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Snakelike Robot To Treat Soldiers During Battle
Al writes "Technology Review has an article about a snake-like robotic arm that could soon be used to treat injured soldiers as they lie on the battlefield. Developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the snakebot attaches to a stretcher and is controlled remotely using a joystick, allowing a doctor to assess a soldier's injuries as the bullets fly by. In future, the robotic arm will be fitted with sensors allowing it to measure vital signs and probe for internal bleeding. Here's a brief video of a prototype arm in action. The arm will become part of the US military's high-tech stretcher, called the Life Support for Trauma and Transport system. This is essentially a portable intensive-care unit, with a ventilator, defibrillator, and other physiological monitors, and it's currently being used in areas of Iraq and Afghanistan."
between the chair force in Nevada and now the medics with joysticks, everyone but the Infantry can finally be safe!
THL phish sticks
When I've been shot in a combat zone, the first thing I want to see is a nice, reassuring ROBOT SNAKE to tend my wounds.
...tentacle rape FTW.
etc
Badger-Badger! Now I can't get that song out of my head.
Here's a brief video of a prototype arm in action.
That brief video of a snake-like object checking out a skeleton looked a lot to me like stop-motion animation.
This looked awesome until I watched the video, then it looked pretty shoddy. There've been some much better snake robots.
Cue the Metal Gear Solid 3 jokes
If you actually WTFV (watch the video) you can see that after giving the soldier a thorough checking over, the snake-bot PLUNGES THROUGH HIS STOMACH AND UP UNDER HIS RIB-CAGE! Is THAT the kind of behavior we want from our snake-bots?!
Who is running this thing? Skynet?
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I foresee this technology currently being developed by the military leading in the near future to great advances in the field of teledildonics!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
IANAS, however, this seems to me like a very limited and expensive toy. It's not able to recover wounded by itself, rather it allows them to be monitored even before they can be extracted from the battlefield. Yet extraction is the critical step---it's not going to be able to save anyone who can't get medical help. Furthermore, I doubt it can gather a whole lot of useful information: if someone is shot, it will be reasonably obvious where. It's only purpose seems to be to pinpoint who is alive and who is dead, so that medics can focus their efforts properly. But it seems like this could be done more easily with miniature "dogtags" which wirelessly signal whether their wearer has a pulse or not.
"Pleassssse ssstate the nature of the medical emergency."
I'm a subcontractor biophysicist on a battlefield medicine project.
Looking at the injuries sustained on the battlefield, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/04/america/wounded.php one should conclude they require massive repairs. As my colleague (one of the authors of the book) has stated, the single most important item to have to survive an injury in a battle is a tourniquet.
Most people go out past the wire with a tourniquet pre-applied (but not tightened) on each limb. When I was there, it was a strong suggestion and may now be a requirement.
Now, I'm not on a snake-like project. If it is more complex (and costs a lot more) than a tourniquet, I'd say it is not going to have the promised outcome any greater than a tourniquet.
a robot snake swallow whole an injured soldier, and poop out the same soldier completely healed :D
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
How about not sending troops to where they get shot at?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
...there's only a skeleton left lying there.
So, at first, I was intrigued by this innocent technological advancement in the name of medicine. /. summary, my mind is performing regex:
That was before I watched the video.
Now, re-reading the
s/(\w+?(ator))/vibr$3/g
Snakes on Irak? Nah, that place is scary enough
when the enemy deploys robotic mongooses?
There is tons of money for war-related tech so this researcher has just aimed his thing that way.
Its cool but it really has nothing to do with war.
I thought it read,
"Technology Review has an article about a snake-like robotic arm that could soon be used to treat injured soldiers as they die on the battlefield."
Seemed kinda pointless to me.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
...is the word you're looking for.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
No. Really. That's the only practical use of this, coz i'm sure the dying solder on the battlefield couldn't care less if a doctor hundreds of mines looks through his rib cage.
Arm that robot snake with a chainsaw and a shotgun, and program him to babble like a neurotic "Evil Dead" Bruce Campbell.
Let a bunch of them loose on your enemy, and you won't have to worry about any casualties on your side.
Soldiers are mentally prepared to face other soldiers in combat situations. They are not mentally prepared to face chainsaw and shotgun wielding robot snakes.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
you are boned.
"You will experience some minor pressure as the robotic snake rams itself up into your rib cage."
Cool stuff.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Goa'uld! If their eyes start glowing after "treatment" you know it's bad. Don't forget, the head shot is the only true stopper.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
...with some morphium. Much better.
This will be useful in war.
But, how will it work?
