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2 articles from 2009

1 October 2009 11:30 AM, PDT | Fast Company | See recent Fast Company news »

From Robocop to Terminator to Saturn 3, robots have had some bad press in sci-fi movies--particularly when given guns and assigned military roles. But that's all fiction. Here are two early prototypes of military bots that are really scary.

Little Dog

The first is a new version of Boston Dynamics astonishing, if incredibly loud, Big Dog robot. The original big beast is designed to be a semi-autonomous pack-horse to assist the soldier in the field--it can trot across almost any terrain, tackling the difficult surface conditions automatically. It even resists being kicked off-course. 

The miniature version, dubbed Little Dog, is still an early prototype but is already capable of autonomously working out how to navigate obstacles and incorporating some artificial intelligence to enable it to proceed to its destination. When the design is finalized, it will be a lot more clever, and a lot more useful. Think of its potential …

- Kit Eaton

16 April 2009 11:03 AM, PDT | FilmSchoolRejects.com | See recent FilmSchoolRejects news »

A new trend appeared this week with famed directors trading in the clapboards and megaphones for inkwells and laptops.  The reverse has happened before with author Michael Crichton directing cinematic classics like Coma, Looker, and Runaway, but I don't recall a director who moved from the big screen to the Kindle... until now.  (There must be previous directors who've written novels so if you know of one, please enlighten me below.) First up, The Independent is reporting (via Fearnet) that David Cronenberg (The Brood, Crash) has just signed a deal for his first novel.  Only forty pages of  "Consumed" have been written so far but that was enough for publisher Fourth Estate to snap up the rights in a "vicious bidding war" that somehow only netted Cronenberg a five-figure sum.  The plot... revolves around a married couple, who are investigative journalists working on two separate stories. The wife is in Paris, delving …

- Rob Hunter

2 articles from 2009