The future of robotics

http://gizmodo.com/368651/new-video-of-bigdog-quadruped-robot-is-so-stunning-its-spooky

The Japanese are obsessed with making human-like (particularly, female-human-like) robots, or robot pets, with carefully scripted responses. But they haven't yet managed to cross the uncanny valley. One of my ex-flatmates had a Roboraptor, which was effective at scaring cats, but little else. And I have great trouble imagining anyone bonding with an AIBO.

Of course, the real home of robotics these days is in factories and industry. Every so often, I will look at something I have bought and think, "This has probably been completely made and packaged by a robot. ...but how?" But for the most part, industrial robotics are out of sight and out of mind.

So Boston Dynamics' BigDog is the first robot I've seen to genuinely impress — nay, amaze — me. Check out the video. Most walking robots walk like a top-down design; like the algorithm designer is mapping the chaos of reality to a group of abstractions, and dealing with each abstraction in turn — hence they appear slow and awkward. Either that, or they use a tripod gait, which is absurdly stable. But the BigDog walks like it's alive. Two legs is certainly harder ... but looking at that video, I start to believe it's possible.

(they're designing BigDog as a pack mule for soldiers. Add in some basic speech recognition ("Come!" "Stay!" "Sit!") and I can totally see soldiers bonding with these things)