The four-legged military robot AlphaDog grows and develops

Back in September of this year, it was known that the four-legged walking robot LS3, also known as AlphaDog, received a lot of upgrades that gave it new features and functions. And since the fall, the robot has participated in an extensive field test program in which, in addition to representatives of the Boston Dynamics company, the American military also actively participated, and below is a video taken during these tests, which clearly shows us some new capabilities of the LS3 robot.



Let me remind you that the LS3 robot is created as a kind of cargo “vehicle” capable of completely independently moving through difficult and rough terrain and which can carry 180 kg of cargo over a distance of more than 30 kilometers within 24 hours. The robot should be able to do all this completely independently, without requiring any human intervention in automatic mode. This will allow soldiers not to be distracted by the control of the robot and concentrate as much as possible on the performance of the main task.



To implement the above requirements, the LS3 robot learned to move, constantly following a certain person at a given distance. In order to control the robot, you no longer need to press the buttons and perform other actions, because AlphaDog is able to recognize and execute ten different voice commands, such as “follow me”, “stand”, “sit”, “stand "," Turn around "and other similar teams. In addition, the AlphaDog robot perfectly perceives and executes more complex commands, consisting of a combination of several simple voice commands.

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Here are some of the other new features of AlphaDog.

- In addition to voice control, the LS3 robot was able to detect thickets and evaluate their permeability, because it can move along a shrub whose height does not exceed 1.5 meters;

- In addition to the mode of following the person and following a predetermined route using the GPS system, the robot can be set to the direction, distance and he will reach the given point on his own;

- Now the AlphaDog robot can successfully move independently in zero visibility conditions, using the control points set on the GPS route for movement;

- The noise level emitted by the robot is reduced to 70 decibels, which is equivalent to the noise level produced by a vacuum cleaner or a car.







Over the next two years, AlphaDog will be involved in a series of field trials that will take place every two to three months. As these tests progressed, new functions and capabilities will be added to the robot, and the operation of all its functions in various meteorological conditions and in different types of terrain will be checked.