Ironcub: a Humanoid Robot Designed to Fly Like Iron Man
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
spectrum.ieee.orgTechstory
heatednegative
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RoboticsArtificial IntelligenceMilitary Technology
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Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Military Technology
The IRonCub, a humanoid robot designed to fly like Iron Man, has sparked controversy and criticism on HN, with commenters questioning its practicality, safety, and potential military applications.
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Oct 2, 2025 at 2:54 PM EDT
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Oct 6, 2025 at 7:36 AM EDT
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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_and_Charles
I'm imagining a team just putting the organs of a human into the robot to save on space. Basically a brain plus whatever is absolutely necessary to run the brain.
Who is this robot going to save with glowing hot turbine engines on it's fore-arms.
This is kill-bot tech put on the iCub to get articles in circulation.
If somebody's going to work on something a million times more the cost and a similar fractional multiple of the effectiveness, maybe you can take them at face value that they're not building a murderbot (at least not by design).
I assure you that drone warfare isnt cutting down on any r&d budget at the pentagon. the whole point is to spend that money.
"The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) is primarily funded by the Italian State but also receives significant funding from European Union research programs, such as the European Research Council (ERC) and Horizon Europe".
No pentagon money here.
Freaky baby face value.
See the XKCD someone has already posted below.
Ummmm, disaster recovery is hard precisely because the infrastructure (e.g. a collapsed building) ceased to be suitable for humans.
I suppose the original iCub research robot is running out of grants it can milk, so they strapped some jet engines to it.
At least if you can keep the weight down.
OK. Why?
Let's forget then "Let's strap model airplane jet engines to the robot and make it fly." part.
For this dumb mechanical albatross to be anywhere close to useful in ANY scenario, even without flying...it has to be useful as a humanoid robot. It isn't. iCub was a cool concept, but it is so far behind the current state of the art I am not sure why they are trying to make it fly.
And, flying?
You can hang a humanoid from any of the already available mega quadcopters and drop it off anywhere within the flight range.
You can probably stick a parachute on an already available humanoid and drop dozens of them from an airplane.
Flying is a solved problem. A humanoid useful in the real world --particularly in disaster areas-- is not. At all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxyLui5LdCc
MY SHOES ARE ON FIRE!
They kinda handwaved the whole "wash the disaster area in superheated jet exhaust before doing your S&R" problem.
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