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DARPA's Alpha Dog robot evolves

The Legged Squad Support System (LS3) can now follow spoken orders and navigate in the dark.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
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Nic Healey

The Legged Squad Support System (LS3) can now follow spoken orders and navigate in the dark.

It's tracking you right now. (Credit: DARPA/Boston Dynamics)

Alpha Dog, the robot pack-carrying army unit, technically known as the LS3, has a few new tricks up its sleeve.

A recent video from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) shows that the LS3 can now respond to around 10 spoken commands, such as "follow", "stay", "sit" and even "roll over". (Thankfully, not "attack" yet — we assume that they'll leave that for Cheetah.)

LS3 can now also use GPS waypoints to navigate in total darkness. And to add to the stealth function, they've got the noise down to around 70 decibels — about that of a vacuum cleaner, which isn't exactly silent, but is well on the way.

Look upon DARPA's work, ye mighty, and despair in the video below.