Re:Boston Dynamics shop: Spot Explorer
by Animats on Tuesday June 16, 2020 @05:57PM
(#23544762)
They had a horse sized payload with the Legged Squad Support system.[1] It worked, but the Marines tried it and it wasn't useful enough. They ended up going with a small ATV for supplies.
(Too noisy, too. A subcontractor was supposed to produce a small, quiet Diesel to power a generator and hydraulic pump, but that never happened. Probably because a small, quiet Diesel is hard. The US military runs on one fuel, JP-8, which works in both aircraft and Diesel engines, so to deploy this, it had to run on JP-8)
(Too noisy, too. A subcontractor was supposed to produce a small, quiet Diesel to power a generator and hydraulic pump, but that never happened. Probably because a small, quiet Diesel is hard. The US military runs on one fuel, JP-8, which works in both aircraft and Diesel engines, so to deploy this, it had to run on JP-8)
[1] https://youtu.be/LIaXEMOhihw