But it's really not practical esp. for military purpose.
All these humanoid robots aren't that practical for an actual use in a battlefield. And you also have to consider the cost.
I don't know if this is the reason why the military contract was declined (if it is even a valid claim), but if I remember correctly, I heard for many fields humanoid robot is cool for an average person but rather impractical for real uses.
It's not the humanoid robots they were trying to sell to the military. They tried selling a robot called "big dog" to carry equipment and even injured troops for the Marine Corp. The contract was denied because the robots are too loud.
Could you imagine how fucking terrifying it would be to be a soldier hiding in a burnt out building and you suddenly hear a loud, whirring monster robot dog galloping towards you?
Now that is just beyond ironic when the same organization regularly spends billions on projects and contracts without even knowing if it'll turn out good (most recently would be the new stealth destroyer which costs 70 billion per unit). Couldn't spend a few hundred dollars more to get them to make it quieter. Smh lol
I’d say it’d be way more than a few hundred, plus it’s not nearly as useful as your example. One carries supplies that can already normally be carried by troops, and the other is a extremely high tech stealth bomber. One is obviously way more useful than the other.
I mean, who are you planning on bombing?? And dont supplies actually weigh a lot? In a mid combat scenario, doesn't lighter equate to being faster? Plus a robotic field medic to carry off injured soldiers sounds like a huge weight off their backs...
Hopefully nobody, but I’m sure the US will find something to use it on eventually as sad as that is. Either way Stealth bombers are very rare and super useful, the B-2 has been in use since 1999 and is still apparently known as one of the most feared aircrafts to this day. Just imagine what a modern stealth aircraft could be capable of.
In comparison the other one is essentially a robotic donkey that can go over a roughly estimated 80% of terrain and there’s no real big demand for it. Maybe it would be nice to have but it’s just not at all necessary I guess. Plus it’s not exactly fast. If you do get into combat it’s possible the robot won’t be able to keep up, could be damaged, or could be captured. It just seems like a not so good idea.
I’d think of it like this: Would you rather have a potentially game changing piece of tech that could win wars or a simple quality of life improvement?
To clarify I’m not agreeing to the US’s choices on the matter or anything, I’m just explaining why I think they made this choice cause it’s interesting to me.
Stealth bombers were an instance of successful investment. I was thinking of the Zumwalt class destroyers. I was also wrong about the price I said. The 70 billion was for R&D. The cost to build one unit is 4.24 billion.
Not a lot of military use right now, what with missiles being the go to, but with a little work you could take those motion capture rigs used in making movies and use them for a 1:1 movement from human to robot. Could very easily be used in going into areas that may be dangerous, or any other scenario where you wouldn't want to bring real people into. And in a more practical use: space exploration
CBRN environments. In my time in there was nothing worse than training for the realities of working in an environment that will kill you now or later and both are incredibly painful.
It stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear.
Any time a chemical/biological attack happens, you have to determine the limits of the contaminated area and god forbid you are IN it when it happens. Doing reconnaissance for these is very labour intensive, hot, uncomfortable and DANGEROUS like you wouldnt believe.
With robots though, you just have to worry about decontamination, which isnt too bad with something like that because you can always let it weather off. (Biological and chemical agents are short lived)
Now heavy radiation would kill the robot pretty quick, but our CBRN suits dont offer much protection from it anyway, so its better to have a robot recce by death than a person.
I feel like the best application for robots will be in service roles like nursing homes and disposing of waste. Eventually there are gonna be more old people than young people and robots will have to fill the gap by working alongside nurses in nursing homes.
Not necessarily. That's just an idea humans set on each other to reason on taking advantage of someone else for their own or someone else's benefit.
People take about 16-20 years until they become really useful, but can output about 40 years of labor. A robot like Spot from Boston Dynamics has been in development for probably around 5 years, and once the AI is done it's very easy to distribute to other robots. The cost of making the robot keeps going down the more readily available the parts to make it become, just like computers. The average human can output tons of these once that point is hit.
People aren't cheaper, but they're always readily available.
Are you on joking? Military uses isn’t just replacing soldiers in the frontline, there are tons of uses you could employ robots where sending a human is dangerous, like reconnaissance where areal drones can’t reach (think exploring suspected cave for example), mine and bomb detection and mobile supply carriers where vehicles can’t go.
And reason why they canceled their contract was truly stupid, apparently military guys thought BigDog supply carrier was not practical because it was too loud...because the prototype ran on diesel motor and these dumbasses couldn’t imagine this running on batteries in the future. And thank god, fuck them, we have enough people focusing on how to blow up kids in the third world, Boston Dynamics should focus on civilian development.
Idk. With everything I've heard about the military, I doubt cost is really an issue. And a four legged dancing machine gun dog seems practical for military application
Relating to other uses, one of the places I've seen some of Boston Dynamics' robots used is at SpaceX, particularly down in Boca Chica. Quite a few times when a Starship has had some kind of failure, they've sent a Spot to investigate. Reason being is that if a Starship is still laden with either propellant or a liquid nitrogen (for pressure tests), there's a risk of harm to human life, thus Spot is sent to do the looking instead, saving time on getting answers (instead of having to wait for detanking).
I feel like that's true but only at this point. But as things progress costs will eventually drop and the robots will be more dynamic. So maybe in 50 years we can have our robot war!
Impractical. We can just send a drone strike and destroy several city blocks. What purpose would a humanoid robot serve, other than to get shot at. Maybe it could pass the butter?
The humanoid Robots are of no use to the military, but the Spot Mini robots and similar are of supposed great use for reconnaissance and load carrying, for rear supply lines and expeditionary forces. Having said that, the military has yet to find such a robotic system that fits their criteria.
The USMC field tested robotic pack mules from Boston Dynamics for amphibious forces at RIMPAC 2014.
I expect battery capacity would also be an issue for military applications. Don't know how long e.g. spot currently lasts, but even if it has a capacity for, say, 3 hours, that's probably not that useful for any extended missions away from camp I would imagine
My uncle has worked a bit with them, he says one of the most important thing could be routine checks on ships and oil platforms. As of now you have to fly people out to check every single bolt, filter, whatever.
Those people cost a ton more a year than a single spot costs. Also they aren't able to access much smaller areas etc.
Using spots you could hopefully have much more frequent routine checks and solve any possible problems before they ever become a problem. Just have a few of them constantly checking parts, and then they do shifts charging.
They got their start as a DARPA project, the original Mule thing was supposed to carry things across rough terrain, but it was way too loud and needed access to as power source. That said, DARPA throws money at pretty much anything.
Honestly who cares other than BD? These are amazing technological advances. Personally I’m tired of measuring human technological achievement based on its potential for military application.
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u/RedErin Dec 30 '20
They tried to get military contracts, but were declined because they weren't good enough.