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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."
This is really scary. They're just begging Skynet to take over! Actually, methinks the military boys saw too many Terminator movies...
More seriously, if the military becomes heavily dependant on this kind of thing, in the near future, I can envisage being an unlicensed ter^H^H^H hacker becoming a crime punishible by an indefinite term in Guantanamo Bay.
/obligatory everything is scary post.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
now. just how the hell does that thing climb the walls?
assuming wallclimbing doesn't require being bit by a radioactive spider, it would be kinda kool to make a couple of those and let them climb around at random at home. if nothing else than to entertain the cat.
besides, couldn't you build a human wall-climber using the same principle?
does this tech scale (sorry) well?
f64 : climbing walls, lacking coffee
Why do people insist on calling these things robots? It's not a robot if a human is controlling it with a remote control. It's just a toy. A true *robot* operates autonomously.
"subject to major, non-reversable programming glitches when subjected to large electro-magnetic fields (such as lightning strikes).
WHAT... pray tell.. isnt subect to a non reverable program glitch when struck by lighting?
even your beloved "linux" couldnt survive that.
p.s. this is a RETORICAL post.. yes i know airplanes and stuff can survive strikes.. but a 2 foot robot?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
I would imagine that the average soldier complete with the "Land Warrior" system holding his/her M4 machine gun (read lightning rod) is also subject to large electro-magnetic fields (such as lightning strikes).
-- Probability does not dismiss possibility --
Shouldn't a robot be described as some mechanical device that's autonomous or otherwise self-guided?
These "robots" all seem to be remote-controlled, making them expensive RC toys you'll find in 5 years at Radio Scrap.
I'll tell you why. Start making it easy for countries to engage in war w/o risking human lives and suddenly you've completely changed the fundamentals of why and when people are willing go to war. Combat bots should be outlawed by the Geneva convention. War sucks, but in order for it to have any legitamcy whatsoever, then lives must be at risk. If lives aren't at risk then wars become too easy to start.
Of course, maybe war will evolve in such a way that we'll just carry out computer models to figure out who wins and then send the "correct" number of losers into extermination chambers ala - what was that episode of Star Trek?
8 ^ |
People used to think that robots, not computers would be common place in the future like in Star Wars (I know it's the distant past in a galaxy far, far... anyway). A few years ago I thought we would have a more Star Trek-type future where computers are integrated into everything and robots wouldn't be so common. Now I believe that is changing. On /. I keep reading about more and more robots as well as computers. On TechTV they seem to always show something about robots, be it on TechLive or that awful Robot Wars (come on, that whole robot fighting fad is sooo two years ago). I think the reason for this change is better, cheaper technology. Anyone can waltz down to the RadioShack, among other outlets, and pick up parts for one. Building a robot 5-10 years ago would result in something along the intelligence of a RoboSweep--not really worth the effort. I think robots will have a larger role in the future than I thought--Good luck Airforce, good luck iRobot (the makers of the Roomba vacuum cleaner).
- Danny
Heck, J5 didn't even have an entire single gigabyte of hard drive space, and my pocket calculator has more RAM than J5 did.
Yes, but your pocket calculator is probably programmed in C++ or some other hideously inefficient programming language. A gigabyte of storage is actually one hell of a lot of space. 64M of RAM is more than enough for a hell of a lot of optimized assembly code and compressed data.
Remember, the huge amounts of RAM and storage in hardware these days is to follow the Microsoft Model of software development: Roll in crap to fill all available storage. Some of us still (believe it or not) feel that software development is convergent. That means: as software gets better and more sophisticated, it should be implementing more functionality while consuming less resources. i.e.: the 486 with 16 megs of RAM that I used to run Slackware on should be BETTER at running the latest Slackware, not worse.
But I'm an optomist. For some reason eye candy is easer to shove into a system than actual increased functionality. So we have shit like GNOME now, not new-improved FVWM3 or FVWM4.
A Good Intro to NetBS
When did our definition of "robot" become "Nifty mobile vehicle with some kind of new technology" ? A robot, sort of by definition, is an autonomous machine, capable of acting and reacting on its own without human intervention. Battlebots? They're just souped-up RC cars. ASIMO? His every step is preprogrammed; if you moved the stairs a foot forward he'd trip, because ASIMO is not a robot.
These pictures clearly show humans remotely controlling them. What makes them different than remote controlled cars that you can buy at Toys-R-Us, the fact that they can crawl up walls or have six funky legs? Please, stop referring to these fancy toys as "robots" and diminishing the accomplishments of those who make real autonomous robots.
And yes, I have worked on real robots. Last year I was on the robotics team from the University of Rochester. Our robot Mabel the Mobile Table, an autonomous robotic hors d'ourvres-serving waiter, won the AAAI Robot Host competition. Robotics means artificial intelligence, at least rudimentary AI, not just some new means of locomotion.
-3Suns
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