DARPATech Shows off Robot Doc and Cancer Breathalyzer

mattnyc99 writes "DARPATech, the Pentagon research arm's annual R&D free-for-all, has some pretty groundbreaking stuff on display this year: the first portable, self-contained robotic surgeon (which a Defense Dept. scientist said would be deployed by 2009), plus a breath-testing gadget that can scan for multiple diseases (including breast cancer) and three new autonomous 'bots that reflect the Pentagon's increasing need for autonomous machinery as the IED-filled Iraq war continues."

Comments

More wasted R&D Billions

[malsdavis]

While robot marines and autonomous machines such as the ones displayed will help the army maintain technological strength over the long-term, I can't help but wonder if they are wasting A LOT of our money. If you look at the hundreds of billions which has been spent on Stealth technology over the past couple of decades, it is pretty impossible to claim even a fraction of that amount has transferred into actual military value.

The fact of the matter is that that in most situtations (the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars being good examples) that Stealth technology is all but pointless because there is no need for it (i.e. enemy anti-air infrastructure has already been destroyed). Even the few of occasions it has been used though (e.g. the Bosnian war and exercises) the stealth technology has only worked part of the time. If you remember in the Bosnian war, stealth aircraft were still able to be shot down, and that was using cold-war era Russian equipment not even designed to combat stealth aircraft.

It isn't difficult to envisage in 10 years time the army neglecting their robotics as almost useless, in the same way most of the hundreds of billions spent on stealth technology is being disregarded as almost useless in "the war on terror".

I bet Lockhead Martin and the other defense contractors aren't complaining though, our tax dollars keep their industry a highly paid one!

Teddy Bear Head

[garlicbready]

for the Trauma Pod I was looking at this bit

Getting the patient off the battlefield and into a hospital is another matter. While the Pod is supposed to eventually meet certain size and weight restrictions, there are no plans yet to incorporate specific vehicles

and I couldn't help but think of the other bot they've got for evacuating injured soldiers from the battlefield (the one with a bears head)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/ 07/1631239

why not combine the two?
to wake up and find your being operated on by a robot with a giant bear head

Re:"No complications"??

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have RTFA.

It's fully human-controlled.