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Robots for Air Force Protection
Roland Piquepaille writes "During a demonstration held in San Antonio on August 6, twelve robots intended to protect bases and people were shown to Air Force security directors and to 230 other security professionals. In "Robots display force-protection prowess," Air Force Link tells us the story. "Demonstrations included one robot that crawled up walls and across ceilings, another that clambered over rocks with six rotating legs and a third that wriggled like a snake through a pipe." This summary contains more details, including photos of the "Wall Crawler" climbing a wall and of Hexapod, a robot with six rotating legs walking over a pile of rocks."
Cool stuff, but I think these would be much more intimidating to potential attackers (check out the videos). :)
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
.. what happens when the bad guys get hold of one?
Stop the brainwash
The hexapod robot is very likely the one commonly
called RHex. It was basically designed after a
cockroach. You can find a lot more videos of it
on the net. Its performance is truly impressive.
And the best thing: The software for RHex is hosted
on sourceforge!
What's interesting, is that Fisher Stevens, the guy who played Ben Jabituya, is not Indian. He's totally pulling an Apu for that role. He's actually from Evanston, IL, but now lives in NYC. Anyway, I think the reason I'm posting this is that it was a shocking realization to me a few years ago to find that out, so fooled was I as a kid watching Short Circuit.
Oh yeah, and Stevens was in Hackers and Super Mario Bros. And he dated Michelle Pfeiffer.
If you can't figure it out from the picture, the idea is that rather than the traditional (biologically inspired) multi-jointed, multi-DOF leg design, a curved and somewhat flexible leg is just mounted directly to the motor shaft, which spins it like a wheel. The result is a robot that can navigate rough terrain with the same competence as its biologically inspired counterpart, but using much simpler control software and, more significantly, requiring much less mechanical complexity, which makes for a much more robust design. Very cool stuff.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
And here are the links for RHex: /. )
( easy to remember, easy to
RHex project home
RHex software on sourceforge
Uh, dude. The wall-crawler (i.e. fuselage inspector) uses a fan to create a low pressure area between it & the surface its crawling. Without an incredibly powerful fan, it won't work on a flying aircraft. Do I have to say anything about the absence of air in space?
Besides, these things (at least right now) are designed to protect bases, not go off on their own and do stuff. Autonomus robots are really hard to do, while we can take basic steps with remotes.
These sorts of things remind me of the Shadowrun sourcebook Corporate ShadowFiles. Lots of interesting ideas in there - rail mounted sentries, flying drones, etc. all linked into a central control center. They were all controlled by a human, but they and some very rudimentary AI were able to secure a large facility. (Yes, I know it's a silly RPG, but the ideas minus the technobabble and cybergear seemed sound.)
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
So, If someone is jamming the control frequency you just tell the real live human sky cops who have authority to use lethal force to wake up and go drive the perimeter road looking for someone jumping the fence. Plus if they are using even the 1980's SINCGARS radio technology the signal will be hard to jam and the jamming will be easy to triangulate back to a source. They are more likely to be using one of the newer frequency agile radio technologies that are even more resistant to jamming. They probably have provision for connecting a landline data link to robots that are 'standing watch' and only move through a limited area mitigating the man in the middle attack vulnerability. The robots that climb on walls and ceilings look like they are intended for use to scout an interior area for intruders. They may be semi-autonomous and only transmit back the base station if they spot something. Given the state of machine object recognition there will have to be an operator evaluating the senor data from this type of stuff for a long time to come.
There was an earlier story on Slashdot about RHex, as part of the Aqua project. Videos are available on the ARL website at McGill.