Robots for Air Force Protection

Posted by michael on Thursday August 14, 2003 @03:25AM from the lazy-flyboys dept.

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."

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Cool stuff... by glh · 2003-08-14 03:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

One of the articles linked talked about people currently buying these things:

People have bought it just the way it is for things like inspecting the fuselage of an aircraft," Wiedeman said.

We are one step closer to having R2D2! I wonder if the robots can crawl around while the plane is in flight? (Probably not, based on the specs given). Anyway, I think this is pretty interesting. Using these on a space shuttle might not be a bad idea, ie- crawling around outside and inspecting things before take off. And later- making external in-flight repairs...