Via: The Drawn Cutlass



It's mesmerizing. It's erie. Leave it on. Watch the whole thing. You have to see the part where the technician tries to kick it over and it rights itself. And then when it slips on the ice, you would swear thar be devils inside! Right now they're working on one that gets 50 mpg and goes 40 mph! And, of course, deep inside the Pentagon there's a guy whose job it is to do some tests and strap machine guns to an army of a thousand of those things. Just picture it! Wow. The sight of that alone would strike fear into the enemy. Hopefully there's someone out there teaching it to climb a ladder and use a hammer. Put these robo-donkeys to work! (Could have used one last night tearing down the booth at the Home Show.)

Anyway, I applaud this use of tax dollars. It's a DARPA project and part of DARPA's mission statement is "to create technological surprise for our enemies." Seems like they're on the right track here.

Something tells me that we'll be seeing a lot more of this stuff before we die. Maybe. Depending on how they improve the power source. Right now it sounds like the thing is being run by a leaf-blower engine, and I for one couldn't stand the noise of those things vacuuming the living room in every house on my block. But in twenty or thirty years? Who knows. One of them will probably carry my casket to the grave.

Boston Dynamics needs a better PR person, though. Come on, put some funky music to that galloping beat!


~