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."

Comments

where this is leading

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:where this is leading

[Dr. Eggman]

Exactly! What American is going to complain about going to war in some country they never heard if none of our soldiers are dieing? Hippies, that's who!

The economy gets a war boost, the government gets to throw its weight around and the only real cost is the death of a bunch of people that aren't American; everybody wins!

Ok, sarcasm aside I do like the idea of robotizing (it's a real word, look it up!) the army as much as we can. Many a great peace-time inventions started as or were sped up by military investment. Think of what a systematizing of something as complex as the military could do for advancements in public and private robotics, AI, or IT!

Is it possible to use a targetted EMP burst?

[Rifter13]

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?

Heh? How does that help?

[layer3switch]

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.

The robot i would like to see,

[sumdumass]

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.

The billion dollar cork

[Nuffsaid]

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.