Megabucks in funding, 28 years of research, and Boston Dynamics is to be 'sold to Hyundai' for 1/40th of an Arm Boston Dynamics, the Softbank-owned robotics biz, is reportedly being sold to South Korean automotive giant Hyundai for $921m in a deal expected to be announced shortly. Softbank and Hyundai have been in talks discussing the takeover for months, and will finalize details of the acquisition on December 10, according to …
The ideal use (as always) is in warfare, not so much as an aggressor but in supplying the warfighters in theatre. Soldiers have to carry ridiculous amounts (in terms of personal weight) of spares (food, water, batteries and ammunition).
But better infantry mobility, increased use of UAVs for surveillance and recon and optimised tech. have lessened the need for an asthmatic sounding robot support dog to carry stuff about.
Plus they're noisy, need a stack-load of energy and always look like they'd easily kill someone if anything went vaguely wrong control-wise - any use outside of military ops would have the Safety Engineers will be licking the nib of their red-pens with glee.
So great fun and the control algorithms are very clever but hard to see where the market is for it...
If/when they solve the power requirements and noise they could be used as a pack animal, but I always thought the idea of fitting one with a mortar for support fire would work well. Operator indicates position of the target from themselves and the unit calculates the trajectory and drops a shell on the target.
You'd be better off having a quieter (fuel cell) UAV carrying a couple of precision missiles that soliders can laser designate onto a target (an annoying infantryman in a "defilade" position behind a wall or rock). This would give the infantry their own precision squad level airforce. The US military tired to get a counter defilade smart gun into the hands of its infantry with the XM-25 smart grenade launcher, but this turned out to be to much extra weight to carry. Really this drone would be a "flying backpack" for mini missiles that the soliders would never have to carry, you'd just have several or dozens or hundreds of such drones flying over an operations area.
There are drones that do this currently, but both the drones and missles cost far to much. Hellfire missiles cost 100k each, and even the man carried Javelin anti tank missles (now used to hit dug in Taliban in Afghanistan) cost 50k each. Maybe with new manufacturing and off the shelf parts missle costs could get down to $150 each (or whatever price level would make their use sustainable).
To get around the problem of the UAV noise alerting the enemy to the presence of the soliders, maybe fly a lot more (cheap) UAVs over a large area of countryside.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
