Slashdot Mirror
Another Robotic Vehicle to Help Soldiers
Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many teams of U.S. scientists working on robots able to find improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq before they can kill American soldiers. Today, let's look at an effort going on at Florida State University (FSU) to build unmanned ground vehicles that could save soldiers' lives. The researchers are creating complex algorithms to control these robots who will have to integrate many different factors such as the type of ground surface or obstacles that might block the vehicle's path. Some of these robots, which also could be used for civilian missions, are currently being tested at FSU. Read more for additional references and pictures of these robots which will have to navigate among dense obstacles."
Ha ha, just kidding. Maybe they'll post a news item about it.
I kinda like the layout. Still, I'm gonna check my preferences to see if I have other options...
-- thinkyhead software and media
... beacuse he was run over by an unmanned transport vehicle!
Hell, just crank up the bandwidth for remote-control vehicles and bots, and outsource the whole damned war. I'm already working on an Abu Graihb torture module.
Table-ized A.I.
So when will these new robots start appearing in the game?
My eyes! They burn from the strain of reading the small letters.
Any moment now I expect robot rights groups to form and start protesting this cruel and unusual treatment of our robot friends. (PETR ?)
Philosophy.
Can't we just send over a bunch of people who compete in the Battlebot tournaments? Yeah, the wedge robots would need a little upgrading, but I can imagine that Nightmare (the big blade a'spinnin') would help out. In the British version of Battlebots (Robot Wars?) they're allowed to use flame weapons. Go go gadget killing machine!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
I think the new look is pretty cool...
:)
one suggestion tho: move the moderation status and score to the main bulk of text (to the left).
A bit annoying as it is since it's too far to the right...
congrats on an otherwise fresh (and needed) new look
.oo00OO
Sorry, I really don't know about EMP bursts, beyond that they fry electronics. Would it be possible to create a targetted, or shaped EMP burst, say in front of vehicles that would fry the circuits on the IEDs, and keep the IEDs from going off?
love is in the air...everywhere I look around...
.oo00OO
...leave Iraq..
Maybe if they created a news post about the new layout people wouldn't be foreced to comment off topic in order to talk about it.
Philosophy.
Sorry about posting offtopic, but theres people who were requesting the old slashdot css, which can be used with a firefox extension (greasemonkey?) to utilize the old look. I've posted all the old css files in my journal for everyone's convenience. Cheers. :)
how do i fix slashdot so that it doesn't look like i'm surfing slashdot from inside a Matrix movie?
moox. for a new generation.
Remember, the current war in Iraq has nothing to do with protecting America. It's not being done for the benefit of the average American citizen.
It is purely a war to benefit politicians and their business connections. That was clearly obvious to most non-Americans before it even started, and is now becoming clear to many of those Americans who were initially fooled. But keep in mind that very few of those politicians and businessmen who support the war have any actual involvement in it. They're not over there fighting. Their children aren't over there fighting.
War has already been "outsourced" from those people onto teens and young men/women from the midwest US, onto immigrants, and onto mercenaries. It's likely not a matter of protecting soldiers for the sake of saving their lives, but rather to keep them alive just because they're cheaper killing machines than planes and missles. While a single missile can cost upwards of $200000, a typical soldier will cost $60000 a year, including equipment and nourishment expenses. That soldier can often kill far more enemy troops than a missile.
So 2 feet midget robot car driving around trying to stop IEDs with suicidial nutbag driving right into target? Better yet, how does that help everyone trying to not get blown to pieces while shopping for food or trying to go to school or trying to go from point A to point B?
Oh wait, here is an idea. EM bomb. No ignition, No Boom.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I WISH that I COULD go RTFA but right now my eyes are bleeding from the strain of the new layout! This is worse than OMG PONIES!!!
Verveces tui similes pro ientaculo mihi appositi sunt
Since I don't fucking LIVE HERE, I don't really care one way or the other...
Tag: R'o'land Piquepaille
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I agree on the suggestion. ( apologies to all for being offtopic )
IOTN - Ionatron has already developed something called a JIN that is a remote vehicle that shoots current into the ground detonating all IED's within a certain range.
