A new video has just been released showing some of the capabilities of Big Dog, a robot designed by Boston Dynamics and funded by DARPA for military applications:



The thing is pretty impressive, if a little creepy. It's interesting how the joints for both sets of legs point inward, so that instead of moving like a regular quadruped, it actually moves like two bipeds facing each other, like two guys carrying a sofa. I'm sure this hurts its speed, but probably makes it a lot more stable.

Also, I guess the software used to run this thing is proprietary. I can't seem to find any information on the algorithms they use.

It's pretty darn cool, though.