Are you amongst the few who remember watching Terminator 1 and 2
oh and 3, starring the tough guy Arnold Schwarzenegger complete with dark
shades, and the famous one liner "I'll be back" If yes then you have
good taste in films, if not you need to check it out, either way the movie
centres on Machines taking over by thinking for themselves and pretty much
waging war thus wiping out humanity, we just had to build a supercomputer that
could think called Skynet didn't we.
But that's a movie after all nothing like that could ever happen
in real life........Right? Well it seems years after the American Defence Advanced
Research Projects Agency aka DARPA
have developed a robot which is pretty close to what people who first saw the
terminator in cinemas looks like, the newly designed robot codenamed
"Atlas" can tackle rough terrain and carry human tools; one assumes
this could well develop into weapons pretty easily.
"Atlas" comes in at a shrewd 6 foot tall and was developed
by Boston Dynamics, "Atlas" is reported to weigh in at 330 pounds, and
its primary purpose of development was to help with human disaster response
which is a pretty cool application for it to be used for. However if you happen
to be in the vicinity of a disaster "I hope not" then you may be
forgiven in thinking that a couple of "Atlas" walking towards you amidst
the smoke are anything but friendly, but don’t worry folks I can confirm that
"Atlas" comes from Massachusetts
and not from the future "phew"
(Click for larger Image)
"Atlas" has been shown to act like a normal human, in
fact its motion sensing and overall physical dynamic mirrors that of a human
very well, at least from both what has been reported and shown, which is really
an incredible advance into robotic physical dynamic engineering, I am actually
writing this off the top of my head and not Google’ing these long words I
assure you.
"Atlas" is designed to walk and
carry things as well as travel through rough terrain outdoors in addition to
climbing using his hands and feet, now if only someone could programme an alogy
of me Tarzan you Jane when he rescues someone that would be pretty comic. "Atlas" Uses Articulated hands
that enable him to use tools which are designed for human use,
"Atlas" apparently from the specs revealed includes 28 hydraulically actuated
degrees of freedom and you standard exoskelital body with two arms, two legs, a
torso and head.
Interestingly the head is also home to stereo
cameras and wait for it..................a laser range finder, yes we keep
coming back to that terminator feel don’t we., this laser finder is tethered to
an off board, electric power supply, thankfully if things go south we know its
weakness. Seriously
though DARPA Robotics designed such as "Atlas" are built to help
and aid with disasters and hazardous environments, just think you could send
this guy into a nuclear power plant maybe turning the tide in what could be a
very dangerous situation.
Programmers
are hard at work it seems intent on pushing the "Atlas" to its
limit, some of the challenge’s programmer’s will be trying to
program "Atlas" to do later this year include driving a utility vehicle,
breaking through a wall (strength not specified), connecting up a fire hose presumably
to fight a fire, and closing a valve shut off.
Such
a robot has huge appeal in terms of military application though and will no
doubt form part of a security tactical unit in time to come, after all bomb disposal
robots are already being used by both the military and Police in some parts of
the world, what “Atlas” could bring to the table is astounding,
helping to clear IEDs or high risk areas, or even just a peace time defence
bot.
Of
course this is probably still a long way off, but you can bet that behind some
secret doors somewhere such plans are already being looked at. What
do you think about the “Atlas” are you excited to see how its developed, used
and deployed into situations where humans would be at risk? Or do you think
that this is starting to get scary?
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