The threat of Big Dog

[subbes]

Oh, good, now they can be our pets.

[TychoCelchuuu]

They can now lie to us.

[gregbrown]

Great for friends or family alike.

[Laxan]

LS3 ... kill.

[Luftmensch]

Oh dear I did not know they sounded like that. I'm not sure I'm totally okay with them now.

@3:08 is like an establishing shot for a Kubrik film.

[TychoCelchuuu]

The sound is easily the worst part. It's like the background noise of a sci-fi horror movie that's designed to keep you on edge constantly. It's unease in audio form.

[I_smell]

Alright joking aside, this is genuinely scary now.

[Brannigan]

Personally, I enjoy the modified head. I assume it's some sort of killscreen, designed to show the victim his own death.

[JonCole]

Bright side: Respond to voice commands.

Dark side: NIGHTVISION.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/19/3785228/darpa-alpha-dog-now-obeys-voice-commands

[I_smell]

Personally, I enjoy the modified head. I assume it's some sort of killscreen, designed to show the victim his own death.

Ideally there's a mirror on the front, so the last thing you see before you die is that the orchestrator of man's destructive end was man himself.

[Armchair General]

They've spent billions of dollars inventing the horse.

[brkl]

Not even that. They call it the mule. But how is it superior to a mule? Apart from being scary looking and sounding.

[TychoCelchuuu]

You don't have to feel bad about forcing it to carry hundreds of pounds for you and follow you around for hours each day, all in a dangerous combat zone?

Also, it's not like you can just straight up invent the crazy superpowerful robots first. That's not how it works. Nobody got mad at the Wright Brothers for invented a slower, less reliable hot air balloon. You start small then work your way up to F-16 jet fighters.

[Nappi]

I think their goal is to make that thing as mule-like as possible. Then all you have to do is to kill one of the enemy mules and replace it with the robot. Just think of all the trouble you can cause.

[Salacious Snake]

I love how we've been able to see the progression from the early bigdog stuff to this. It always looked like they were onto something, but now it appears to be getting very close to being something practical. The people at Boston Dynamics are fucking awesome; they must be super excited about their work.

It's terrific stuff.

[Nachimir]

Yeah, this thread is funny, but for the most part I find all of this work incredibly exciting to see*. These things were science fiction when we were kids! So many systems are small fragments of humans and other species; recreated, enhanced and understood in ways we definitely couldn't have acheived in past decades.

Edit: which reminds me of this Atlantic piece on what exactly a cyborg is: http://www.theatlant...d-cyborg/63995/

*Combat drones: Not exciting.

[subbes]

Not even that. They call it the mule.

No, no no no no no, they call it The Mule.

[brkl]

Oh, god. I'd forgotten about that. I wonder if that reference is intentional (it could easily be). If that's the case, that ramps up the fear factor significantly.

[subbes]

Watching a BigDog skid on ice certainly adjusts my emotions, if you know what I mean.

I mean I laugh at it.

[James]

For me the most disturbing thing about the more lifelike of Boston Dynamics' horrific robo-beasts is that when they stumble I have a moment of genuine anxiety, an actual sensation in my gut, when I think "Oh no! I hope it doesn't get hurt!". In other words, their movement is lifelike enough for me to have some sort of misplaced empathy for them. When the robotic hordes rise, and Big Dogs roam the streets dispassionately annihilating any trace of life, I'll feel bad about fighting back because of their lifelike legs and gait. I'm extra doomed.

Also, my favourite thing about that last video is the weird little head movement the guy does at the very beginning. It makes him look a bit like he's a robot powering up, too; one machine leading another. Or perhaps he's just psyching himself up for the ordeal of intimidation he's about to go through. He never looks back. He's too terrified of what he knows he'd see.

[subbes]

Could one ride a Big Dog?

[TychoCelchuuu]

I don't see why not, although with a higher center of gravity they might tumble over more often. Why you would want to get that close to one of them is completely beyond me.

[Brannigan]

I'd name mine Clifford

[Nachimir]

At the very end, they'll entice the last of us into riding them around. Then, they will roll over and crush us.

[Nappi]