The Noble Lie

Mark at Parallelnormal linked a video which gives us a glimpse of the robotic future of humping your pack through the bush. Big Dog is a smart robot that can carry around 350 lbs of gear and can stay on its feet through rough terrain and being jostled around. He's not very stealthy though -- sounds like a swarm of hornets coming through.

Developed at Boston Dynamics, for DARPA. We'll be seeing a lot more of this stuff... The US Military's stated goal is to be 50 percent robotic by 2015.

Big Dog demo

Big Dog "beta test" (haha)