Founded in 2015, Ghost Robotics has made a name for itself with its innovative quadruped robots, particularly the Vision 60. This midsize, dog-like ground drone is tailored for navigating unstructured urban and natural environments.
Equipped with Nvidia's Xavier chip, the Vision 60 boasts impressive specifications, including a 3-hour maximum run time, a payload capacity of 22 pounds (10 kg), and a top speed of 10 feet per second (three meters per second).
Fans of Black Mirror: Metalhead may think that the Unitree A1 Robot Dog is uncomfortably close to this little guy:
Fans of Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel Snow Crash may recall the Rat Thing:
The body is Rottweiler-sized, segmented into overlapping hard plates like those of a rhinoceros. The legs are long, curled way up to deliver power, like a cheetah's.
The body converges to a sharp nose. In the front it bends down sharply, and there is a black canopy, raked sharply like the windshield of a fighter plane. If the Rat Thing has eyes, this is where it looks out.
(Read more about Stephenson's Rat Thing)
As far as I know, the first reference to a "robot dog" is in The Iron World (1939) by Otis Adelbert Kline:
“Suppose you leave that to me. I have demonstrated it to my own satisfaction. I have transferred the ego of a dog to a synthetic dog brain in the skull case of a robot dog. Behold...”
“A robot dog!”
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/5/2023)
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