121 karma · joined January 24, 2019
Ex: http://www.simonstalenhag.se/bilderbig/by_procession_1920.jp...
Bonus: when catastrophic hydraulic leaks inevitably occurred and sprayed hot hydraulic fluid over the hot exhaust, you would be rewarded with the lovely smell of a deep fryer!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#NIF...
[1] https://www.army.mil/article/125315/darpas_warrior_web_proje... (the first image is of BD's system; you can just make out "BOST" around the center of the left thigh)
[2] https://www.globenewswire.com/fr/news-release/2014/10/02/670...
https://www.governing.com/now/taking-the-commuter-out-of-ame...
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29634/trump-tweets-int...
Amusingly (but perhaps not surprisingly), British imperialism briefly waded into this dispute as well:
> Following British attempts to control the seaway in the late 1830s, the Times Journal, published in London in 1840, referred to the Persian Gulf as the "Britain Sea", but this name was never used in any other context.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute
This was done primarily to increase the likelihood that the vehicle would land on all four wheels, in order to maximize energy dissipation by the wheels on landing and thus minimize shock seen by the body. As a secondary benefit, footage from the onboard camera stood a chance to be usable during a hop, instead of being a blurry mess. Lots of great details in their patent filing for the robot[2].
Source: I helped design this robot
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo [2]: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8849451B2/
When they got back into the hardware business in the early 2000's, those projects were primarily funded by DARPA/DOD contracts, but the steady income stream provided by e.g. DI-Guy helped fill the gaps between contracts, allowing them to run a business that, though lean, stayed in the black. Eventually, as a part of the Google acquisition, DI-Guy was divested to VT MAK, another local company in the modeling/sim software business [2].
Source: former employee that worked at BD for the better part of a decade from the mid 00's to late 10's
[1]: https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/di-guy [2]: https://www.mak.com/products/visualize/70-landing-pages-1/la...