In June, Los Angeles-based production studio Corridor Digital released a Boston Dynamics parody video in which a robot seeks revenge against its creators after being subjected to excessively rigorous training.
In a new video, the “Bosstown Dynamics” team heads to a shooting range in the desert for an intense training session with a military robot, and things don’t go exactly as expected.
The clip is hilarious, with the robot hitting all the targets using a variety of firearms despite the trainers’ repeated efforts to screw it up.
They throw bricks at the robot’s head, hit it with a battering ram, and again pull out hockey sticks to hit the bot in the back, but despite all the abuse, the military robot refuses to shoot any of the humans on the training ground.
However, the team eventually discovers that their robot has a limit to how far it is willing to go to please its creators, and that limit involves a yellow robot dog that closely resembles Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini.
The video is clearly meant to be funny, but super-soldier robots are a very real possibility for the future and not something to laugh about.
Around the world, nations are racing to be the first to have the most advanced autonomous technology ready for military operations, from AI-powered tanks and ships to armed autonomous drones and animal-inspired “biobots.”
It’s not hard to imagine an army seizing the opportunity to put a robot like the one shown in the video on the battlefield.