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Army Looks at Robotic Dogs
mr. squishie writes "Someone important must have gotten an Aibo...According to Wired news, the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command has just awarded a $2.5 million contract to build a prototype of a large robot dog that would follow soldiers into battle and carry food, ammunition, and medical supplies. This is apparently part of a larger movement by various branches of the military investigating the uses of robots based on various types of wildlife, ranging from engine-repairing robot elephant trunks and mine-destroying robot lobsters to the cliched robot-fly-spy-on-the-wall trick. I wonder if they're looking into giant robot anteaters as an alternative to costly bunker-buster bombs?"
Its called a mule.
I wonder if they're looking into giant robot anteaters as an alternative to costly bunker-buster bombs?
Why not? After all, they've already got a giant robot chimpanzee as an alternative to a defense secretary.
<rimshot>These sigs are more interesting tha
Pretending to protect national security, provide the troops with better gear to fight terrorism, and other great headlines, our government is spending more of your money on projects that will go way over budget and provide little of the original promises.
Unfortunately, this is how our federal government always works. We've lost our capitalist direction in the last 140 years, and are now thoroughly mercantilist. Promises are made, but in reality those promises only lead to friends of the government getting a big wad of cash -- and when they over extend the budget, they just ask for more.
Sure, $3 million doesn't sound like a lot, but when has government ever provided anything at or under budget?
I'm disgusted that the average citizen allows this. There is really no reason to allow more and more of our hard earned income to go into the pockets of those friendly with the powers-that-be. Both the Democrats and Republicans have lied and lied, and neither is going to help us stabilize the economy and put more money in your pocket without increasing the costs to others.
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When the early prototype mysteriously faild to deliver the food, an investigation revealed that they had foolishly based the design on Scooby Doo.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I wonder if they're looking into giant robot anteaters as an alternative to costly bunker-buster bombs?"
Who is deploying giant robot ants? If no one is deployiong such a weapon, why are we creating something to eat them?
At Sunderland, we're working on a 'robotic sheepdog' to help find victims in building collapses or similar disasters. This would be able to track its controller acoustically and use similar technology to localize and track sound streams of interest.
I've always thought that legged vehicles where an obvious solution to all-terrain travel and transport. Rubber tires become increasingly inefficient at the terrain becomes rougher (absorbing energy in all the deflections from rocks, etc.). And walkers can go where no wheeled vehicle can pass. The problem has always been designing legged motion systems that have the fluidity of biological walkers (the jerky move-stop-move motion of oldstyle robots is too slow and inefficient). But with faster embedded processors and sensors, true fluid walking and running are possible.
I wonder if this presages the return of true calvary -- robotic-horse mounted soliders.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If I were a soldier, the first thing I'd do is reprogram my dog to walk ahead of me, not behind me. Let it step on the landmines, absorb enemy fire, etc.
Oh wait, this robot is worth $2.5m, eh? Ah, now I understand why the soldier is in front.
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We have and do use war dogs. The Marine kennels are in North Carolina and Virginia and the Army kennels are, I believe, in Oklahoma. In addition, MPs have canine squads just like civilian cops and many of these squads have war dog training in addition to police dog training.
They're useful for sniffing out booby traps and ambushes. There are a couple of problems, though:
All's true that is mistrusted
"Unit 247 wakes up. He is excited. Others are barking. Someone is trying to hurt a nice girl. This makes him angry."
Just how far away from Stephenson's Rat Thing are we?
.M@
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do you use them for good, or for awesome?
But then we'd h ave to agree with other countries as to what color our lazer weapons would be( USA = red, russia = blue, france = pink, etc.) so we can finally have a full scale GI Joe-esque presentation. If you've going to have war you need to see who's winning.
Does this mean we'd have a robo-geraldo "entrenched" with the other robots?
-or so you'd think
I wonder if they're looking into giant robot anteaters as an alternative to costly bunker-buster bombs?
Licking terrorists to death is probably SOME violation of the Geneva Convention!
Actually...that's an urban legend.
a sp
It's the Fisher Space Pen that you refer too and the pen vs. pencil thing has been tossed around by the internet and by the West Wing TV show.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.
"NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed a safer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge. Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and developement costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government.
Because of the fire in Apollo 1, in which three Astronauts died, NASA required a writing instrument that would not burn in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. It also had to work in the extreme conditions of outer space:
In a vacuum. - With no gravity. - In hot temperatures of +150C in sunlight and also in the cold shadows of space where the temperatures drop to -120C."
It also had to work in the extreme conditions of outer space:
In a vacuum. - With no gravity. - In hot temperatures of +150C in sunlight and also in the cold shadows of space where the temperatures drop to -120C."
Hopefully they meant it had to work AFTER BEING IN the extreme conditions of space. Because if anyone ever makes me write something when it is -120C, I think I may stab them with the pen instead.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Why not work on GIANT KILLER robot soliders?
Egos not withstanding, the various punk warlords around the world that give us problems are not really giants. Indeed, since Ulysses blinded the Cyclops, giants haven't caused any trouble for the most part. So robot soldiers need to just kill regular sized people.
But then we'd h ave to agree with other countries as to what color our lazer weapons would be( USA = red, russia = blue, france = pink, etc.) ...
No, no, no! Don't you know the laws of movie physics! Good is higher than evil on the on the electromagnetic spectrum. That's why good guys always use blue energy and bad guys always use red energy. Using red lasers would make US the evil empire, instead of... of...
I, uh.. hey, what's that's shiny distraction over there!
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