Scott
SSHGuru.com
Just wait a decade or two, robots such as these are only the front line. No scientist like Einstein stands out today simply because there are too many scientists who would deserve to be mentioned. Future shock is now real or in modern day terms, a singularity, is that much closer. Japanese culture is where I almost expect intelligent machines to emerge from. We fear Skynet, the typical Japanese adult cut their teeth on Astroboy and intelligent machines are viewed as "our robot friends" in their culture. Overly simplified maybe, but the generalities remain that here we are fearful of machine intelligence while there they are hopeful of it. Throw in the fact that Japan's elderly population will outnumber the youth of it's population in about 20 years is creating a need to have autonomous machines to simply help those future people to get out of bed and into the bath.
Shh.
Robots to help soldiers occupy and terrorize another country without getting killed or maimed so badly? Yeah, that's an honorable application of technology - to make it more efficient for the power brokers to force their will upon entire populations. What the people who control the US government and the US military these days are doing is heinous. George Orwell was very precisely prescient. To protect a soldier so that he can live to kill another day is not a worthy goal of any scientific endeavor. To refine technology to keep a soldier safe so he can kill more innocent people tomorrow, next month, next year should be nobody's job.
The way it works mostly now is they are triggered by cellphones or two-way radios. That requires electronics that could be disabled... they aren't generally like mines that sit there passivley and wait for something heavy to drive over.
However then the insurgents may well switch to just simple wires trailing off somewhere that couldn't be disabled by EMP. That means they would have to stay closer, and of course after the device went back you could trace where the wires led to, and perhaps gain further information on who it was there by something they left behind in haste.
Or, they might figure out how to shield it well enough the electronics would survive. I'm not sure what effect that would have on reception of the triggering signal though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hey, it's a classic. You don't have to laugh. The Meme Monster made me do it.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
DON'T SEND THEM TO WAR FOR OIL! Seriously, though, in a time when soldiers have to choose between using homebought armor that actually works (but will cost them their pension) or losing their lives from lack of protection by their employer, the only real way to make sure the government stops killing our Guys and Gals is to pull them out of this useless war.
If I want to scan by message title and then rating, my eyes go left/right/left/right...
/. more. Kinda like a Linux box with Fluxbox...not the prettiest but by far the most efficient.
This is prettier, but I think I liked the old
Whether artificial or not, let's send a bit of what the Bush Administration has done to the American people over to our heroic men and women stationed in Iraq.
"...envisions the creation of an unmanned ground vehicle that could patrol large areas without putting U.S. soldiers in harm's way." "We're already using drones (unmanned airplanes) for surveillance in the skies over Iraq,"
So how long before they save lives by taking lives?
It may be pedantic and out of date but I would prefer if there was a disincentive for military action (like counter invasion or the loss of life) rather than an all out search for ways to carry out military action on the cheap.
Although who wants to see dead soldiers and civilians (of any nationality) - This is good for robotics, it may be bad for warfare - but then sadly technology with any military application usually does end up killing people,- lets all get back to clubs with nails in, the body count may be lower.
I have a wild idea, how about we all comment on TFA instead of complaining about the new /. layout.
As for TFA... anything that can prevent the death of a soldier in combat is something I will support.
Talking to Geeks is like eating jello with a chainsaw, interesting, but painful.
Does anybody have the "light" CSS too? I didn't think they'd mess up the light CSS; but damn, it looks awful now.
Give me my Slashdot back!
It was a joke! SCO didn't patent the old CSS!
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Or if the only thing that's changed is the CSS, then Slashdot could just put an "alternate stylesheet" link tag in the header.
This is really bad.
I had to hunt for the "read more" link on each story, and it just feels too blocky and non-flowing.
I really don't like this CSS at all... I don't know if everyone else agrees with me or not.
Could you at least give me a option to pick the old one?
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
On the weekend I noticed a rather cool looking robot video posted to stileproject here http://www.stilemedia.com/?v=heexe1.wmv Probably not a good idea to grab it from work though as people (like my boss) don't believe you when you say it's a science and anatomy site.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
And is war really the worst thing out there? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Do we still believe this or not? The sad, tragic truth is that there will always be people who are willing to throw others' lives away, and sometimes the only way to stop such people is to wage war.
Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a way to make a disincentive to war. Perhaps the only way to end a war without annihilating the enemy is to make it so hard on them that they clearly see that they face annihilation (see bombing raids over Japan (especially atomic), General Sherman's march across Georgia, etc.).
Is it possible that the only reason we are still fighting in Iraq is because we are unwilling to take the steps necessary to truly end it? That's not a rhetorical question, I really want to know what people think, because I don't know.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Sure there is funding to be had for this. But I don't care about "American soldiers" as such, since "American soldiers" are responsible for spreading radio-active materials all over Iraq. Sorry. More misguided research.
For some reason, it kept trying to torture me and murder my family.
The robot i would like to see is a 8 wheeled behemoth with a 4 foot thick armored plate surounding the control area and engine compartment about 6-8 feet wide and maybe 5 foot long that that blasts water jets into the ground directly underneath it to dismantly and land mines it rolls over while doing 50 MPH. Then four robotic armes (2 arms like the booms on a backhoe and 2 arms that function like regular arms capatble of grasping things). EMP generators that only effect maybe a ten foot area and can either disable IED's and road side bombs or set them off. Radio jamming equiptment that can also stop remote detonations. An aray of input sensores that can locate human object and relay thier actions or placment (snypers) and maybe even target them for some other smart weapon to take out. 50 cal snyper riffles and a machine gun, maybe a small 25 or 30 mm auto loading cannon for troop support.
Make this controlable by a couple of nitendo/xbox style controlers with a sighting relay and let it escort every convoy they run in hostile teritory. All the other vehicles need to do is stay back and follow the wet areas. If it does detonate something, it can push it aside, pick it up with the arms and move it or even do a quicky repair to the road to let the other vehilces pass. Give it a UAV for extended sensor information gathering.
Article? What Article?
In the old days, we would level the city, and the inhabitants that survived were more than willing to stop fighting and get on with the reubilding.
In the 1940's, those people that survived managed to turn into an economic power that eventually caused damage to the U.S economy simply becaues they worked harder.
I say we go back to the old days. In 15 years, I would LOVE to buy an Iraqi car. And other products made out of oil. Some people seem to forget that plastic is made out of oil. Thins like food wrapping, or foot ball helmets.
Anything in order to put some more money into their economy and hopefully help them prosper.
I've got a better idea than robotic vehicles. What about not being at war all the time?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
What do they need them for besides triggering IED's?
Now if only they could make a robot that protects Iraqi civilians from U.S marines who can't aim.
Anything that helps to prevent human losses is welcome. That said, some methods are more efficient than others. Sending sophisticated robots to defuse explosive traps aimed at American soldiers looks way less efficient than keeping those soldiers at home, preventing both the loss of their lives and that of uncounted civilians, the destruction of a country and the wave of terrorism that is spawned by such violence. This kind of "solution" makes me think of a billion-dollar electronic, intelligent cork put into the hole (opened at a price of a billion dollar) into a billion dollar dam that shouldn't have been built in the first place. Weird analogy, I know, but American politics is no less weird.
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
Does anyone tend to think before posting ideas? An EMP device will set the bomb off not stop it from igniting. The whole concept of an EMP device is to disable the electronics by inducing a massive current. Massive currents will still set the bomb off. Also, what if the stupid thing is inside a faraday cage (read car). The Emp device is useless. Not to mention not all bombs use fancy electronics which can be fried. I doubt the level of technology some of these terrorists use is applicable to being able to be blown up by an EMP device.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Like: shooting underaged terrorists who throw baseballs at cars
or: arresting people with the wrong skin colour or beard
or: automatically spraying teargas if too many people gather together
And isn't it great: these things don't need health insurance or a medical plan, and they don't feel bad about violating the rights of poor Florida residents...
I for one resent our potential police droids
sig?
Two things:
a) Rage. Take part in an anger management course.
b) Homophobia. Find the cause of it.
