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By Jay Fitzgerald
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Video of Waltham co.’s invention scores 2 million YouTube hits
Article & Video link: http://www.bostonherald.com/jobfind....bg?articleid=1081975&srvc=home&position=also
A new video of BigDog - a robotic “pack mule” that Waltham-based Boston Dynamics is developing for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - has attracted more than 2 million viewers since the clip went live on YouTube this week.
n the video (see sidebar), BigDog walks around on four mechanical legs, carrying hundreds of pounds of cargo without tipping over. The device climbs up a snow-covered hill, walks over rocks, slips on ice but rights itself - even avoids tipping over when a man comes by and kicks it.
Measuring about a yard long and a yard high, BigDog might one day haul around soldiers’ backpacks, ammunition and other materials in dangerous places where traditional vehicles can’t go.
Powered by a gas engine, BigDog uses a robotic technology called “dynamic balancing” to remain upright.
A spokesman for Boston Dynamics, an engineering firm spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, declined to comment on the video. A DARPA spokesman didn’t return calls seeking comment.
However, the group Massachusetts HighTech said Boston Dynamics has a three-year contract worth a potential $40 million to develop BigDog for DARPA.
BigDog has already been a smash hit on YouTube, although everyone seems to have a different opinion of what the weird machine looks like.
“It’s quite a creature - most resembling a giant fly in a 1950s horror movie, complete with eerie buzzing sound, only sans wings,” Joel Brown wrote on his local HubArts.com blog this week.
Several other companies are developing advanced robots for the Pentagon, which hopes to increase the use of such devices for a host of military purposes.
For instance, Burlington’s iRobot Corp. - maker of the popular Roomba robot vacuum cleaner - has developed the PackBot robot, now used in Iraq to dismantle bombs.
Most robots use wheels or treads to buzz around.
But not the sensor-laden BigDog.
Its mechnical legs have knee- and ankle-like joints that allow BigDog to literally walk over terrain traditional vehicles can’t handle - sort of the way a horse can still do some things better than a car.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Video of Waltham co.’s invention scores 2 million YouTube hits
Article & Video link: http://www.bostonherald.com/jobfind....bg?articleid=1081975&srvc=home&position=also
A new video of BigDog - a robotic “pack mule” that Waltham-based Boston Dynamics is developing for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - has attracted more than 2 million viewers since the clip went live on YouTube this week.
n the video (see sidebar), BigDog walks around on four mechanical legs, carrying hundreds of pounds of cargo without tipping over. The device climbs up a snow-covered hill, walks over rocks, slips on ice but rights itself - even avoids tipping over when a man comes by and kicks it.
Measuring about a yard long and a yard high, BigDog might one day haul around soldiers’ backpacks, ammunition and other materials in dangerous places where traditional vehicles can’t go.
Powered by a gas engine, BigDog uses a robotic technology called “dynamic balancing” to remain upright.
A spokesman for Boston Dynamics, an engineering firm spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, declined to comment on the video. A DARPA spokesman didn’t return calls seeking comment.
However, the group Massachusetts HighTech said Boston Dynamics has a three-year contract worth a potential $40 million to develop BigDog for DARPA.
BigDog has already been a smash hit on YouTube, although everyone seems to have a different opinion of what the weird machine looks like.
“It’s quite a creature - most resembling a giant fly in a 1950s horror movie, complete with eerie buzzing sound, only sans wings,” Joel Brown wrote on his local HubArts.com blog this week.
Several other companies are developing advanced robots for the Pentagon, which hopes to increase the use of such devices for a host of military purposes.
For instance, Burlington’s iRobot Corp. - maker of the popular Roomba robot vacuum cleaner - has developed the PackBot robot, now used in Iraq to dismantle bombs.
Most robots use wheels or treads to buzz around.
But not the sensor-laden BigDog.
Its mechnical legs have knee- and ankle-like joints that allow BigDog to literally walk over terrain traditional vehicles can’t handle - sort of the way a horse can still do some things better than a car.