DARPA Begin Testing Mule Robot On The Battlefield

Via: Computerworld It looks like a bull, trots at the speed of a wolf and carries equipment like a pack mule, but does it have a place on the battlefield of the future? Researchers  are conducting a two-year study of a robot that promises to lighten the load that soldiers must carry and they gave it a high-profile demonstration in September.  The four-legged robot, developed by the U.S. government-funded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Boston Dynamics, is part of DARPA's Legged Squad Support System (LS3) program, and is packed with technology. It's a development on Big Dog, a robot platform developed by Boston Dynamics several years ago.  As warfare gets more high tech, soldiers are being asked to carry more gear -- as much as 45 kilograms, according to the U.S. military -- and that can slow them down, bring on injuries or hasten the onset of fatigue. So the U.S. Army and DARPA have made physical overburden an important focus of their technology research. Human Hunting Robots