Robots Go Spelunking

anakog writes "Yahoo! News runs a story about robots being used by the military in Afghanistan to search caves. The article features a few slides with pictures and comments. This seems to be the first time robots are used as tools for combat, although the article does not say if they have encountered any resistance yet. There is no mention of the manufacturer of the robots, however, I am fairly certain that they are the PackBots manufactured by IRobot. I happened to visit Real World Interface (which later merged with IRobot) a couple of years ago and saw the PackBots' predecessors, which were called Urban Robots. The company had a contract with the Department of Defence. As the name implies, the military were envisioning to use the robots to scan buildings in urban areas back then."