Checking the heartbeat with a sensor mounted on a moving stick controlled by a joystick could be hard.
By reading this you agree to give me (Noxn) 1 dollar.
Well, I can see a proactive enemy doing several things:
-- jamming (or attempting jamming) of the snakes
-- using canisters to launch fake (or real) snakes toward the wounded so that conscious wounded will be terrified as hell and may resort to shooting at the expensive devices and venemous or scary real ones
-- launching fraggers into the field to make pointless the use of snakes.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
By the looks of it, it seems they have a small problem. The system should at least be able to quickly determine that the subject is a SKELETON!! Maybe they should add a camera? :)
As the robotic snake meticulously examines the skeleton in the video, the human controller must be thinking to himself "yeah, he's pretty fucking dead."
None of the conflicts that the US is in are defense wars. A bunch of people got past security in Manchester and Boston and now we're torching up the Middle East.
It's a good policy to use these devices to save soldier's lives now that we're caught in this mess.
An ounce of prevention and disbelief in obvious propaganda would have prevented the pounds, no megatons of cure we've needed subsequently.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"They don't have a robotic Abrams Tank yet!"
Oh yes they do!... Ok its not an Abrams, but its still much bigger than SWORDS. Its called Ripsaw MS1, (it lives up to its name!) and while its only a prototype, imagine being in the way of this scary robot!
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tlcenWPzsUU
(The tension system on the tracks is amazing to watch closely how much it can take).
Of course, the obvious thing is...if you can make a robot arm good enough to let a doctor do an exam, why don't you instead build a robot arm that SHOOTS BACK and reduces the total number of infantry you need???! I mean, what kind of idiots put money into this? For the same cost to develop the robotics and telepresence tech and to get it engineered for this medical purpose, you could build a combat robot that would soak up the bullets!
This snakelike robot is programmed in Python, of course
Please tell me this isn't going to be a robotic Dr. Watson!
Rather than wasting huge sums of money on making war more acceptable to the public (by reducing the rate of casualties), we should be spending huge amounts to END war. The day that war becomes a safe occupation for the aggressor is the day that we'll see more of it, and this project is another small step towards that.I am an American, and it scares me to see my country launch unprovoked wars of aggression. The US spends more on the military than the next 4 biggest-spending countries... COMBINED. Anybody that works to make war easier, works toward making more war. These researchers are guilty of conspiracy to commit murder by helping to enable more efficient killing forces. Human being have to stop killing human beings, end of story!
Snake robot hacked to perform colon exam. I'm just saying...
I know slashdot frowns on really short comments, but what the fuck? I'd rather see the .gov money in this go to any one of a dozen different techology efforts.
A Taste of Armageddon
The article: "Because it's impossible for a person to simultaneously control all the joints on the snake, the team developed software to enable precise control of the robot's movements via a joystick." Well yes, if you're trying to do everything via a joystick/computer screen. But if you can just grab onto the physical local robot and move it the way you want, like a gooseneck lamp, that seems pretty natural, and the operator can focus on doing the job instead of futzing with computer cursors and program options. Since this is an emergency, you want it to be usable by any MD or technician with minimal additional training and practice. The computer simulation would then just be a luxury since it doesn't tell you any more than what you can already see (and feel) on the local robot, and possibly even an unnecesary distraction; you mainly just need to hold the local robot and watch the video camera for feedback.
It could even be bidirectional: if someone moved it on the remote end to help position it, those movements would be replicated on the local end, and the local and remote personnel could easily cooperate. Maybe restrict the maximum movement speed for safety so one end doesn't wop the other (either accidentally or just fooling around for fun).
When I think of soldiers being serviced by snake-like devices, I can't help but picture a bunch of dudes on beanbags with fleshlights.
super-duper systems and sensors and now a high tek stretcher --- whoopee for the military-industrial complex and their lobbyists.
In a related story, insurgents blew-up one of the Army's latest $20M troop transports using explosives scraped from old weapons, formed into a shaped charge in a discarded brake drum, and detonated by a light sensor from a jihad elmo doll.
Its not the years, its the mileage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
It's obviously a constrictor snake.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
so that a doctor at a remote clinic may move the robot to any point on a soldier's body to assess his injuries as he's being carried to a safe location. The robot's serpentine flexibility allows it to maneuver within tight confines, so that, in case a casualty can't be extracted from the battlefield immediately, the robot can perform an initial medical assessment in the field.
You seriously think the jihadists are going to be packing SNAKE GUNS to try and counter this?
At first glance, I read the title as "Snakelike Robot To Eat Soldiers During Battle". Gah!