FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Meet the Six-Legged Monster That You Can Drive

I grew up in rural Northern California, and up in those parts you see a lot of trucks. Really BIG trucks. Never mind that the smaller, lighter 4x4s I drove -- a Pathfinder, a Trooper -- were better at racing around orchards and fields Dukes of Hazzard...

I grew up in rural Northern California, and up in those parts you see a lot of trucks. Really BIG trucks. Never mind that the smaller, lighter 4×4s I drove — a Pathfinder, a Trooper — were better at racing around orchards and fields Dukes of Hazzard style, and forget that those rides get gas mileage in the low single digits. To some folks, all that matters is that trucks look bad ass, like they could just smash through and over anything. It’s accepting impracticality for the sake of the capability of inducing sheer, awesome terror, which is why we find ourselves staring at this apocalyptic hexapod.

Advertisement

It’s appropriately called Stompy, and it’s being built by a team of instructors and students at Massachusetts robotics lab Artisan’s Asylum. Pretty epic build for a summer course, right? Well, it all makes sense when you learn that the three instructors, Gui Cavalcanti, Dan Cody, and James Whong, have all passed through Boston Dynamics, one of America’s brightest hotspots for weird, freaky robotics.

Via the Stompy site.

Wired has the scoop on the new project:

You might know Cavalcanti from his previous work on AlphaDog, the DARPA-funded, four-legged robot designed to assist soldiers by carrying up to 400 pounds for around 20 miles. Cavalcanti has since left Boston Dynamics to work at the Asylum full time, and Stompy is the first class he's organized. "We always wanted to design robots," Cavalcanti told Wired, "but they take a lot of time, effort and money." So Cavalcanti and his coconspirators hatched a plan: create a working leg and develop a smaller prototype that can be scaled up. Once they've produced a proof of concept, "we'll figure out a bill of materials and Kickstart it," as the current budget only pays for, "the powerplant, core training leg and the overhead," according to Cavalcanti.

A two-seater than can walk over cars? Where can I buy one? This thing sounds amazing, although I’m wondering if it will come with accessories. It’s going to need a little extra-oomph to compete with the Timberjack Walking Machine — which I rated as Indescribably Nightmarish in a roundup of gnarly logging gear — in the race for the ultimate insect-inspired transport for supervillains. Which, my friends, is a contest I’d desperately like to judge for.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @drderekmead.

Connections: