Boston Dynamics Big Dog (new video March 2008)

olinerd · 17.4M views · 2008-03-17 · 3:29

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Overview

Boston Dynamics' March 2008 video of BigDog, a four-legged robot, walking on ice and snow, climbing rubble and recovering from slips and kicks.

On Hacker News

HN returns to it as the classic jaw-dropping demo of legged robots handling rough terrain, and as a historical marker for how long such robots have existed.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2008–2019

Topics

What people said

russell · 2009-07 · Strong recommendation
I thought Toyota was pretty good until I followed the link in the article to Big Dog. [VIDEO] Big Dog is truly awesome. It runs, jumps, recovers from slips, climbs over rubble, ...
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vitobcn · 2010-05 · Recommendation
I find amazing how difficult it is to successfully perform apparently trivial tasks such as walking. There's more information about the 'LittleDog' on the Boston Dynamics website: [LINK] I was really impressed 2 years ago by their video of the 'BigDog': [VIDEO] (check out t=40s)
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lacker · 2008-10 · Recommendation
Here's some specific suggestions. I was most recently fascinated by this video on head tracking "virtual reality". [LINK] Another cool thing if you're into DIY robots (not really educational, but I found it inspiring) is the Yellow Drum Machine. [LINK] Not sure why I got on the robot tangent but here's another good one, a 4-legged robot that's pretty good at navigating hills and obstacles. Especially the recovery from a fall sequence around 1:25. [VIDEO] And here is hacking the Wii Fit controller and a Roomba to do a sort of vacuum-by-surfing... thing? [LINK]
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Sources

Video by olinerd, played through YouTube.

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