5 ms·

DARPA's AlphaDog robot pack mule begins real world testing

53 points by mrsebastian 15y ago

cellis 15y ago
But how long before they outfit these things with the nano-quadrotors?
tkahn6 15y ago
I always get a serious 'uncanny valley' feeling when I watch a video of one of these things. It reacts very organically when it stumbles and tries to recover and yet the rest of its motions are obvious mechanical facsimiles of natural movement. Reminds me of rat things from Snow Crash.
- samstave 15y ago
  Don't worry, we are right on track for the full cyberpunk reality of 2020.
- agumonkey 15y ago
  Can't find the video again, there was a humanoid version of this that was frigtheningly humanlike, smooth, articulated, balanced, subtle. It wasnt made to look human, fully opened and wired everywhere, yet the behavior/balance was more complex and on point than anything I've seen.
  - spyder 15y ago
    http://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics http://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics
    - agumonkey 15y ago
      I searched for it quite a long time before answering. It's not their PetMan either, the one I saw was a finer grained, mostly black parts robot that almost had the muscular system shape.
- capisce 15y ago
  You're not alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc
DasIch 15y ago
I'm wondering what would happen if the robot would be attacked? How easy would it be to destroy one? The noise makes it impossible to use for anything that requires a certain amount of stealth. So really what is the use case apart from probably being a very interesting project to work on?
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  It's a pack mule. Except pack mules require a lot more infrastructure to take care of and deploy. If you're in the mountains of, say, Afghanistan, it's really hard to be resupplied. But with something like this you can take hundreds of pounds of food, ammunition, etc. with you into very rugged, unimproved terrain. Which allows you to reduce the load on individual soldiers, increase the length of time deployed soldiers can fight effectively, etc.
  - WiseWeasel 15y ago
    With the noise it makes, I'd give this thing unattended about 5 minutes in the mountains of Afghanistan before it gets converted to scrap. Hell, it's such an ear-sore, I might be tempted if I found that thing unattended in the mountains of California...
    - Tossrock 15y ago
      Sound pressure levels fall off as the square of distance. You might be surprised how quickly a gas engine fades into background noise. Of course, that presumes background noise, which may not be present in pristine Afghan wilderness.
dsr_ 15y ago
While voice command recognition is pretty good with a limited command set and a low-noise environment, a battlefield is not a low-noise environment. OK, anyone could predict that. Let's take it a few steps further: - military bases are not low-noise environments - "come here" is a great command, but if there's no authentication, it's a hazard - in the other direction, just how quiet is the gasoline engine on an AlphaDog? Loud enough to give away your position, relative to the trudge of a squad's worth of boots on the ground?
- jessriedel 15y ago
  The first two problems are pretty much solved by using a microphone headset to issue commands.
schiffern 15y ago
So it costs 32 million dollars, is enormously complicated, has a noisy generator on the back, turns into a brick after 20 miles, and has half the carrying capacity of a camel. Cool tech, but we've got a ways to go, people.
- joe_the_user 15y ago
  Well, it may indeed be worse than a camel in nearly every respect. But if it's good enough to be widely used, it will also get widely tested, which may allow a next generation item which would be considerably better than a camel.
- MostExtremeCake 15y ago
  Realistic response: a camel requires that someone is always with it, telling it where to go. This thing can just be told to go 5 miles in a direction without supervision and will maybe reliably get there. It can also go through stuff that's too toxic for a camel/human being. Tin-foil-hat response: Can't strap guns to a camel and have it shoot things. The progression from unmanned tech used for non-combat purposes to combat seems likely. Predator drones used to be used for surveillance and did not have hellfire missiles strapped to them.
  - abecedarius 15y ago
    That kinda suggests making an automated cameldriver instead. Of course that's much easier to make fun of.
- melling 15y ago
  Not really, this stuff follows a curve like Moore's Law. Take the first DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous cars. No one finished, or came even close. A year later, several cars finished. Progress will accelerate.
  - khafra 15y ago
    Energy density and materials don't follow a Moore's Law curve. In 10 years, a walker this size will have similar carrying capacity and range.
mikehuffman 15y ago
I have always hoped that new power and energy advances would come from these military applications.
ChuckMcM 15y ago
Some of the comments here remind me that not everyone watches occasional episodes of 'Weaponology' [1] :-) That show does a credible job of tracking the various technologies that contribute to the eventual weapon that you know today in the 21st century. One of the shows talked about the Tank and how it was developed to get people across the 'deadmans zone' in trench warfare and ended up becoming the backbone of mobile maneuver tactics. So this thing demonstrates a vehicle that can navigate completely unimproved terrain carrying a useful load. In battlefields like Afghanistan there is a huge challenge getting troops resupplied (this is true in any war of course). Helicopters and other air drop means (the robotic parachutes are pretty cool) require that your troops break cover to recover their goods, these things could walk into camp where you are under cover drop off supplies. So one tactician might air drop these things out of a plane at a safe altitude and have them land within a couple of miles of the targeted base. The vehicle starts up, and walks over to the base to drop off the supplies. It could conceivably walk back out and, using a helium balloon, send up a retrieval cable that would let a helicopter come and pull it out of there. Thats a pretty cool capability. And in peace time if this thing could walk into a city ravaged by an earth quake and drop off supplies, that would be cool. Or carry a clean up device through a nuclear contaminated forest, etc etc. The key is 'unimproved terrain' and '400 lbs for 20 miles'. [1] http://military.discovery.com/convergence/weaponology/episode/episode.html http://military.discovery.com/convergence/weaponology/episod...

