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Radiation Robot Makes Troops Safer
Darkman, Walkin Dude wrote to mention a plucky little radiation-proof robot working to make life easier for folks in the military. From the article: "By this time an hour and a half had gone by, and the team was temporarily out of ideas. Phil had estimated that the robot could remain ambulatory in the radiation field for only 50 minutes, and in fact the robot's lower portion was no longer responding to commands. The RAP team, as a precaution against this very circumstance, working with White Sands personnel had tied a rope to M2 before sending it into the work area. The rope, attached to a RAP team winch 100 feet outside the structure, ensured the robot could be hauled out if radiation damaged its drive unit. But radiation shields now blocked a direct haul. M2 was hemmed in. Using a ten-foot-long pole and standing at the edge of the field (which fanned out like a flashlight beam, strongest at its center and weakest at its edges), team members hooked and then tugged at the rope hauling M2. The deflection of the rope's pull slid the robot around a moveable radiation shield without knocking it over. The RAP team's winch then pulled the robot directly out. "
Seconds later, Sarah Connor grabbed the pole and impaled the robot, destroying its primary power supply. Even as its eyes went dark, emergency systems kicked in to begin rerouting secondary and tertiary power systems.
Wise to the design of robots, Sarah and her son, future savior of humankind John Connor, shoved the robot through a nearby doorway conveniently located right above a steel foundry where it dramatically screamed in electronic pain for a few seconds. And then it was over.
"Is it over, mom?" John asked, panting.
Sarah Connor wiped the sweat out of her eyes. "It's over," she said as the familiar industrial movie soundtrack theme began to play. "It's over."
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
" Because the robot lacked a trigger finger to depress and release a drill control, the Sandia team stalked the aisles of local hardware stores, buying cordless drills and other equipment they modified into remotely operated drills, hooks, and grippers."
Awesome, like a poor hardware hacker's dream... a big fat budget for using power tools in a manner inconsistent with their labeling. I think this is the fulfillment of a lot of engineer's reason for being engineers.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Then the RAP team started throwing up gang signs and rhyming insults against the enemy....
A chapter of I, Robot.
All you need is a HEV suit and a Crowbar. Everyone knows that!
Mighty Mouse sounds like a inapropreate name for that robot, maybe they should call it Slowpoke Rodriguez.
this is why the last rule of adventuring is "never forget your 10-foot pole".
Only 2 sp at Anonymously Run General Store!
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
I can see the geeks saying:
Yesterday our battalion configured Apache and rebuilt kernels all day.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"Troops save troop-saving robot." Ohh... a paradox. Which saved first, the troops, or the robot?
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
Another problem with tubes is that to accommodate the bulk of a tube-based control computer, the robot would have to be big enough to be cast as the villain in a bad Godzilla sequel.
Give them a break. They're only using a Mark 2 Bolo. A Mark XXX Continental Siege Unit would clean up in Iraq: radiation schmadiation.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Send in a tech? With a high-intensity gamma source stuck nearby?
Surely you must be joking.