The army is funding several projects to create a robotic mule that can follow the soldiers while carrying food, ammunition, equipment, etc. Obviously, looking for instance at the week that the Mars Rover Spirit is taking just to roll off of its platform, this is going to be a while before it is ready for realistic conditions, but it is good innovative work anyway.
"We're coming full circle," said Paul Meunch, a TACOM research scientist. "In the days of George Washington, the Army used mules and horses. Then it moved on to trucks. And then armored vehicles and tanks. Now we could be swinging back to four legs."But reaching that galloping dream won't be easy. Building mechanical legs that work right has been a brutal task. Spinning a wheel is simple. Swinging a set of legs that can bend, step high and keep a robot balanced is hard.
"We're at the bottom of the pyramid right now," said Ben Krupp, president of Yobotics, which won a $750,000, two-year TACOM grant to build a Great Dane-sized drone. "It's tough just to get a four-legged robot to run across the parking lot without falling down."
After decades of research, tiny, commercial robo-dogs can now scamper across a flat surface. Child-sized humanoid bots can waddle -- carefully. A canine drone in the armed forces would have to do much better, though, keeping up with soldiers marching over uneven terrain.
Probably wind up looking more like a giant insect than a dog, as they are much more stable and a lot faster over unever terrain.
Posted by elkaim at January 8, 2004 12:07 PM