Created by: Boston Dynamics
Size: 2 ft., 4 in. tall, weighing 165 lbs.
Purpose: Deployment as a mobility platform

A four-legged robot that resembles the Walkers from Star Wars, BigDog was designed to help Army grunts hump gear into roadless areas. Built around a combustion engine, the first prototypes of BigDog are in the testing phase and the next two years will involve working alongside defense contractors to come up with a deployable robot to work in a battlefield scenario. That will be followed by another 18 months of testing, according to Boston Dynamics founder and President Marc Raibert. BigDog can already make decisions about whether to go left or right around a tree, but carrying a gun and making a decision about shooting a gun are not really possibilities at this point. "To be honest, I get a little irritated with the gun question, because, to be honest, it's no different from putting a gun on a pickup truck," Raibert says. "People immediately jump to the point where they're imagining science fiction robots [that are] thinking, sentient being[s]. We're really building a mobility platform. It's like a truck that can go anywhere."

See BigDog in action.