Military.com has an interesting story about a "bum bot" that rolls around an Atlanta neighborhood:
Cars passing O'Terrill's pub screech to a halt at the sight of a 300-pound, waist-high robot marked "SECURITY" rolling through downtown long after dark.
The regulars hardly glance outside. They've seen bar owner Rufus Terrill's invention on patrol before - its bright red lights and even brighter spot light blazing, infrared video camera filming and water cannon at the ready in the spinning turret on top.
"You're trespassing. That's private property," Terrill scolds an older man through the robot's loudspeaker. The man is sitting at the edge of the driveway to a child care center down the street. "Go on."
The man's hands go up and he shuffles into the shadows. Almost immediately, a group of men behind him scatters too.
The Bum Bot's reputation, it seems, has preceded it.
The electronic vigilante - on the beat since September - has enraged neighborhood activists, who have threatened protests. Street people say it's intimidating. And homeless advocates question the intentions of its inventor, who uses the Bum Bot as a marketing tool and a political prop.
As a supplement to the UAV plan outlined in the post below, Gizmodo has a post about this wild concept the Army has laid at the feet of select engineering schools, including the University of Michigan. Here's an excerpt:
The proposal is for the bat to be just six inches in length, weigh only four ounces and use just one watt of power, backed by a lithium-ion battery, which could be charged by not just solar energy, but wind energy and random vibrations as well. The bat's intended goal would be to run surveillance ops and relay data in realtime, including sights and sounds from minicams and mini-microphones, but also radiation and poison gas readings.
The UMich grant consists of $10 million over five years, creating the U-M Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology (dubbed "COM-BAT"—pun intended). The focus is to shrink down many electronics that while currently available would only be good if the US Army wanted, say, a 12-foot spy-bat. Not too stealthy.
For energy recovery, UMich will work to develop "quantum dot solar cells," making current solar cells twice as nice. The bat's autonomous navi system will be 1,000 times smaller than current systems, and that much more energy efficient too. The comms system will be shrunk to one-tenth the current size, too.
The Army . . . giving new meaning to shrinkage.
(Gouge: CM)
-- Ward
Video: "Send more robots!"
Here's a quick video fix to start your Tuesday:
As the man says, "Why send a soldier when you can send a robot?"
-- Ward
The Robot Nose Always Knows
Thanks to cameras, speakers and microphones there are robotic vehicles that can see, talk and hear what's happening at some potentially dangerous perimeter or checkpoint and relay the info in real time to a security center.
And, if necessary, the robotic gate guards can open or return fire on human command.
And while the machines still lack the "nose" to sniff out trouble, that soon could change thanks to a new, computerized scent detector manufactured by Israeli Defense Industries.
The U.S. Army has been talking to Scent Detection Technologies of Israel, which brought the Mini-Nose system to the United States about six months ago, about adapting it to a robotic vehicle, said Tom Neugebauer, SDT's U.S. Operational Integration Manager in Dallas.
"The Army contacted us a few months ago," he said today in Washington, D.C., where he was presenting the system at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting and exposition. "They want to put it in places where they would need to screen people."
Neugebauer said the company developed the system at the request of the Israeli and U.S. governments. Israel was especially eager for a new-generation explosives detector because of the history of suicide bombings in the country, he said.
Unlike the systems used throughout U.S. airports, which rely on a chemical analysis of swabs rubbed across clothing and other items, the Mini-Nose uses a vacuum gun to "sniff" an object. The gun's nose is then placed into a small sensor chamber about the size of a desk phone where the vacuumed particles are analyzed.
The results are immediately viewable on a touch screen that is based on a Windows mobile operating system. The beauty of that is that if any new chemicals or combinations begin emerging on the terrorist explosive scene, the information can, once known, be downloaded to the chamber to be recognized when sniffed out.
Currently, at least one U.S. hospital and some corporations have adopted the Mini-Nose, but it's not yet being used at American airports. Negebauer said the company is still going through the process to be certified by the Transportation Safety Administration.
