One day you may see one of these walking up your street dropping off letters and parcels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da6Dyma4KN8&feature=fvst

For a more complete description see:

BigDog - The Most Advanced Rough-Terrain Robot on Earth

http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_bigdog.html

>>BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics robots. It is a rough-terrain robot that walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by an engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog has four legs that are articulated like an animal’s, with compliant elements to absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule; about 3 feet long, 2.5 feet tall and weighs 240 lbs.

[...]

The ultimate goal for BigDog is to develop a robot that can go anywhere people and animals can go. The program is funded by the Tactical Technology Office at DARPA.>>

Soon there will be no need for humans:)....then what?

cc

quote..""Soon there will be no need for humans:)....then what?
""

the rich buy more robots
and tell them...what they want to..*make us do

their tax deductable too
but tip em over..what happens
going to be a lot of poeople not liking..the neo[new]..public service,method of delivery..and hurt the messanger]..

sop

the status
must retain its quo

Planet 3 wrote:

>>Soon there will be no need for humans:)....then what?>>

That may be more of an issue than you think:

See:

Rio Tinto approves driverless trains for Pilbara

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/rio-tinto-approves-driverless-trains-for-pilbara

And:

Rise of the machines

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/rise-of-the-machines/story-e6frg6z6-1226291014017

>>IN Western Australia's dusty Pilbara region, fully laden robot trucks weighing as much as a fuelled A380 Airbus and as high as a two-storey building are working in mining pits, often within a few metres of people.

So far, it is just a trial. But it is working so well that, within three years, half the trucks working for the nation's biggest iron ore exporter - Rio Tinto - will be hauling the nation's main resource bounty without drivers.>>

We are only at the beginning of an automation revolution.

Steven, very interesting, but I think I read the same thing, as your last post, about 30 years ago.

I know I was supposed to have an automatic self drive vacuum cleaner, a self drive car, & a maid, years ago.

I'm not too sure weather to be pleased or annoyed that all this stuff didn't appear as promised. I don't actually need any of it now either, but you could say the same about computers & mobile phones.

Still, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for my doggy postman.

Fair enough Hasbeen but thirty years ago the sizeable insurance company for which I worked had about as much computing power as is to be found in an iPhone. And it filled an underground bunker.

Thirty years ago there were no driverless trucks and trains. There were also no semi-autonomous drones flying around killing people.

Thirty years ago the notion of replacing lawyers with software seemed ridiculous. Today… well see:

Armies of Expensive Lawyers, Replaced by Cheaper Software

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/science/05legal.html?_r=1

>>When five television studios became entangled in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit against CBS, the cost was immense. As part of the obscure task of “discovery” — providing documents relevant to a lawsuit — the studios examined six million documents at a cost of more than $2.2 million, much of it to pay for a platoon of lawyers and paralegals who worked for months at high hourly rates.

But that was in 1978. Now, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, “e-discovery” software can analyze documents in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the cost. In January, for example, Blackstone Discovery of Palo Alto, Calif., helped analyze 1.5 million documents for less than $100,000.>>

Thirty years ago there had been no DARPA urban challenge.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2007_Urban_Challenge

See also this must watch video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4A036o85u0

In Japan they're talking of robo-helpers for the elderly.

See this video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgfowy_robot-care-for-the-elderly_tech

The robot future is coming Hasbeen. It's just a couple of decades late.

Yes Stephen, I do remember those air conditioned girls, the ones who drove the old computers, that had to be air conditioned to keep working, [the computers that is, but possibly the girls too]. It was a sore point with a mate who was a divisional manager with Moulded Products, who could not get air con in his office in the early 60s. He also complained that they funded the computer, used mostly by the lab, by charging $4.50 an invoice, to all divisions, when an invoice clerk cost $40 a week.

But you must have forgotten the Jindivik. It was a remote controlled plane, back in the 50s. It was used for target practice, rather than targeting anything, but I think it could have.

In 58 they had an old one hanging in front of the guard house, at the entrance of the Forrest Hills Air Force apprentice school, [near Wagga]. It hung there until we trainee pilots from Uranquinty Air Force pilot training school, [also near Wagga], stole it one night, & set it up in our parade ground for Monday parade.

What a kerfuffle that caused, almost as much as the time we "kidnapped" one of the boy's girlfriends, from a Wagga street corner one Saturday morning, in a hit & run raid in an huge old Buick.

Life was real fun back then, & I can't see much useful advance since then mate.

PS, I was navy, not air force, but they sent us off to the Air Force to learn the basics of flying. Of course they then took us back, & taught us how to do it, [propper like] without without all that mucking around with an airstrip.

Oh yes, I do approve of replacing lawyers with computers, do you think you could arrange to do it with the bottle red head one, in Canberra.

Hasbeen,

I thought you knew!

The one in Canberra is a prototype PMbot. She's a beta version animated by an Android release called pumpernickel sandwich. (Not to be confused with ice cream sandwich).

The next release will have the improved pastrami on rye release.

BTW Hasbeen,

Interesting that the Australian Navy taught you the basics of flying.

In the South African army they taught us how to bale out!

Lucky you Stephen.

Every pilot course before mine had done 3 jumps. However by the time I joined, we were a bit short of aircraft, we weren't supposed to eject, so did not get an actual jump in training.

The last word at every briefing back then was "bring those bl00dy aircraft back alive". If we had survived a crash, I doubt we would have survived the debriefing.

And for a poor bugger like me weighing nearly a hundred kilos didn't those old T10 chutes come in damn hard, especially on summer jumps. Thin air and hard ground. Ouch.

As to robotics this was something that really impressed me.

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4

I'm just wondering when the first one carrying a hypodermic will fly in Fidel Castro's window.

It seems a bit typical that the Japanese are developing robots to assist the elderly while the Yanks are creating 'Big Dog' for the Army.

Great video csteele, thanks.

To me one of the scariest is Robosnake:

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JnQL7mjspg

The "snake" can also be packed with explosives - a sort of kamikaze snake.

And this one, csteele, will confirm all your worst suspicions :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdDzUP2heC0

BTW robotics is a bit like computer science. It's a general purpose tool. Military developments will have civilian uses and vice versa

Dear stephenlmeyer,

No, it is more this that confirms my worst suspicions and fears.

http://www.skewsme.com/implants.html#axzz1t2a8gUlW

Why can't they just leave the bloody brain alone?

It sickens and disgusts me particularly what they are doing to animals. I am not a serious animal lover but to be hard wiring a creature’s brain to get it to do what we want is a step too far. As a secularist that is my line in the sand. Surely we should be civilised enough to regard the brain as sacrosanct.

And what about the obscenity of saying this research, which is designed to enhance the interface between humans and the weaponry they deploy, will assist those missing limbs through the use by others of weapons of war.

It is enough to ... (fill in what you want because I'm speechless).

Stevenlmeyer,

<< One day you may see one of these walking up your street dropping off letters and parcels>>

The whole concept of someone/thing walking around the suburb(s) delivering mail is so 18th Century.
Things (should) have moved way past that: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-26/super-computer/3972832

Save BigDog for more appropriate tasks like rescue missions to/in dangerous locations, exploration of alien planets, and stand-ins for Green MPs who might want to duck away from parliament for a day or two, but don't want anyone to notice their absence.

SPQR your forgetting one thing mate.

It doesn't matter how good that computer gets, if you want to do some on line shopping, someone has to physically move that book, radio, pair of shoes, or pretty bauble from your supplier to your home.

If all this on line shopping continues to expand, you're likely to need a hundred postmen for every suburb.

I wonder if throwing big dog a bone will stop our mail going walk about?

Cheers, Hasbeen. Good point.