Did you know that in the 1960s, the U.S. Army worked with General Electric to build a four-legged, human-operated robot walker that could kick Jeeps out of its way and step on light bulbs without completely crushing them into a million shards? Now you do.
Called the "walking truck" or Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine (CAM), the walking machine was designed in 1965 as an experimental vehicle for rough terrain — either that or to take out Rebel forces on planet Hoth. Controlled by a bunch of hydraulic levers mapped to corresponding legs, the CAM and its 11-foot tall legs was capable of traveling at 35-miles per hour, but it had one flaw.
"The strain of thinking about which leg to move next exhausted the operator after about 15 minutes."
The U.S. Army hoped the CAM would be able to traverse through swampland impassable to ordinary vehicles while carrying loads of a quarter-ton on its back. Sadly, there was only one CAM ever built, as a budget cut left it sitting unloved and forgotten in a U.S. Army warehouse in Detroit. Resurrected, you now find it in the U.S. Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis.
Seeing this thing does makes you wonder, what else does the U.S. Army have? A mini Death Star? Landspeeders? Oh, the things we'll never know.
Check out a video of this four-legged tank in action by clicking this link. PHOTOS
CyberneticZoo, via Technabob
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