Comments

  1. rogerfirth says

    Because these guys have a sense of humor and really have fun doing what they’re doing.

  2. Larry says

    Marketing slogan: Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with! (lets see the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation sue me from the future! Hah!)

  3. Richard Smith says

    But how much more awesome would it be if the video was produced by Dahir Insaat?

  4. komarov says

    Hm, no mounted gatling gun? Next model maybe? At the very least replace the manipulator with something sharp and pointy. Or teach it how to toss coke cans at someone’s head. And then replace the cans with something sharp and pointy.

  5. edmond says

    These are to robotics what the DynaTAC was to smart phones. Can’t wait to see what we’ll have crawling around our houses in 20 years.

  6. Nick Gotts says

    They should do one with three legs and two heads. – chigau@2

    How about an amphibious one with seven heads and ten horns? That would really get the fundies going!

  7. FossilFishy (NOBODY, and proud of it!) says

    “Ooo, ooo, ooo, I know what that looks like!”

    [reads comments]

    Four plus hours late. Dammit.

    [surrenders his geek badge]

  8. unclefrogy says

    did they give it face because without one it begins to look too creepy and dangerous after a while kind of like putting a big pink bow on a doberman.?
    uncle frogy

  9. Artor says

    As several other Niven readers have already observed, it would only take a couple minor changes to make it into a recognizable alien species. My thought was to replace the clunky jointed arm with the sinuous metal snake of a Tesla recharging cable. Or two of them, of course!

  10. Rich Woods says

    It’s not as much the Uncanny-Valley-skull-manipulator-on-a-dog’s-body as the constant plasticky movement sound around the house which got me. Three minutes of that and I’d kick the bloody thing out of an upper-floor window into the neighbour’s pond. “Swim your way out of that, you bastard!”

    Obviously once it did, I’d be obligated to bow down and worship it as my new Metal God.

  11. emergence says

    Has Boston Dynamics considered making these things able to jump or sprint? I think I remember seeing one video where a quadruped could do a little hop.

  12. anym says

    #26, emergence:

    Has Boston Dynamics considered making these things able to jump or sprint?

    They had a tethered test robot (cheetah) that did those things. They have an untethered one (wildcat) that can run quite swiftly but I don’t think it jumps. Mind you, this video is nearly 3 years old already, so they might have improved it by now (and maybe made it quieter).