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"Bear" Robot to Rescue Wounded Troops
Jim Hall writes "The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear head to help carry injured soldiers out of combat. The "friendly appearance" of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease. The 6ft tall Bear can cross bumpy ground without toppling thanks to a combination of gyroscopes and computer controlled motors to maintain balance. It is expected to be ready for testing within five years. 'It is also narrow enough to squeeze through doorways, but can lift 135kg (500 lbs.) with its hydraulic arms in a single smooth movement, to avoid causing pain to wounded soldiers. While the existing prototype slides its arms under its burden like a forklift, future versions will be fitted with manoeuvrable hands to gently scoop up casualties. The Bear is controlled remotely and has cameras and microphones through which an operator sees and hears. It can even tackle stairs while carrying a human-sized dummy.'"
Give the robot a menacing look with red eyes, a gun, 500 pounds of Ammo, and leave the troop home; Also embed an explosive.
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Park rangers report a rash of picnic basket thefts by large robotic creatures with teddy bear heads.
Aye, Boo Boo?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I can see the news headline now.
... what! ... no! get away! ... AAAARRRRRRGGGGH!! (splat) (rend) (growl) ...
So long as it works with the new Hello Kitty Laptop to run it remotely, sounds like a plan.
I for one welcome our
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...it's just so cute! Forget more bullets, we'll just disarm our opponents with cuteness from now on.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
...Bears are evil killing machines. I can't want to see Stephen Colbert's take on this story.
Yeah, because if I'm wounded, in pain, drifting in and out of consciousness, being picked up by a 6-ft robot bear with hydraulic arms will be so soothing. The teddy-bear head is just the thing.
Full Metal Panic Fumoffu time.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I'm glad they settled on the "bear" look then. Now that that hurdle has been overcome, the only other matter, of designing and building a functional, reliable semi-autonomous bipedal robot, should be trivial.
If the thing is so sophisticated that can navigate rough terrain in a hostile arena and carry someone back, why not give it a gun and let it do the fighting? Then there would be no wounded to carry back.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Obviously, NASA did the metric to English units conversion for this.
It's the new exchange rate. The US pound has been greatly devalued in relation to the European kilogram.
Anyway, I see a lot of skepticism about this design, but I think it's great. TFS makes it sound like the robot is designed with a furry brown teddy bear head, but it's more just a friendly robot face. Having been rescued from death (although not the battlefield kind) before, I would say that it's a great idea to have something like that when the people it will be picking up are not thinking clearly.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
What we need now is for some enterprising journalist to break into the lab, find the other one, be hunted down and killed by it. Then we have an episode of the X files in the making.
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I worked as a life guard for almost eight years. Most of the injuries were thankfully mundane but there were a few horrific ones that I was witness to.
You can be as cool or as macho as you want but when you're bleeding out and close to death... all that swagger goes away and you will most likely do anything you can to get away from the pain and your own mortality. This doesn't mean that you'd be sobbing or hysterical but *any* comfort you can find you will cling onto.
It's also been proven, time and again, that a patients survival rate is influenced by their state of mind.
So... a "teddy bear" head may seem stupid or silly but it is actually a very well conceived and valid idea. Beyond the patient's needs, there is the very real likely possibility that a "friendly" looking robot is less likely to be attacked by the enemy.