Buck Rogers

We all used to chuckle at the robots depicted on television sci-fi shows. Buck Rogers’ sidekick, Twiki (”A-beedy-beedy-beedy-beedy… Nice going, Buck!”), and Daggit the robot dog on Battlestar Galactica. These were outcroppings of C3PO and R2D2, who in a twisted kind of way were descendents of the positively hilarious Robot from Lost In Space.

Kids were led to believe that this was the future we had to look forward to. Well kids, we’re close…

As soon as my teenager heads off to college I’m getting one of those robots that will mow my lawn. I have also promised my wife a “Roomba” robotic vacuum cleaner as soon as the budget will allow it. Those, plus an army of cute but ultimately just entertaining robot dogs, are the ways that robots are touching our lives today. That is about to change.

Hop on YouTube.com and check out the cute (ha!) little toy Boston Dynamics has in prototype form nicknamed ‘Big Dog’. It’s a four-legged, autonomous robot that can climb hills; navigate snow, ice, sand, gravel, and uneven rock surfaces; hop over reasonably-sized obstacles and chasms; and do all of this with a payload of over 300 pounds. It has self-leveling gyroscope (I assume) technology such that when you roundhouse kick the thing, it stumbles in reaction to the force, but then regains its balance (!!!) and keeps on heading towards its intended destination.

There is ‘Little Dog’ too, a less impressive but still worthy descendent. There is additional video of a scorpion-like device about a foot across that climbs smooth vertical surfaces. Hello…

In real-world (actually, extra-terrestrial) action at this moment is Dextre, a robot that now lives on the exterior shell of the International Space Stations. Those crazy Canadians who brought us the robotic arm that is used in the Space Shuttle cargo bay developed this little sucker, who after a small power problem was resolved, was put through its paces just days ago by the Endeavor crew who delivered him to his new home orbiting the earth. There he will live, carefully crawling around the outside of the Station, at first assisting astronauts performing space walks.

But the day will come when he and perhaps some yet-to-be-delivered robotic colleagues can perform safety checks and routine maintenance on the Station. This will all but eliminate the need for dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive space walks using living, breathing astronauts. Depending Dextre’s success at such duties, he may see the list of tasks performed by him and his brethren expanded in the future.

And that’s why advances like this are important. It’s not the first step that you can see that is mesmerizing, it’s the next ninety-nine that you can’t see.

Take Big Dog. Right now this is a robotic mule. It was developed with a grant from the Defense Department, so Big Dog itself will see use as a way to haul heavy equipment and supplies into remote areas quietly. To get an artillery unit onto the side of a mountain with a 30-degree slope: nine guys with a dozen Big Dogs set off at dusk, and by morning you have an emplacement that takes some Taliban outpost completely by surprise. Additional uses could be search and rescue, counter-terrorism, bomb retrieval and neutralization, and just plain old hauling stuff over rough terrain. Plus, arm the thing and give it some “vision”, and you’ve got a pretty bad-ass way to clear a house of bad guys without endangering soldiers or police.

But then think non-military. We have the Segway which balances on two wheels when powered up; Big Dog could be turned into a two-legged device very easily. So then that raises the possibility of it becoming a very practical, very functional set of legs for a double-amputee. Miniaturize the thing to a unit 8 inches tall and it becomes something very useful in small mine shafts, particularly in emergencies. I’m sure if I sat here for more than thirty seconds I could come up with a dozen of them.

And what about Dextre? Well, we are approaching the day when the Space Elevator will be a reality. See my related post on that topic here. So when you have the ability to move large amounts of cargo to low-earth orbit, what do you do with it? Well, you have to field a team of space-walking human workers to move it, inventory it, and put it to some use. But if you have a team of Dextres instead, that team of human workers becomes reduced to a few operators and supervisors. The robots can retrieve and inventory your supplies, then scramble over whatever structure you’re building, performing perhaps a single task before moving on, just like assembly line workers, free of the constraints of environment suits or oxygen supplies. The work goes faster, cheaper, and safer.

That scorpion thing that scales vertical surfaces? I envision a team of window-washing scorpions living on the side of skyscrapers and running on a constant schedule (except when it rains). Or else single-seat rescue vehicles dispatched during a high-rise fire to get people out of the building safely. Scale the building, find an open window (or smash one out), take on one person and lower them to the ground with a retractable basket on heavy-duty cables. Then yank the basket back up and go again until everyone is down, then go to another floor.

Once the physical limitations are breached, once the scaling or balancing or crawling has been achieved, the tasks these critters perform are butt-simple computer programming. Those limitations are about to go bye-bye, which means you will be seeing commercial applications appear very soon. As with any technology, when mass production is engaged prices will come down. So I fully expect to see some of these neat little gadgets influencing our lives before I log out for good. Certainly my kids will.

Just remember, there was a day when everyone thought it was impossible to have a phone that you carried around in your pocket and would work anywhere you went. Now look at us. Buck Rogers, indeed.