Walking vehicles, legged machines need more maturation before they can come into their own in Army inventory

ADELPHI, Md. – New work from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md., suggests that while walking vehicles have made little progress so far, in the future they may stand tall beside other military vehicles. Even walking tanks may not be impossible. Forbes reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

8 July 2021 -- Pentagon leaders have looked at walkers before, perhaps most famously with the Boston Dynamics BigDog, a quadruped robot made famous by YouTube videos that was intended to be a robotic load carrier for foot soldiers.

While it was popular with viewers, however, BigDog’s successor LS3 was deemed too noisy to use in the field and the program was discontinued in 2015. Still, the past may not be a good guide.

“Legged machines are by no means doomed,” says Alexander Kott of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), lead researcher on a new project. “This technology needs more maturation, and with maturation will likely come better tradeoffs between adaptability and efficiency.”

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John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics