I am fascinated to see the development that has been made in robotics to make robots fit either human or otherwise organic behavior. It is worth noting that it takes an exceptional amount of skill and engineering to simulate even the simplest intelligence or motor skills of living things; nevertheless, research and development has come a long way in recent years.

For instance, I had a very memorable experience when I saw a 20 minute presentation of ASIMO at Disneyland a couple years ago. ASIMO even has his own website. Naturally, seeing him online or in a video doesn’t have the same impact as seeing him in person.

Well, ASIMO is a pretty impressive humanoid robot, but BigDog is an amazing demonstration of a quadruped robot. The video on the BigDog webpage shows off how agile the robot can be. It’s amazing how natural its movement seems!

Props to Cali Lewis of GeekBrief fame for featuring this amazing robot.

First, watch this amazing video. It will spark your imagination as you see the fantasy from movies like Minority Report become potential reality:

Then, watch this followup demonstration, by the same engineer, which blows away the first demonstration.

This technology is obviously too expensive right now, but it exists and it is coming!

A friend of mine forwarded this great video:

You know, by the end of the video, the comparison to a book is so simplistic, I really was wondering just what it is that makes it so difficult to understand how a computer can store our information..