These Robot Dogs Can Even Pull A Three-Ton Airplane. Believe Or Not?

It doesn’t come as a surprise when dogs can pull a sled, but dragging an airplane is another story. Of course, it is impossible for real dogs but it may be possible for robot dogs. At least, the following case will prove it to you.

More than a month ago, a YouTube video showed us that Boston Dynamics’ robot dogs called SpotMini managed to pull a truck. This time, researchers from Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT for short) have made an announcement on HyQReal – the latest version of their quadrupedal robot dogs. More notably, these robots can even pull a three-ton plane.

In terms of the height, HyQReal is as high as SpotMini, but its weight is 3 times as large as robot dogs from Boston Dynamics. If SpotMini weighs 30kg and is 84cm tall, the height and weight of the robots from IIT are 90 cm and 130 kg, respectively.

Explaining about this issue, IIT developers revealed that these bots were designed to help humans to tackle possible situations in disaster scenarios (fires or flood).

When exchanging information with CNET via email, the Dynamic Legged Systems project leader Claudio Semini said,

What the robot dogs HyQReal can do actually makes a strong impression on anyone of us. However, in fact, the phenomenon is partly related to the rolling resistance of the airplane’s tires compared to this vehicle’s overall weight.

The HyQReal’s capability is especially suitable to handle hard missions. Now it’s time for us to learn how to treat both AI and robots better if we don’t want to regret someday.