Hasta La Ideas

If I told you I had the following vision: “I saw a tall David Cross hiking through the woods and being followed by a horse that was actually a robot,” it would sound like I had 1) Eaten spicy food before bedtime, 2) watched Arrested Development, Seabiscuit and Short Circuit then 3) went to bed and had one of those combination-of-my-day nightmares. But no, it’s actual DARPA footage of my old nemesis Boston Dynamics’ latest LS3 robot development program advances.

Working together with the U.S. Marine Corps’ Warfighting Laboratory, they’re now showing actual, practical applications for their creepy and mesmerizing quadropedal robots: They’ve created a pack animal that follows you around.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “Soldier, keep that head on a swivel!” If that wasn’t creepy enough, I do not enjoy how the machine, after falling down around 2:15 in the video, gets back to its feet and freezes in place. It is as if it’s feeling ashamed of its blunder and is processing actual emotions.

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