Developments in robotics that mimic living things are quite amazing. Here’s one robot designed to look and work like a pack mule that can go over rough terrain.
Here’s one that walks like a human.
Here are remarkably human-like robots that cannot walk but whose facial expressions and conversation are quite realistic. It is being explored for use as therapy.
There are also octopus/squid robots
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/octopus-chronicles/2013/07/26/will-the-robot-uprising-be-squishy/
Scientific American had a full article on this
Actually, the second 2 videos show robots developed just down the road from my office (and where I’m sitting now). Tsukuba is the center for Robotics and Nanotechnology.
In AIST, this snake robot is being developed, and at our university (University of Tsukuba), the Robot suit HAL is being developed.
So what happens when they start putting guns on the backs of the dog robots and sending them after people? They’re to the point that they can’t easily be kicked over, and some of them have speeds faster than humans can run when on flat terrain. With just a bit of jiggering to make them tougher and more versatile, war can be waged without any risk to soldiers’ lives.
My friend says that this is a good reason to invent lightsabers. Or maybe hammers and axes will be effective against them, and we’ll regress back to medieval military technology.
invivoMark: This is what happens
http://youtu.be/JkTKKaQpXoM
That ‘mule’ has the same problem as a snowmobile -- when the going gets really tough you can’t kill and eat it!
Does anyone else get the feeling that we are looking at the prequels to the Terminator movies?
Testing
F_{\mu\nu} F^{\mu\nu} = \ 2 \left( B^2 -- \frac{E^2}{c^2} \right)