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New bioinspired robot flies, rolls, walks, and more
- christkv 3y agoCountdown until its made into a weapon.
- JimtheCoder 3y agoI was thinking more in the direction of a toy for kids aged 8-15.
- scrps 3y agoThose better be some rich kids. 10 year old me would have jump at the chance to tinker with a functional drone like that.
- JimtheCoder 3y agoIt would have to be targeted to the kids with workaholic parents who neglect to spend time with their children, and thus need to spend big to demonstrate that they do, in fact, love their offspring. The children in question would use the toy for 3 or 4 weeks, get bored of it, and move on. We all know these people...
- RobotToaster 3y agoThose things aren't mutually exclusive.
- civilitty 3y agoScale up the rotors, put a gun on it, and bam, fully autonomous mobile artillery!
- christkv 3y agoAdd an explosive and it will pursue you. First flying and when you try to hide in a bunker it transforms and rolls on in after you.
- stronglikedan 3y agoScale the whole thing down to the size of a cockroach, and put a poison tip dart on it!
- scotty79 3y agoI really hope development goes in this direction. Infantry should be obsoleted as soon as possible.
- civilitty 3y agoThat way all us civilian Zam Wesell wannabes can have a go at it too!
- barbariangrunge 3y agoInfantry soon being obsolete is a way of saying that people will no longer be able defend themselves from near-future weapons
- kspacewalk2 3y agoExcept with drones of their own.
- King-Aaron 3y agoYep, get rid of the middle man and go straight to autonomous drones killing civilians instead
- melling 3y agoDrones are the future of warfare so you are a little late to complain about drones being used for warfare. The race is well under way. “…used by both Russia and Ukraine for surveillance and for delivering bombs, goes for around US $2,000. You can get 55,000 of them for the price of a single F-35” https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/drone-warfare-ukraine-2660279031 https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/drone-warfare-ukraine-26602790...
- jylam 3y ago"Drones are the future of warfare so you are a little late to complain about drones being used for warfare. The race is well under way" So it's not the future of warfare then by your own words, that's the present situation. What are you complaining about ?
- fivre 3y agohttps://thenewpress.com/books/theory-of-drone https://thenewpress.com/books/theory-of-drone is a neat read from the (not that much) earlier period where drone warfare was asymmetric, trying to contextualize it in the broader history of warfare.
- syntaxing 3y agoThe driving to walking transition is pretty darn cool. Using the propellers to lift itself up is pretty smart. But overall, this seems like an absolute reliability nightmare.
- mc32 3y agoIt’s probably a one use disposable solution when something critical needs to be delivered somewhere, be it peaceful (medicines) of bellicose (explosives) or anything in between.
- hackernewds 3y agoSo defense applications with bloated budgets and underutilized obligations to the payee, designed to transfer public funds to private pockets? Got it
- samstave 3y agoThe good news is that when the battery dies, it has no moving parts!, keeping it simple. EDIT: What would be really neat ; putting little inflatable pontoons on those skids. That thing is awesome, however, with the hard plastic wheels, and the way it scapes them back into forward wheels, I feel like this is a dead-in-the-water-flaw. Imagine trying to scrape the wheels back into place on sand, or any other terrain obsticals that will prevent the pulling the wheels in. Instead, it should move the pivot joint and allow for the wheels to be lifted up, gull-wing-style, then straightened and then placed down like feet, lift the body, then drive.... That thing will die in water without pontoons (the wheels/tyres maybe) -- and also not relying on scraping hard Big-Wheel stile plastice tyres along whatever surface.
- TX81Z 3y agoAlso what if a twig gets in the wheel? Seems like it wouldn’t be able to fly then.
- low_tech_punk 3y agoToday we are announcing two revolutionary products: A drone and a car. A drone and a car. A drone and a car. ...
- antiviral 3y agocontext for the uninitiated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrJzXM7a6o&t=130s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrJzXM7a6o&t=130s
- letmeflyhome 3y agoThey should have had the legs extend up and down to prevent scratching the wheels.
- stronglikedan 3y agoGotta save something for the next iteration, to get the MVP shipped!
- c22 3y agoFor landing I wonder if you could fold the wheels in first and just fall back into driving stance.
- jackallis 3y agowell, now all it needs is capability to swim and there goes humanity.
- kijin 3y agoJust make the body waterproof, and it will be able to move around in water just fine using the drone propellers.
