[tpmx]

Wow, it's taken us so long to get (something like) this thing going. 37 years now, and Boston Dynamics is only now in the final steps of productizing v1.

[GeorgeTirebiter]

Boston Dynamics' CEO, Marc Raibert, was a professor at CMU at the same time, and Marc and Ivan are good pals. Little-known fact: Ivan convinced Marc to start doing work in legged locomotion! So, in a way, Ivan is responsible for modern legged locomotion by 'seeding' the field with a genius like Marc Raibert! Here's some of what was going on at CMU at the same time as Ivan's Walker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG_ZKXo6Rlg

[bpicolo]

This video was extremely cool. Thanks for sharing! Legged robots are so endearing.

[GeorgeTirebiter]

Glad you liked it. Boston Dynamics is an overnight success only 40-ish years in the making... !

See also this Scientific American article of theirs https://www.academia.edu/28215739/Machines_That_Walk

[kevin_thibedeau]

The Timberjack walking tree harvester was mostly ready for commercialization.

[tpmx]

Got a link?

[snerbles]

This was their promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftV2HeKPeBM

Timberjack was bought by John Deere in 2000, and the subsidiary discontinued in '06.

[tpmx]

That looked neat.. but also impractical. Way too slow.

It's interesting that it came from Finland.