A couple notes on the video: those weights that AlphaDog is carrying in a few of the clips weigh a total of 400 pounds (180 kilograms), and the robot will be able to carry that load up to 20 miles (30 kilometers) over the course of 24 hours without having to refuel. At the end of the running demo (just after the 45 second mark), the robot collapses into the safety frame like that simply because it ran out of room, not because of any kind of mechanical problem. And notice how two people pushing as hard as they can don't phase AlphaDog in the least, and in the event that it does tip over for some reason, it has no trouble self-righting, which is a useful new feature.
As cool as BigDog was (and is), its relatively limited payload, range, and awful noise kept it from being a realistically deployable system. AlphaDog, on the other hand, looks like it's getting very close to something that we could see out in the field, using GPS navigation and computer vision to follow soldiers while carrying their gear over any kind of terrain. Boston Dynamics' schedule has the first walk-out of AlphaDog taking place sometime in 2012, when DARPA and the U.S. Marines will begin to put the robot to the test for real.
Boston Dynamics' Marc Raibert On The Future Of BigDog
Boston Dynamics' Marc Raibert On The Future Of BigDog
Back in May (I think, although the video wasn’t posted until now), Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, gave a talk at Stanford on the current progress and future plans for BigDog. It’s an over an hour long, but (as you might expect) the juicy bits come in towards the end regarding the future plans. If you don’t have an hour or so, I’d recommend starting in at about the 46:50 mark, where you get to see some video of a quieter BigDog with an electric motor, among other things. If you don’t have time for even that, here’s a summary of what I thought were the most interesting bits:
-Marc Raibert says he’s inspired by mountain goats, which is pretty daunting when you’re designing a quadrupedal robot.-Robots vs. mules: mules are better, except: they can only carry about a third of their body weight, they don’t take direction well, and they’re not easy to warehouse.-That video of BigDog slipping on ice and recovering? It wasn’t programmed specifically to deal with slippery surfaces, and they didn’t even know it was icy out, they were just shooting some other test video and it happened to cross a patch of ice, recovering using its standard dynamic balance programming.-BigDog is able to run (actually run, including a stride phase without any ground contact) at a little bit over 6 mph, although they’re still working on its balance while running.-Boston Dynamics has two working BigDogs, both of which you can see in action at 30:40 (this is new video). Raibert wants to get 7 or 8 of them together to go dog sledding (!).-BigDog can’t yet get up on its own, but they’re working on it… The next generation will have the hip (or shoulder) joints positioned outside of the body and higher up, with an increased range of motion that will allow the robot to get its legs under its body, which the current generation can’t do.-Kinematically, the orientation of BigDog’s legs (knee front or knee back) just doesn’t matter. They’re able to take the legs off and swap them around.-The noise BigDog makes is “much worse” in person. The videos “don’t do it justice.”-Electric motor BigDog still sounds like bees (although they’ll be able to mute it completely), only runs for 10 minutes, and is slightly underpowered… They’re contemplating a “hybrid” version, where you can switch to silent operation for 10 minutes and then back to gas.-BigDog can follow people autonomously using a scanning LIDAR system, engineers say it’s “really scary to have the robot following you going down hills” (ha!).-There’s no redundancy in the walking system, “BigDog goes down when you shoot off a leg.”-The biggest challenge so far has been making the system able to run in the heat (due to the engine).
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