Link: Big Dog Robot by larvalsubjects

http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/big-dog-robot/

…the advantage of legged robots such as this is that they can go just about anywhere. Where robots that use wheels and treads get bogged down in mud and rocky terrain, legged robots are able to tackle just about any terrain. Just think about the billy goat, for example. Even billy goats that are a few days old are able to climb mountainous terrain with little trouble. The remarkable thing about Big Dog is just how biological its movements look. You get a sense of this when you watch it slipping on the ice in the film above, but the footage I saw yesterday was even more remarkable. There researchers kicked the robot from the side as it was walking and the manner in which it recovered was eerily organic.

The interpretation of ‘biological’ traits as a sign of superior design or intelligence, is somewhat anthropocentric but completely natural. The robot in the video displays charateristics which we expect to see in animal quadrapeds, which is a big part of the ‘wow’ factor of the video.

More interesting to us as in the context of algorithms is the video in the same post describing machine learning. Any comments on that video?