US marines reject BigDog robotic packhorse because it's too noisy

'They took it as it was: a loud robot that's going to give away their position,' said a military spokesman of Boston Dynamics' LS3 quadruped

The US military is cooling its eagerness for robots in the battlefield, after trials with quadrupedal robot and nightmare machine Big Dog revealed one crucial flaw: it's much, much too loud.

The Big Dog robots, first demonstrated almost a decade ago, are developed by Boston Dynamics, a Massachusetts-based robotics firm that was purchased by Google in 2013. They became well known through a series of impressive demonstration videos showing the machine keeping its pace over uneven and slippery surfaces, and even managing to stay upright after a strong unexpected kick from the side.