It’s interesting seeing people who wonder why we don’t just use regular mules. I guess it shows how out of touch with nature and farm animals most folks are. Biological mules need constant maintenance every day. They need food, water, shelter. They generate lots of waste. And they’re not storable. This is especially bad for longer duration operations. Using a mule to take supplies deep into the mountains, or where have you, for 3 months then be able to move to the next location is a mule that needs to be fed for 3 months, so you need to bring 3 months of food for the mule, which probably requires more mules, and so on. With a robot you just turn it off when not in use.
Even in mountains you can find food and water for pack animals. Where do you imagine they shelter themselves in the wild? The key element is that they are quiet. …and will take themselves out of a firefight without the need for orders.
It is interesting that the mule and robot are about equal mass and payload ability.
On the other hand, real mules are cheaper, can live off the land, are somewhat self repairing, and you can eat them if you run out of food. Sort of like Marines, but smarter.
Real Mules also flee from the sound of gunfire and incoming artillery. Robo-Mule don’t give a shit.
In real operational situations a real mule would I think be more useful than the LS3, but given a few years of development to make the mechanical mule quieter, lighter, faster and more nimble, steel (or advanced composite materials) will out perform flesh.
It appears they developed this in a mindset of replicating a quadruped. But instead of just replacing a mule with a mechanical mule, they should have based their robot-carrier on the ant. Ants carry 10-50 times their weight, move fast and climb walls. And oh yeah, they can dig holes. Think that would be a handy feature in a military environment?
Well, if we are going to go there, consider this one where army ants kill everything in their path: The Naked Jungle. Now imagine, that with the advent of nanotechnology, the “ants” are constructed of diamond with supercomputer brains. And they are heading your way…
“they should have based their robot-carrier on the ant.”
Agreed, something with a wide flat back that’s easy to load or ride on, think in terms of a small Jeep with 6 legs.
And quiet.
The machine should be a hybrid that can run silently off the batteries when necessary. They would recharge the batteries and augment the performance with the gasoline/diesel engine when they can.
The more you complicate the transmission the less weight it can carry.
Ants’ strength/weight ratio is a function of their size, not their design. Weight scales with volume whereas strength scales with length or cross-sectional area. An ant the size of these mules wouldn’t be able to carry that much more weight.
Strength to weight may be comparable. But a six-legged machine would not fall over like this one did because it stuck one of its legs in a hole.
Ants’ strength/weight ratio is a function of their size, not their design. Weight scales with volume whereas strength scales with length or cross-sectional area. An ant the size of these mules wouldn’t be able to carry that much more weight.
Keep in mind the strength of the materials the unit is built from, if bone was 10 times as strong as it is, animals the size of elephants could be the shape of leopards, and with the leopard agility. If the materials legged vehicles are built from are 10 times as strong as bone, to copy the movement of animals, we should take full advantage of the greater material strength and look to copy the design of animals a fraction of the size of our vehicle.
But that would apply to quadrupeds, too. No need for six legs. It might provide more flexibility, but it would also be harder to program.
Agree, but with the extra legs you get redundancy, surer footing, and I expect a greater ability to get over obstacles – 2 legs reaching over to get a purchase with the other 4 legs still supporting the weight.
Is the quadruped design the best design for larger animals, or just an accident of evolution that vertebrate life on Earth’s been stuck with?
Is the quadruped design the best design for larger animals, or just an accident of evolution that vertebrate life on Earth’s been stuck with?
Vertebrates don’t have the skeletal structure for additional limbs. But it is an interesting question as to why Arthropods are typically smaller animals. Evolutionary pressures drove, or allowed, dinosaurs to become gigantic. Are there any examples of insects or spiders, say, the size of a dog, let alone that of a mule? BTW, if there are, please tell me where, because I want to make sure I never go there.
The really big insects were around when the O2 content of the atmosphere was much higher. The problem isn’t the number of legs, but the respiratory/circulatory system.
One of the early man-sized walking machines was six-legged; they made that choice because it was easier to program a six-legged walker (plant three legs, move the other three forward, plant them, move the original three forward). I suspect that a six-legged machine would be half again as heavy as a four-legged machine that could carry the same load at the same speed, but have no evidence to support that.
You can’t take mules into combat. They run away at the sound of gunfire. That’s why the cavalry always left them with the pack train and rode horses into battle.
It will be interesting to see how the decedents of this robot look in 20 years. Look at pictures of early tanks to see how crude this robot might be compared to what it might become.
These things will evolve into the Army’s version of the predator drone.
Francis the Talking Predator?
Bill S – Sure, Earth’s vertebrates don’t have the right skeletal structure for additional limbs. That doesn’t mean it would have been impossible for vertebrates to have 6 limbs if evolution had gone that way.
There are a fair number of things like that in biology – things about body structure, now virtually set in stone, that are basically a matter of chance. Digit number, for example; polydactylic cats, for example, do just fine.
Wrong link. That’s the Wiley Coyote link. Delete this comment.