-- Bryant Jordan
Rifle Robots Rigged and Ready
This month's National Defense magazine reports that the Army has quietly introduced a rifle-toting robot into the Iraq war. So far three of the Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS) have been deployed. (Wouldn't that acronym actually be SWORRDAS? And how long did some major at the systems command spend working that one up?)
The SWORDS is armed with a M249 rifle and is remotely controlled by a soldier through a terminal. There are no reports of the SWORDS being used in actual combat yet, however.
The 80 robots approved under an urgent materiel release are being held up "due to limited funding in fiscal years 2006-2007," said Lt. Col. William Wiggins, a spokesman for the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.
“While SWORDS is currently not a program of record, the Army has initiated a memorandum of agreement between ARDEC and Robotic System-Joint Project Office to expedite establishing a funded program to meet Army needs," Wiggins said in a written statement.
Yesterday it was “Congo,” today it’s “Minority Report.”
Well, sort of.
They don’t look quite as creepy as the spider bots that crawled under doorways and scanned bath tub surfaces in the Tom Cruise hit, but you can see that it might only take a few years to make them that way.
A North Carolina company has developed a technology that can give robots the ability to climb sheer walls. Vortex Holdings, LLC ginned up the so-called “Vortex Regenerative Air Movement” technology that creates a “tornado in a cup,” making it possible for small payloads of up to 3.5 pounds to be adhered to walls.
It’s easy to see the potential military and law enforcement applications of such a device, especially in urban fights where snooping around the corner and peering over that window ledge could mean the difference between popping the bad guy and hitting civilians.
I’ll let DT readers decide whether this kind of thing could potentially result in unwarranted and excessive intrusion into civilian life.
New Scientist Tech reports that the U.S. Army has contracted Vecna Technologies of College Park, Maryland to develop a robot specifically designed to extract wounded troops.
"The Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot (BEAR) will be able to travel over bumpy terrain and squeeze through doorways while carrying an injured soldier in its arms," the article states.
"The robot's hydraulic arms are designed to pick up loads in a single smooth movement, to avoid causing pain to wounded soldiers. While the existing prototype slides its arms under its burden like a forklift, future versions will be fitted with maneuverable hands to gently scoop up casualties.
"The robot's humanoid body and teddy bear-style head give it a friendly appearance. 'A really important thing when you're dealing with casualties is trying to maintain that human touch,' says Gary Gilbert of the U.S. Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center in Frederick, Maryland, which provided the initial funding for BEAR's development. Congress has since added $1.1 million."
BEAR is expected to be ready for field testing in about five years.
(Gouge: CM)
-- Ward
Merging of Man and Robot
Seapower is the official magazine of the Navy League but under the direction of Richard Barnard, Peter Atkinson, and Rick Burgess in recent years it has also emerged as a great source of future tech news and information.
The May issue of Seapower is no exception. Among features on micro air vehicles and new uses for fighter targeting pods is a cover story about the merging of man and robot to fight the wars of the not-so-distant future.
In the story, titled "New Era," Seapower correspondent Roxana Tiron writes about how "scientists foresee the merger of man and machine capabilities, enabling creation of robots to fight side-by-side with humans." She goes on to suggest that "advances in biomimetrics will help scientists imitate organic life, fostering machine intelligence approaching human speed by 2040."
"Robots will be used routinely in the most dangerous missions," said Stephen DeAntonio, business development director at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center. "They will be fully autonomous with sophisticated behaviors and will be part of full-fledged networks where the is credible information sharing among ground robots, air vehicles and humans."
The article also mentions the notion that fast-acting robots could take over when odds favor enemy forces.
Can't you just see the headlines circa 2040? "General charged with waiting too long to commit robots," or "Soldiers complain that robots stole taste of victory."
(Update, 1200 EDT): And of course no Robot/Human article would be complete without running the "I Robot" scenario to ground.
"It is imperative for robots to become part of the command structure," said Thomas McKenna, director of ONR's Sciences Division. "Why should be build expensive wild beasts?"
Can you say "Robo Berzerker"? Sounds kind of cool, actually.
(Photo: "Robolobster," developed by Northwestern's Marine Science Center for naval reconnaissance and surveillance, mine detection, and search and rescue.)