Maybe these two are connected, as in "repressed homosexuality" or "uncontrolled anger that unloads on any target", who knows. I suspect the first one, BTW. As an example, I suggest reading the web comic Trucker Fags in Denial as they seem to be in a similar situation like you.
Thanks
Are they being set up with like wire trips, weight sensors, or just plain a man in the ditch with his finger on the button? Given the suicide bombers' mentality, I could see the latter being the most reliable choice. In that case, sending an unmanned vehicle ahead of the rest would be very unlikely to discover or trigger the explosion early.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The problem is that while this type of technology works very well, it is the brains behind this whole war that are faulty. Technology cannot fix that.
An EMP disables electronics by inducing a current overload into a circuit which burns it out like a fuse is burnt out by a current overload. This is just as likely to set off the bomb by inducing a current into the detonator as disabling it.
Is there another way to make humanity progress wihtout wan beneath? I mean, the best and fastest progress take place durig war. Is where humanity use theire best. So as to destroy. This robots are there to detect bombs, or to plant them? It's the same. Who came first, the egg or the chicken? Stop bothering them, and they'll stop bothering you... Maybe...
The religion for unstable ultraconservative fanatics with severe cultural inferiority complexes who find offenses against their religion of childish rage under every rock and lurking behind every tree.
Muslim solutions for offenses both perceived and real:
Offense: A Muslim's wife cheats on him
Solution: Surgically remove her clitoris, often under filthy conditions, before she reaches womanhood so she will never be tempted to think of sex as something she should be enjoying.
Offense: Theo Van Gogh creates a documentary about the shoddy plight of women in Islam.
Solution: Shoot him in cold blood in public, and use a knife to affix an Islamic tract to his chest.
Offense: Danish cartoonists publish cartoons depicting the douchebag Mohammed, some of them critical of real problems with Islam, as an experiment in self-censorship.
Solution: Take to the streets, burning cars and beating everyone in sight. Threaten the cartoonists with death.
Offense: Two idiotic Muslim teens fry themselves when they run into an electrical substation while fleeing French police.
Solution: Burn Paris to the ground.
Here are papers and more videos from the lab's web page: http://www.eng.fsu.edu/ciscor/research_highlights. htm
Lab's web page: http://www.eng.fsu.edu/ciscor/
The robot hardware platforms are a customized ATRV (four wheels) by RWI (now iRobot) and a Pioneer DX (two wheels) by ActivMedia (now MobileRobots Inc.). This hardware would not be used in the field (Since RWI no longer exists and the DX is about 2 feet tall), but the navigation principles they developed might be (along with many others).
Have to agree - it's goddamn awful. The font is too thin, especially when reversed. My eyes ain't what they used to be and diabetes doesn't help, but the new font just looks wrong - as if someone is going to give it a tweak at any moment and put the proper one in.
AT&ROFLMAO
This is funny.. Once again real life is getting dangerously close to Sci-Fi.. :-) If anyone watches Stargate SG-1 they'll know what I am talking about.. But for those who dont here is a link..
http://www.tvacres.com/images/malp.jpp
Just like in Stalingrad!
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
One thing about being here is that it's all about luck. We can only do so much as far as tactics go, and as far as being "aware of our surroundings" and being "careful". A lot depends on luck.
So any little thing is helpful. Thanks.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
a new improvement in our ability to slaughter the infidel darkies is always welcome
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
The issue you pointed out is not what the robot is designed to fix. IEDs are buried by the side of the road or hidden in debris. The robot car can go up and investigate disturbances without slowing down or risking the main force. Otherwise, the insurgents may use a conspicuous decoy to stop a battle force right in the kill zone of well-hidden daisy-chained munitions. Car bombers will still get the traditional, low-tech treatment: verbal and manual warnings, warning shots, then hot steel and lead.
An EM bomb will probably screw the American forces more than the suicide bombers, who will probably switch to mechanical detonators that are manually activated. American comm gear which is crucial in battle to call in backup and fire support may get wasted. In short, he who live in glass houses should not cast stones.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Great. so they build this machine to save the lives of soldiers. Why not stop the war in the first place?
This one is from NYU: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~yann/research/lagr/index.ht ml
If you don't like war find another country to live in you damn liberal!
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."