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Comment by ckastner | Hacker News Reader

I thought of that example, too, but thought that it had been cancelled as unsuccessful.

Turns out it was cancelled for mainly other reasons. Quoting [1]: "By late 2015, the Marines had put the LS3 into storage because of limitations with the robot including loud noise, challenges in repairing it if it breaks, and how to integrate it into a traditional Marine patrol"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legged_Squad_Support_System

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Turns out the marines don't really need a loud, expensive, fragile machine to haul their gear when they can just use a quad bike.

Robots are awesome but integrating practical robotics with mission critical operations is really really hard, especially because you're automatically competing with battle-tested best in class solutions.

Actually turns out Boston Dynamics had a good idea and over-engineered it. LM built a cheaper, wheeled, semi-autonomous troop support vehicle that ended up selling pretty well.

https://defense-update.com/20070529_smss.html

That thing looks an awful lot like a quad bike with two extra wheels.

AKA a "6 Wheeler". At least that's what we called them when I was kid. They use differential steering, which makes them a good fit for automation. Don't have to worry about turning a steering column, just shift the power around which the off the shelf ATV already handles.

Yep, there were ads for them in the back of Popular Science magazine. They were fully amphibious too and could float.

Don't get me wrong, I love my fellow kinematically-complicated meatbags but I do kind of think wheels win this round.

There are still a couple of companies that sell 6WD (and 8WD) vehicles like these - Argo is one of them (and that machine up-thread looks like they just strapped some stuff to one of those):

https://argoxtv.com/

The other kind of "extreme off-road differential steered" ATV that people both want (and then seemingly want to sell soon after - almost like a boat) is the Russian Sherp:

https://sherpatv.com/

I'd love to have one of those - but they are a bit out of my budget (and my wife would probably divorce me if I brought one home, even if I could afford it).

I love the Sherp! Also the roughly-equivalent bike version: https://canadamotoguide.com/2016/08/03/russian-2wd-bike-is-a...

yeah basically, but with no driver. That was my point about over-engineering: the army didn't want an expensive re-invention of off road vehicles, just existing technology tailored to their needs.

BD has a long term vision for robotics and I'm not suggesting that they should stop working towards that. Just making the point that it's possible to create robust solutions using simpler robotics even in complex environments.

Could you explain what you mean by "selling pretty well"?

It seems they shipped a few prototypes…

The first four block 1 varients deployed to Afghanistan were pretty widely publicized. After that you can find public references to test events throughout the 2010s, the manufacturing of a few block 2 varients, and stated interest from more than one agency. But no there aren't a lot of hard numbers to be found in a Google search. Presumably you could learn more by looking through the actual contracts, but that takes some time and effort.

For a completely new military program, that's close to your best case scenario. Most new programs get dropped after the first prototype.

https://www.auvsi.org/arms-armed-and-armor-lockheed-martin-p...

I saw that Lockheed was not selected by the Army for their next round.

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2017/12/14/four-companies-a...

I guess I don't see delivering prototypes as selling well, but arguing opinions is boring, so whatever.

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