Think you meant this link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/robots/the-day-the-marines-met-their-robotic-mule#slide-1
It’s interesting seeing people who wonder why we don’t just use regular mules. I guess it shows how out of touch with nature and farm animals most folks are. Biological mules need constant maintenance every day. They need food, water, shelter. They generate lots of waste. And they’re not storable. This is especially bad for longer duration operations. Using a mule to take supplies deep into the mountains, or where have you, for 3 months then be able to move to the next location is a mule that needs to be fed for 3 months, so you need to bring 3 months of food for the mule, which probably requires more mules, and so on. With a robot you just turn it off when not in use.
Even in mountains you can find food and water for pack animals. Where do you imagine they shelter themselves in the wild? The key element is that they are quiet. …and will take themselves out of a firefight without the need for orders.
It is interesting that the mule and robot are about equal mass and payload ability.
On the other hand, real mules are cheaper, can live off the land, are somewhat self repairing, and you can eat them if you run out of food. Sort of like Marines, but smarter.
Real Mules also flee from the sound of gunfire and incoming artillery. Robo-Mule don’t give a shit.
In real operational situations a real mule would I think be more useful than the LS3, but given a few years of development to make the mechanical mule quieter, lighter, faster and more nimble, steel (or advanced composite materials) will out perform flesh.
It appears they developed this in a mindset of replicating a quadruped. But instead of just replacing a mule with a mechanical mule, they should have based their robot-carrier on the ant. Ants carry 10-50 times their weight, move fast and climb walls. And oh yeah, they can dig holes. Think that would be a handy feature in a military environment?
Perhaps they could use them?
Well, if we are going to go there, consider this one where army ants kill everything in their path: The Naked Jungle. Now imagine, that with the advent of nanotechnology, the “ants” are constructed of diamond with supercomputer brains. And they are heading your way…
“they should have based their robot-carrier on the ant.”
Agreed, something with a wide flat back that’s easy to load or ride on, think in terms of a small Jeep with 6 legs.
And quiet.
The machine should be a hybrid that can run silently off the batteries when necessary. They would recharge the batteries and augment the performance with the gasoline/diesel engine when they can.
The more you complicate the transmission the less weight it can carry.
Ants’ strength/weight ratio is a function of their size, not their design. Weight scales with volume whereas strength scales with length or cross-sectional area. An ant the size of these mules wouldn’t be able to carry that much more weight.
Strength to weight may be comparable. But a six-legged machine would not fall over like this one did because it stuck one of its legs in a hole.
Ants’ strength/weight ratio is a function of their size, not their design. Weight scales with volume whereas strength scales with length or cross-sectional area. An ant the size of these mules wouldn’t be able to carry that much more weight.
Keep in mind the strength of the materials the unit is built from, if bone was 10 times as strong as it is, animals the size of elephants could be the shape of leopards, and with the leopard agility. If the materials legged vehicles are built from are 10 times as strong as bone, to copy the movement of animals, we should take full advantage of the greater material strength and look to copy the design of animals a fraction of the size of our vehicle.
But that would apply to quadrupeds, too. No need for six legs. It might provide more flexibility, but it would also be harder to program.
Agree, but with the extra legs you get redundancy, surer footing, and I expect a greater ability to get over obstacles – 2 legs reaching over to get a purchase with the other 4 legs still supporting the weight.
Is the quadruped design the best design for larger animals, or just an accident of evolution that vertebrate life on Earth’s been stuck with?
Is the quadruped design the best design for larger animals, or just an accident of evolution that vertebrate life on Earth’s been stuck with?
Vertebrates don’t have the skeletal structure for additional limbs. But it is an interesting question as to why Arthropods are typically smaller animals. Evolutionary pressures drove, or allowed, dinosaurs to become gigantic. Are there any examples of insects or spiders, say, the size of a dog, let alone that of a mule? BTW, if there are, please tell me where, because I want to make sure I never go there.
The really big insects were around when the O2 content of the atmosphere was much higher. The problem isn’t the number of legs, but the respiratory/circulatory system.
One of the early man-sized walking machines was six-legged; they made that choice because it was easier to program a six-legged walker (plant three legs, move the other three forward, plant them, move the original three forward). I suspect that a six-legged machine would be half again as heavy as a four-legged machine that could carry the same load at the same speed, but have no evidence to support that.
You can’t take mules into combat. They run away at the sound of gunfire. That’s why the cavalry always left them with the pack train and rode horses into battle.
It will be interesting to see how the decedents of this robot look in 20 years. Look at pictures of early tanks to see how crude this robot might be compared to what it might become.
These things will evolve into the Army’s version of the predator drone.
Francis the Talking Predator?
Bill S – Sure, Earth’s vertebrates don’t have the right skeletal structure for additional limbs. That doesn’t mean it would have been impossible for vertebrates to have 6 limbs if evolution had gone that way.
There are a fair number of things like that in biology – things about body structure, now virtually set in stone, that are basically a matter of chance. Digit number, for example; polydactylic cats, for example, do just fine.