Go home, robot, you’re drunk: Boston Dynamics’ BigDog can now hurl cinderblocks

By Natt Garun March 1, 2013

bigdog throws cinderblock — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Welp, time to pack up and call it a night. Boston Dynamics’ all-terrain robot BigDog, a brother bot to ones that could run 40 mph, jot, and rollover, has now learned the sweet art of destruction. In the organization’s latest video, the DARPA-funded robot has been equipped with a front-facing arm/head that could grab a concrete cinderblock and toss it aside, using its body as a force to hurl blocks at least 15 feet away.

While we can’t figure out exactly why one would ever need robots that can fling concrete bricks, the video is both amazing and terrifying all at once. Since BigDog replies on its hydraulic legs to stay steady, it’s also amusing to see the robot slightly lose balance when it first picks up the cinderblock. The destruction that cometh after, however, is a whole ‘nother story. Perhaps one could argue that a robot with the ability to pick up heavy objects and toss it away could be helpful in clearing obstructed path in military searches and missions, but it’s obvious everyone else is thinking BigDog is eventually going to be made for offense. That’s a pretty wild thought knowing that a giant automaton will possibly hurl objects at enemies – given its additional specs include a 240-pound body, legs that can run nearly 13 miles without stopping, and ability to carry 340 pounds and climb slopes up to 35 degrees under all-weather terrain. What other tricks could Boston Dynamics teach this dog? We’ll just have to wait until the team integrates voice recognition.

Scared or impressed, the development makes for an interesting video to watch, so here is BigDog in all its glory. Doesn’t it look like it had a bit too much to drink?

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Emerging Tech

Former Digital Trends Contributor

An avid gadgets and Internet culture enthusiast, Natt Garun spends her days bringing you the funniest, coolest, and strangest…

Emerging Tech

Tormented robot pulls a gun on its creators in latest Boston Dynamics spoof

tormented robot pulls a gun on its creators in boston dynamics spoof bosstown

Boston Dynamics: New Robots Now Fight Back

Boston Dynamics has made a name for itself building incredibly agile and skillful robots, its steady stream of demonstration videos never failing to impress. And scare us a little, too.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."