53 points by mrsebastian 15y ago

But how long before they outfit these things with the nano-quadrotors?

I always get a serious 'uncanny valley' feeling when I watch a video of one of these things. It reacts very organically when it stumbles and tries to recover and yet the rest of its motions are obvious mechanical facsimiles of natural movement. Reminds me of rat things from Snow Crash.

samstave 15y ago
Don't worry, we are right on track for the full cyberpunk reality of 2020.
agumonkey 15y ago
Can't find the video again, there was a humanoid version of this that was frigtheningly humanlike, smooth, articulated, balanced, subtle. It wasnt made to look human, fully opened and wired everywhere, yet the behavior/balance was more complex and on point than anything I've seen.
- spyder 15y ago
  http://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics http://www.youtube.com/user/BostonDynamics
  - agumonkey 15y ago
    I searched for it quite a long time before answering. It's not their PetMan either, the one I saw was a finer grained, mostly black parts robot that almost had the muscular system shape.
capisce 15y ago
You're not alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc

DasIch 15y ago

I'm wondering what would happen if the robot would be attacked? How easy would it be to destroy one? The noise makes it impossible to use for anything that requires a certain amount of stealth. So really what is the use case apart from probably being a very interesting project to work on?

InclinedPlane 15y ago
It's a pack mule. Except pack mules require a lot more infrastructure to take care of and deploy. If you're in the mountains of, say, Afghanistan, it's really hard to be resupplied. But with something like this you can take hundreds of pounds of food, ammunition, etc. with you into very rugged, unimproved terrain. Which allows you to reduce the load on individual soldiers, increase the length of time deployed soldiers can fight effectively, etc.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  With the noise it makes, I'd give this thing unattended about 5 minutes in the mountains of Afghanistan before it gets converted to scrap. Hell, it's such an ear-sore, I might be tempted if I found that thing unattended in the mountains of California...
  - Tossrock 15y ago
    Sound pressure levels fall off as the square of distance. You might be surprised how quickly a gas engine fades into background noise. Of course, that presumes background noise, which may not be present in pristine Afghan wilderness.

dsr_ 15y ago

While voice command recognition is pretty good with a limited command set and a low-noise environment, a battlefield is not a low-noise environment. OK, anyone could predict that. Let's take it a few steps further: - military bases are not low-noise environments - "come here" is a great command, but if there's no authentication, it's a hazard - in the other direction, just how quiet is the gasoline engine on an AlphaDog? Loud enough to give away your position, relative to the trudge of a squad's worth of boots on the ground?

jessriedel 15y ago
The first two problems are pretty much solved by using a microphone headset to issue commands.

schiffern 15y ago

So it costs 32 million dollars, is enormously complicated, has a noisy generator on the back, turns into a brick after 20 miles, and has half the carrying capacity of a camel. Cool tech, but we've got a ways to go, people.

joe_the_user 15y ago
Well, it may indeed be worse than a camel in nearly every respect. But if it's good enough to be widely used, it will also get widely tested, which may allow a next generation item which would be considerably better than a camel.
MostExtremeCake 15y ago
Realistic response: a camel requires that someone is always with it, telling it where to go. This thing can just be told to go 5 miles in a direction without supervision and will maybe reliably get there. It can also go through stuff that's too toxic for a camel/human being. Tin-foil-hat response: Can't strap guns to a camel and have it shoot things. The progression from unmanned tech used for non-combat purposes to combat seems likely. Predator drones used to be used for surveillance and did not have hellfire missiles strapped to them.
- abecedarius 15y ago
  That kinda suggests making an automated cameldriver instead. Of course that's much easier to make fun of.
melling 15y ago
Not really, this stuff follows a curve like Moore's Law. Take the first DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous cars. No one finished, or came even close. A year later, several cars finished. Progress will accelerate.
- khafra 15y ago
  Energy density and materials don't follow a Moore's Law curve. In 10 years, a walker this size will have similar carrying capacity and range.

mikehuffman 15y ago

I have always hoped that new power and energy advances would come from these military applications.

ChuckMcM 15y ago

Some of the comments here remind me that not everyone watches occasional episodes of 'Weaponology' [1] :-) That show does a credible job of tracking the various technologies that contribute to the eventual weapon that you know today in the 21st century. One of the shows talked about the Tank and how it was developed to get people across the 'deadmans zone' in trench warfare and ended up becoming the backbone of mobile maneuver tactics. So this thing demonstrates a vehicle that can navigate completely unimproved terrain carrying a useful load. In battlefields like Afghanistan there is a huge challenge getting troops resupplied (this is true in any war of course). Helicopters and other air drop means (the robotic parachutes are pretty cool) require that your troops break cover to recover their goods, these things could walk into camp where you are under cover drop off supplies. So one tactician might air drop these things out of a plane at a safe altitude and have them land within a couple of miles of the targeted base. The vehicle starts up, and walks over to the base to drop off the supplies. It could conceivably walk back out and, using a helium balloon, send up a retrieval cable that would let a helicopter come and pull it out of there. Thats a pretty cool capability. And in peace time if this thing could walk into a city ravaged by an earth quake and drop off supplies, that would be cool. Or carry a clean up device through a nuclear contaminated forest, etc etc. The key is 'unimproved terrain' and '400 lbs for 20 miles'. [1] http://military.discovery.com/convergence/weaponology/episode/episode.html http://military.discovery.com/convergence/weaponology/episod...