Realistic response: a camel requires that someone is always with it, telling it where to go. This thing can just be told to go 5 miles in a direction without supervision and will maybe reliably get there. It can also go through stuff that's too toxic for a camel/human being.

Tin-foil-hat response: Can't strap guns to a camel and have it shoot things. The progression from unmanned tech used for non-combat purposes to combat seems likely. Predator drones used to be used for surveillance and did not have hellfire missiles strapped to them.

That kinda suggests making an automated cameldriver instead. Of course that's much easier to make fun of.

It is much harder to refine, expand, and mass produce camels. Camels manufacturing time is much longer. Camels are much vulnerable from enemy fire than metal&plastic. Camels don't have night vision. It is much harder to silence a Camel. Camels can't negotiate rough terrain. Camels need to be fed. Military logistics is tuned around delivering fuel, ammo and parts, not hay. Camels get sick, scared, injured, run away, etc. Camels spit.

I think there are problems with many of your points.

> Camels are much vulnerable from enemy fire than metal&plastic. Disagree. I'm quite sure if you shot one of these robots, it would stop working.

> It is much harder to silence a Camel. Disagree; under normal circumstances a camel makes about as much noise as a soldier walking, whereas this thing makes much more noise via its gas generator. This can only be silenced by going all electric, which given the poor energy density of current battery technology, is not feasible.

> Camels can't negotiate rough terrain. I am not a camel expert but I believe they can walk over terrain at least as rough as this robot.

> Camels need to be fed. Military logistics is tuned around delivering fuel, ammo and parts, not hay.

Military logistics is also tuned around delivering provisions, which are pretty similar to hay. Anyway, a cubic meter is a cubic meter.

> Camels get sick, scared, injured, run away, etc. This is the strongest advantage over a camel: precise control. You can't program a camel. However, the other points are not really big wins for the robot.

Not really, this stuff follows a curve like Moore's Law. Take the first DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous cars. No one finished, or came even close. A year later, several cars finished. Progress will accelerate.

Energy density and materials don't follow a Moore's Law curve. In 10 years, a walker this size will have similar carrying capacity and range.

It's gasoline powered, not battery powered. It may not be magical fairy dust, but it's not a bad fuel. It's not "20 miles, then plug it in for thirty hours", it's "20 miles, then pour another gallon in".

Also, it's 20 miles at troop walking speed, not 20 miles at 65 miles an hour.

To be fair, they've been working on BigDog since 2005. Very fun to watch their progress but it's not exponential.

Yeah. As I was watching the video, I kept thinking "why not just use a horse?".

But I think it's safe to say that this isn't going to be used just for carrying stuff. They're aiming to ultimately weaponize it and use the new tech to create other cool stuff.

Horses and camels require food, shelter, and care.

Let's say you want to have the capability of offloading 100lbs of equipment (say, 40 lbs of food, about 1500 rounds of ammunition, and about 20 lbs of miscellaneous other equipment) from soldiers so they can fight more effectively and for longer (up to a month or so), and you want to have a standing ability to be able to do this for up to 2,000 soldiers at any given time.

This means you need to buy 500 "alpha dogs" and then keep them in storage somewhere until needed.

Or it means you need to buy about 1,000 camels. Which require about 30-40 lbs of food and water a day, and produce as much urine and manure per day as well. That's five thousand tons of food and water a year, and five thousand tons of urine and manure a year. You need to build shelter to house them and you need to hire people to take care of them. You need to treat them when they are injured, you need to replace them when they are too injured to work or when they die. You need to train them. And they probably won't survive spending a month without food and water, even camels. In contrast, a robotic pack mule left without supplies for a month is merely inactive and can be retrieved and refueled.

Also, horses, mules, and camels are fragile. Far more fragile than humans under extreme conditions.

Well, camels can carry twice as much as the Alpha Dog, so you'd actually need 250 camels.

Camels don't even need to eat every day. They eat pretty much anything that grows in the desert. It looks like they can eat "up to" 10 lb/day. Being a desert animal, the camel has a exceptionally efficient kidneys, so they don't need to urinate a lot.

There's a reason people have used camels for thousands of years in the desert. In the Middle East healthy camel costs around $1000. That cost must include food, breeding, training, etc. It's hard to imagine ever getting the price of an Alpha Dog down to that level.

I also have a hard time believing that a camel is less resilient than a human being in its native environment.

Well, it may indeed be worse than a camel in nearly every respect. But if it's good enough to be widely used, it will also get widely tested, which may allow a next generation item which would be considerably better than a camel.

The research version has these problems.

Go and find me another robot that can climb rough terrain hills autonomously and I'll say that the cost is unjustified.