DARPA's AlphaDog robot pack mule begins real world testing
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
So this thing demonstrates a vehicle that can navigate completely unimproved terrain carrying a useful load. In battlefields like Afghanistan there is a huge challenge getting troops resupplied (this is true in any war of course). Helicopters and other air drop means (the robotic parachutes are pretty cool) require that your troops break cover to recover their goods, these things could walk into camp where you are under cover drop off supplies.
So one tactician might air drop these things out of a plane at a safe altitude and have them land within a couple of miles of the targeted base. The vehicle starts up, and walks over to the base to drop off the supplies. It could conceivably walk back out and, using a helium balloon, send up a retrieval cable that would let a helicopter come and pull it out of there.
Thats a pretty cool capability. And in peace time if this thing could walk into a city ravaged by an earth quake and drop off supplies, that would be cool. Or carry a clean up device through a nuclear contaminated forest, etc etc. The key is 'unimproved terrain' and '400 lbs for 20 miles'.
[1] http://military.discovery.com/convergence/weaponology/episod...
Cool tech, but we've got a ways to go, people.
Tin-foil-hat response: Can't strap guns to a camel and have it shoot things. The progression from unmanned tech used for non-combat purposes to combat seems likely. Predator drones used to be used for surveillance and did not have hellfire missiles strapped to them.
Also, it's 20 miles at troop walking speed, not 20 miles at 65 miles an hour.
But I think it's safe to say that this isn't going to be used just for carrying stuff. They're aiming to ultimately weaponize it and use the new tech to create other cool stuff.
Let's say you want to have the capability of offloading 100lbs of equipment (say, 40 lbs of food, about 1500 rounds of ammunition, and about 20 lbs of miscellaneous other equipment) from soldiers so they can fight more effectively and for longer (up to a month or so), and you want to have a standing ability to be able to do this for up to 2,000 soldiers at any given time.
This means you need to buy 500 "alpha dogs" and then keep them in storage somewhere until needed.
Or it means you need to buy about 1,000 camels. Which require about 30-40 lbs of food and water a day, and produce as much urine and manure per day as well. That's five thousand tons of food and water a year, and five thousand tons of urine and manure a year. You need to build shelter to house them and you need to hire people to take care of them. You need to treat them when they are injured, you need to replace them when they are too injured to work or when they die. You need to train them. And they probably won't survive spending a month without food and water, even camels. In contrast, a robotic pack mule left without supplies for a month is merely inactive and can be retrieved and refueled.
Also, horses, mules, and camels are fragile. Far more fragile than humans under extreme conditions.
Camels don't even need to eat every day. They eat pretty much anything that grows in the desert. It looks like they can eat "up to" 10 lb/day. Being a desert animal, the camel has a exceptionally efficient kidneys, so they don't need to urinate a lot.
There's a reason people have used camels for thousands of years in the desert. In the Middle East healthy camel costs around $1000. That cost must include food, breeding, training, etc. It's hard to imagine ever getting the price of an Alpha Dog down to that level.
I also have a hard time believing that a camel is less resilient than a human being in its native environment.
Go and find me another robot that can climb rough terrain hills autonomously and I'll say that the cost is unjustified.
> Camels are much vulnerable from enemy fire than metal&plastic. Disagree. I'm quite sure if you shot one of these robots, it would stop working.
> It is much harder to silence a Camel. Disagree; under normal circumstances a camel makes about as much noise as a soldier walking, whereas this thing makes much more noise via its gas generator. This can only be silenced by going all electric, which given the poor energy density of current battery technology, is not feasible.
> Camels can't negotiate rough terrain. I am not a camel expert but I believe they can walk over terrain at least as rough as this robot.
> Camels need to be fed. Military logistics is tuned around delivering fuel, ammo and parts, not hay.
Military logistics is also tuned around delivering provisions, which are pretty similar to hay. Anyway, a cubic meter is a cubic meter.
> Camels get sick, scared, injured, run away, etc. This is the strongest advantage over a camel: precise control. You can't program a camel. However, the other points are not really big wins for the robot.
OK, anyone could predict that. Let's take it a few steps further:
- military bases are not low-noise environments
- "come here" is a great command, but if there's no authentication, it's a hazard
- in the other direction, just how quiet is the gasoline engine on an AlphaDog? Loud enough to give away your position, relative to the trudge of a squad's worth of boots on the ground?
If you're in the mountains of, say, Afghanistan, it's really hard to be resupplied. But with something like this you can take hundreds of pounds of food, ammunition, etc. with you into very rugged, unimproved terrain. Which allows you to reduce the load on individual soldiers, increase the length of time deployed soldiers can fight effectively, etc.