Strut Your Stuff

One of the things which really makes me proud to be from Boston is the fact the city is a leader in health and human services. Between all the schools and hospitals in the area it is usually a pretty good bet that if a company has made a medical breakthrough, someone from the city has had a hand in it. Now, normally I am very proud when I hear that an invention which could change the world was developed in Boston. People always complain about their hometowns but at the end of the day it is like a member of your family - you are allowed to talk about how much they frustrate you but no one from outside your family is allowed to say one bad word about them. Thus, my official position is that everything from Boston is great, even when that clearly isn't the case. Occasionally this sense of community pride backfires, especially when I find myself defending things I would loathe if they were from any other city (Dane Cook springs to mind), but I always try and keep those feelings to myself. Still, even I may have reached the breaking point this week when I learned that there was a new robot being developed in Boston which runs like a jungle cat and when it is finally completed should be able to travel at speeds near 30 mph, faster than Usain Bolt. I have to tell you, that doesn't seem like a very bright idea.

Of course, using the movements of an animal in robotics is nothing new. Evolution has done a wonderful job of making sure most animals move in the most efficient manner possible, so copying those movements makes a tremendous amount of sense. Just a few weeks ago there was a news item that NASA is developing robots for its next Mars mission which would deploy from the main rover and slither around the surface like snakes, meaning they could go to smaller, tighter spaces where the main machine could not. I have no doubt this new cat-like technology is being developed for the same reason. It certainly would have an easier time than the traditional method of having a robot with a couple of tracks along the bottom, I just don't know why it needs to move so fast. Honestly, has anyone ever seen a robot plodding along and thought, "You know what would be great? If that lifeless piece of metal could come at me much faster than I would ever be able to get out of its way should something malfunction." I'm all for copying the graceful way animals move in the wild, I am just not sure the speed at which they do so needs to be duplicated by machines. The simple fact of the matter is this - if you ever need a robot to get someplace that quickly I would assume the bigger issue is figuring out how you are going to get away from that place even faster.