- contingencies 3y agoTricopter slash tricycle design may work better for swimming. The 'rear' wheel could have a controllable axis of rotation. That said, we have hundreds of years of propellers getting caught in seaweed. I don't like the chances of a lightweight drone resisting fouling, especially if it has a prop ring enclosure.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoNotice the cute, baby/pet like music for for tech that will be used by militaries in the near future
- jcims 3y agoAt least they named it appropriately.
- carimura 3y agomy exact first thought. black mirror to the soundtrack of a photo app.
- TX81Z 3y agoCame to post this comment and you beat me to it. I think it deserves an overdub with some very intense industrial techno or the Terminator theme.
- civilitty 3y agoBlack Mirror episode Metalhead playing on a TV in the background or picture-in-picture would be most fitting, I think.
- Vecr 3y agoHow about "The Rebel Path (Cello Version)" originally for Cyberpunk 2077 but unused?
- sogen 3y agoMy suggestion: Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream, fast forward it about 30s then press play. The violins kick in just when the logo appears.
- type0 3y agoBelieve by the Chemical Brothers is most appropriate
- dj_mc_merlin 3y agoThe main benefit I can think of for the military is the ability to approach zones that have anti drone equipment via the ground. Noise isn't really a concern since grenade drones fly too high and kamikaze drones rely on speed and unpredictability. Not sure how much better approach on wheels would be than just flying low, either. The tradeoff is presumably higher cost and less reliability. Additionally, less ability to carry mass than if it just flew. I can't imagine a way this would be too useful but obviously a lack of imagination isn't proof..
- SeanLuke 3y agoI don't see any walking.
- octernion 3y agoclearly you have a strong grasp of the article's content
- SeanLuke 3y ago> Joints on the wheel assemblies allow M4 to execute a walking motion. In M4's current iteration, the walking motion is mostly proof of concept. However, with anticipated advances, future M4 generations could possess the ability to effectively walk across broken terrain that a wheeled robot would struggle with. Except that the provided demonstration isn't walking any more than using a Segway is walking.
- octernion 3y agoit's pretty obvious that it can't actually walk.
- Mimmy 3y agoAgreed, the headline is a bit misleading. It can fly, roll on 4 wheels, or roll on 2 wheels. The latter is interesting, but doesn't constitute "walking", especially when the point of walking (as a preferred method of locomotion) is to be able to step over obstacles or onto platforms like stairs, which rolling on two wheels obviously can't accomplish.
- djaychela 3y agoI noticed the terrified terrapin at 0:40 in the video as much as anything else! Impressive idea though, being able to be multi-modal. It'll be interesting to see how quickly that is copied and made available to Joe Public.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoKill all humans?
- EGreg 3y agoRemember people. Robots don’t kill people. Pe— oh wait
- WalterBright 3y agoFound another picture of it: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/terminator/images/0/08/HK_Aerial_2029.jpg/revision/latest https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/terminator/images/0/08/HK_...
- bastardoperator 3y agoWhat is the practical application for robots like these?
- Ozzie_osman 3y agoUnfortunately, usually killing people.
- yazzku 3y agoIt's usually more productive to ask who's paying for the research than to try to answer that question directly. And the answer for these projects usually: the military complex, possibly through one or two levels of indirection of government/federal grants.
- runamuck 3y agoCaltech developed the first triple-changer Transformer. More than meets the eye!
- sacnoradhq 3y agoNeat. What I want to see are close-framed, 15 mm thin, 75 g max, 4 wire, ultra-quiet lift modules 20x20 cm to move through buildings at/below background noise levels. vcc, tach, control, and gnd. Toroidal designs show some promise in 3D-printed composites, perhaps of the "flower-Moebius" 5-7 large double blade design with a long chord.
- snickmy 3y agoUnpopular opinion. Sometimes I look at university projects like this and I struggle to differentiate what is really innovation vs what is just grownup kids having too much time and money at their disposal.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoHaha, saying post docs have too much money is amusing! They have time, because they accept lower remuneration for many years to work on things they are interested in. All of this research has to get funding from somewhere. Presumably the funding bodies decided this was a potentially useful thing to fund. So I'm not sure what your complaint is really. Are you unhappy because you personally don't see the value in some research? That it just looks too much fun to be "real" work?
- snickmy 3y agoNot all research is fund through grants. Additionally, not all grants are optimising for real world impact. Not saying that this is bad. I just wonder if those post docs were put in a business context with the same runway of money, but a more strict business outcome as success criteria, would focus their work on the same things in the academia. I'm also realising, as I'm writing that this is a very well know objection to industry vs academia, and possibly my knowledge is limited enough that I'm most likely wrong :)