For the first half of that video I was convinced it was two dudes doing some crazy public performance art.
Now I think it's the creepiest goddamn thing mankind has ever intentionally produced. If I was walking around the forest by myself and that motherfucker came walking by, I'd cry.
My god that's incredible! They've made SO much progress on giving robots natural movement abilities. That's awesome as hell. I gasped when the guy kicked it and it recovered so naturally. True, it's a bit creepy when it's slipping across the ice, but just because of how natural it looks. :O Neat!
Like the McRib, I had uncanny valley/charmfear at first, but as I realized what it was, and the way it was moving, I was very much impressed and wanted to subscribe to their newsletter.
Now that the tech has been developed far enough, we need to modify the motor so its sound is more Primally creepy and fear inducing (aka: the WWII german Machine gun that fired so fast it really demoralized people), outfit with black chitinous armor, and set them loose in forests to "Herd, Shadow, and scare the shit out of people"
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Date: 2008-03-17 07:08 pm (UTC)Now I think it's the creepiest goddamn thing mankind has ever intentionally produced. If I was walking around the forest by myself and that motherfucker came walking by, I'd cry.
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Date: 2008-03-17 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 12:25 pm (UTC)Here's an example of a very old version of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKBEeQCGbO8
That was designed in the early 80s :) The bigger guy uses the same type of emergent learning to move.
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Date: 2008-03-18 12:42 pm (UTC)That was the original (1989ish) version of this. Back then it was called the gazelle bot and mimicked the movements of a gazelle.
Looks like they changed its movement dynamics to score some nice DARPA swag :)
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Date: 2008-03-17 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-17 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-18 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 11:26 am (UTC)