Tag Archives: DARPA

Four-legged, DARPA-funded, running war robot unveiled (VIDEO)

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RT
Oct 5, 2013

Developers at Boston Dynamics, an engineering company specializing in robotics, have released video of an untethered robot capable of standing and mobilizing on its own.

WildCat is a four-legged outdoor runner capable of rising, turning, and reaching running speeds up to 16 mph on flat ground.

WildCat is a close cousin to Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah, another quadrupedal robot that was unveiled a year ago, running at speeds over 28 mph on a treadmill – quicker than world’s fastest man Usain Bolt’s top speed of 27.78 mph. However, unlike WildCat, Cheetah was connected to a power source.

The runner carries a large – and very loud – motor to operate its four limbs, though the weight hampers its speed and agility.

Boston Dynamics has not detailed what is next for WildCat, but it is known to have been developed for military use, as the project is part of the Maximum Mobility and Manipulation Program funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

Professor: Robots to Patrol Cities by 2040

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“What is your ID number? What are you doing here?”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
July 25, 2013

Robots will be patrolling cities by 2040 according to Professor Noel Sharkey, who predicts their tasks will include asking for ID, tasering and arresting suspects as well as crowd control.

Image: DARPA

In an article entitled 2084: Big robot is watching you, Sharkey, a robotics professor at the University of Sheffield, forecasts a world in which the jobs of surveillance, security and law enforcement have largely been handed over to artificial intelligence.

WIthin the next 30 years, Sharkey asserts that, “Humanoid walking robots would be more in use for crowd control at games, strikes and riots. Robots will patrol city centres and trouble spots where fights are likely to break out.”

“Robots will have reasonable speech perception and be able to ask questions and respond to answers. What is your ID number? What are you doing here? Move along. They may work in teams of tracked robots with non-lethal weapons (e.g. Tasers or nets) and be on call for diffusing difficult situations and arresting people,” adds Sharkey.

As well as performing more mundane tasks like checking tickets and throwing people out of events, robots will also “be able to spray a crowd with RFID tag darts or some futuristic equivalent so that people can be tracked after the crowd has been dispersed,” writes Sharkey.

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