History
BigDog is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the hopes that it will be able to serve as a robotic pack mule to accompany soldiers in terrain too rough for conventional vehicles. Instead of wheels or treads, BigDog uses four legs for movement, allowing it to move across surfaces that would defeat wheels. The legs contain a variety of sensors, including joint position and ground contact. BigDog also features a laser gyroscope and a stereo vision system.
BigDog was featured in episodes of Web Junk 20 and Hungry Beast, and in articles in New Scientist, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and The Wall Street Journal.
On March 18, 2008, Boston Dynamics released video footage of a new generation of BigDog. The footage shows BigDog's ability to walk on icy terrain and recover its balance when kicked from the side.[2]
Hardware
Big Dog is powered by a two-stroke, one-cylinder, 15-HP go-kart engine operating at over 9,000 RPM. The engine drives a hydraulic pump, which in turn drives the hydraulic leg actuators. Each leg has four actuators (two for the hip joint, and one each for the knee and ankle joints), for a total of 16. Each actuator unit consists of a hydraulic cylinder, servovalve, position sensor, and force sensor.
Onboard computing power is a ruggedized PC/104 board stack with a Pentium 4 class computer running QNX.[3]

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