Robotic 'Dogs' to be tested on US/Mexico border
Interesting stuff here, now I don’t know much about Ghost Robotics, but if they are anything like the products that Boston Dynamics produces, then I can tell you that those illegally crossing the board are in for a special “treat”. Here are some videos of both the Ghost Robotics and the Boston Dynamics robots.
Note that neither company’s products are autonomous, they are fully controlled by a remote operator, there is no AI, and they are controlled by a human at all times. However, there are automatic functions built in, like the instruction set to automatically right itself when it falls over.
The Ghost Dog can travel approximately 7 miles on a charge at speeds of nearly 2.5 miles per hour.
Swamp Dog
Ghost Dog
The robots at Boston Dynamics have more autonomous capabilities such as you can program autonomous routes with the Spot, so it can inspect or patrol on its own and report back its findings. They have a series of dynamic highly-mobile robots, including BigDog, Spot, Atlas, and Handle.
The Atlas, which stands 5′ tall, is a bipedal humanoid robot primarily developed by the American robotics company Boston Dynamics with funding and oversight from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). (Source – Wikipedia)
Here is the Atlas by Boston Dynamics demonstrating his agility.
Atlas
Here is a cute video of the Atlas dancing, though it is silly, it does demonstrate the agility and stability of the robot.
Atlas dancing
Atlas Doing Some Gymnastics
Here is Spot in the real world, on the job at National Grid. Spot helps to keep employees safe
Spot On The Job
This video shows some of the evolution of Spot and Spot mini and is a great demonstration of its capabilities including opening a door.
Spot and Spot Mini
Here is a video of an earlier version of Spot (2015) demonstrating some of its abilities and agility
Spot (2015)
Depending on how much they can carry, I really could see these being used in the military to carry large amounts of heavy equipment. In fact, they have the BigDog which is specially made to be a pack mule – This is a video showing the evolution of the BigDog.
BigDog
Of course, this started a series of parody videos of the Boston Dynamic robots.
Some of these are pretty good. Corridor Crew is one of the biggest parody video makers, making the Bosstown Dynamics series.
