DARPA's TerminatorBot

It's unclear why DARPA would name a robot that's supposed to rescue people from disaster "TerminatorBot" other than the fact that robots need badass names as a matter of course. Its nickname is "CRAWLER," which stands for Cylindrical Robot for Autonomous Walking and Lifting during Emergency Response (awww, ain't acronyms cute?) — named for its special arms that give it the ability to crawl over debris by dragging its body along over rough terrain. A future version of this bot will supposedly have the ability to shimmy down ropes, which is pretty amazing and yet… kinda creepy.

[Via The Raw Feed]

[MaTeng @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Might be called terminatorbot for the awsome scene in T2 where the last remains of an almost terminated terminator is dragged by a robot hand which actually looked quite a bit like this one....

[Sheldon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

It was indeed for those reasons MaTeng (have a look at the short web site)
Either Barb was being deliberately slow to get people to read their website or it was missed by all those who did read their website

[Tom Chiverton @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

1) and 2).

Read the page. They said "Inspired by the final scene of the original Terminator movie". i.e. the terminator dragging it's torso after Sarah using only it's arms.

Can no one read ?

[ixalon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

My first reaction was "What's a Replicator from SG-1 doing on Engadget?"

[Jayson Elliot @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

I can't read.

What did you just say?

[Justin Gehring @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Hey, I know one of the professors that worked on this: Richard M. Voyles. He's a professor at the U of M and teaching Artificial Intelligence. Very cool guy, has lots of very cool robots that you can see demos of and play with if you ask. The terminator bot was kinda cool when he talked about it. Part of me wants to go back for my Masters in computer science just so I can work with Voyles and Papanikolopoulos again. (say that name 3 times fast).

[WOV @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

"Oh, hello, robot! Thank you for finding me in this collapsed Chick-Fil-A!"
"Beep. Whirr."
"Can you get me out?"
"Whirr."
"Oh. So, no. I guess they'll need a technical rescue confined space team, huh?"
"wheep."
"With the air rams and the hydraulic equipment and the special dogs, right. Huh. Do you want one of these nuggets?"
"boop."
"Ok. So I guess it would have actually made more sense to just use one of those dogs to find me, since they can detect me from about 100 feet away, outside the wreckage, almost instantaneously, and point directly to where I am, and are guaranteed to work. Rather than just crawling through the insanely complex and unpredictable internal structure of a collapse at 1 mph, with no external reference of where you are."
"Shuffle."
"I guess that for as often as confined space search and rescue occurs, that does probably make a lot more sense than some ostensible search and rescue bot of the type that's never been finished or used or really served any purpose other than greasing a DARPA grant application."
"Bloop."
"Oh, yeah, ha. Grease. That is ironic. I dunno, I was just pulling out the fry basket."
"Guilty look"
"Oh my God. This is part of the grant application, isn't it? You bastards. You beautiful bastards. I just had to work in the Pentagon City Chick-Fil-A."

[Zach @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

HAHA WOV! good stuff.

[CH @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Put some C4 on this little guy and he really would become a Terminator.

[andy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:24AM]

Anyone else reminded of the scene from Red Dwarf where Kryten's severed hand goes for help?

alternatively:

I can just see Tom Selleck on a half built office block fighting off dozens of these things, and Gene Simmons...