at botjunkie pointed out how tired littledog must be to absolutely collapse at the end of each run. We started out thinking that his comment was humorous, but the bot is obviously going into … [Read more...]

Little dog

Dating back to September of 2007, this certainly isn't new news, but its new to us. This is Little dog, the miniature version of the ever so creepy Big Dog. We aren't sure if the lack of Big dogs signature jogging in place makes this little guy seem more lifelike or less.  Little dog was designed to be a research platform into study automated navigation of natural terrain. We wouldn't mind having … [Read more...]