This article was taken from the December 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online. "About half the Earth's landmass is terrain that is too rough for wheeled and tracked vehicles," says Marc Raibert, founder of robotics company Boston Dynamics. "It's too steep, muddy, rocky, slippery, wet, soft, loose or snowy. But people and animals can go almost anywhere on foot. So we are building machines with feet to go there too."
Boston Dynamics spun out of the Leg Laboratory at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, where Raibert worked on two- and four-legged walking machines. The current generation of robots can judge their position more accurately, using algorithms to calculate the movements needed to stay upright, while faster processors enable real-time reactions.
The latest robots cope with unstable surfaces such as ice or gravel, quickly regaining balance when they slip, and range from the mule-sized Legged Squad Support System (LS3) robot packhorse, to the rabbit-sized Sand Flea, which is capable of leaping over obstacles to explore urban terrain. Less speedy are the various humanoids, some of them startlingly lifelike. "The anthropomorphic robots such as Petman and Atlas use motions similar to a human's, so it's not surprising that there is a resemblance," explains Raibert.
Boston Dynamics has won a $32 million (£20m) commission from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for LS3, plus US Army contracts for the Sand Flea and the six-legged RHex. The company also markets DI-Guy software, which adds realistic humans to computer simulations. The machines aren't just rising -- they're trotting, jumping and crawling too.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
