We’ve written about the X-47B UCAS a few times here on BotJunkie, but for some reason, we haven’t been able to manage the same level of access as the Discovery channel. Sigh. At least we can enjoy the videos that they produce:

Part 2, after the jump. (Read more…)

The Georgian Defense Ministry (this Georgia, not that one) says that a Russian MiG-29 Fulcrum has shot down one of their unarmed Hermes 450 reconnaissance drones. Russia is dismissing the report as “nonsense,” but Georgia has video footage taken by the drone up until the very end:

Okay, I know this has international incident written all over it, but it’s a pretty sweet video. The drone was shot down in Abkhazia, which is a separatist territory backed by the Russians. It’s certainly not anything like shooting down a manned aircraft, but it’ll be interesting to see how much this exchange escalates.

After the jump, a video from 2002 showing a US Predator drone engaging an Iraqi MiG-25. (Read more…)

An RP-7 robot, normally used to allow physicians to interact remotely with patients, allowed Army Staff Sgt. Erik Lloyd (stationed in Iraq) to interact (sort of) with his family and 7 day old son at a hospital in Texas. Lloyd had full control of the robot’s movements and cameras, and was able to communicate through a live video uplink with his family and meet his son (albeit virtually) for the very first time.

“It was an awesome experience. I am far from the first father in this conflict who has missed the birth of their child. … However, with this technology I was in a small way allowed to feel more like I was part of a family than I had been … since he was born.”

It’s really promising to see the military using robots in ways like this, since it implies that robots are being allowed out of their box a little bit, and hopefully they’ll start to become more useful to soldiers on an everyday, not necessarily combat basis.

Telepresence is in no way limited to the military or commercial sectors. It’s exactly the sort of niche that the iRobot ConnectR is designed to fill, albeit in a slightly less complicated manner. The Rovio should do more or less the same thing. So far, neither of these are available commercially, I imagine because telepresence is not something that people think they need yet, even in a niche market. Will people need it, and will people be comfortable with the idea? I’m not sure what to think, but we should find out in the second half of this year.

[ DefenseLink ] VIA [ AUVSI ]

Last week Popular Science reported that Foster Miller TALON SWARDS armed robots were pulled out of Iraq because of a malfunction where “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move,” which is a potentially very dangerous thing to have happen. I took the position that even if there were some serious bugs to be worked out, it was still worth keeping the SWORDS robots in active development because of their future potential to replace humans in dangerous areas. Now it appears that the problems that the robots were having were seriously overstated… Here is what actually happened, according to Danger Room, who spoke directly to Foster Miller:

“The whole thing is an urban legend,” says Foster Miller spokesperson Cynthia Black, of the reports about SWORDS moving its gun without a command. There were three cases of uncommanded movements, but all three were prior to the 2006 safety certification, she says. “One case involved a loose wire. So, now there is now redundant wiring on every circuit. One involved a solder, a connection that broke. everything now is double-soldered.” The third case was a test were the robot was put on a 45 degree hill and left to run for two and a half hours. “When the motor started to overheat, the robot shut the motor off, that caused the robot to slide back down the incline,” she says. “Those are the three uncommanded movements.”

Just to reemphasize, all three of those movements were prior to the 2006 safety certification. And it’s also worth reemphasizing that these systems are basically complicated remote controlled robots, and they certainly cannot fire their weapons without a human pushing a button. So, what is holding back the deployment of the SWORDS system? National Defense has the answer, after the jump. (Read more…)

Last August, we wrote about the deployment of three TALON SWORDS armed robots into active service in Iraq. The bots, designed by Foster-Miller, can be armed with a variety of weaponry, and are remote controlled, not autonomous. Back in the August article, I commented that the SWORDS “also feature a kill switch, because sometimes the bots kinda go crazy.” I wasn’t just making a joke; Danger Room had reported that “the machines had a tendency to spin out of control from time to time.” Two months later in October of 2007, Foster Miller introduced a new version of SWORDS called MAARS, which included a bunch of new safety features designed specifically to prevent friendly fire incidents. It now seems as though these improvements came too late, as the SWORDS robots have been withdrawn, reports Popular Science:

[T]he Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Forces, Kevin Fahey, was asked what happened to SWORDS. After all, no specific reason for the 11th-hour withdrawal ever came from the military or its contractors at Foster-Miller. Fahey’s answer was vague, but he confirmed that the robots never opened fire when they weren’t supposed to. His understanding is that “the gun started moving when it was not intended to move.” In other words, the SWORDS swung around in the wrong direction, and the plug got pulled fast. No humans were hurt, but as Fahey pointed out, “once you’ve done something that’s really bad, it can take 10 or 20 years to try it again.”

It’s understandable that armed robots can be dangerous, even if they’re only semi-autonomous. I agree on principle with Fahey’s position; if a SWORDS robot were to injure or kill someone (for lack of a better phrase) by itself, it may very well take years (although maybe not 10 or 20) before armed robots that work in concert with humans are tried again. However, people make mistakes too. Equipment malfunctions. No matter how concerned you are with safety, wars are going to remain dangerous. But robots are replaceable, and the longer it takes to get them into service, the worse it’s going to be for humans on the battlefield.

[ Foster-Miller ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

Robotic insects have got to be the ultimate fantasy of intelligence services around the world. Although people have certainly been working on them, so far they’ve been unable to duplicate the spectacular motor and control systems that insects are born with. One solution is to hijack the insects themselves, using implants to control their nervous systems and steer them around. Although (as you can see from the video above) the basic control systems are understood, there’s still a long way to go in terms of power use, control miniaturization, guidance… And of course the point of the whole exercise, which is getting some data back. Otherwise, spying on people just isn’t as much fun.

[ DARPA Hybrid Insect Program ] VIA [ New Scientist ]

Boston Dynamics has quite a reputation for innovative of methods bot locomotion (like RHex), but some of their most popular (best funded?) projects are of the four legged sort. We introduced you to LittleDog here on BotJunkie last September, and loyal readers might even remember his brother, BigDog, from when we covered him on OhGizmo two years ago. BigDog has come a long way since his first few tentative steps… The DARPA funded, gear-hauling quadruped is now able to carry a staggering 340 pounds over terrain that would challenge a human carrying nothing. And he survives being kicked in the ribs with way more grace than I do. Check it out:

[ BigDog ] VIA [ Automaton ]

Here’s the scenario:

An aggressive regional power with robust integrated air defenses, ballistic/cruise missiles, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and chemical WMD capabilities has attacked a U.S. ally. Offshore, a Navy Carrier Strike Group prosecutes enemy submarine and surface forces. Nearby countries refuse basing rights to U.S. forces, and the closest secure bases are thousands of miles distant. From the first hours of the conflict, ultra-long endurance Navy UCAV’s hold the entire battlespace perpetually at risk, identifying emergent targets and denying the enemy the sanctuary of strategic depth. Networking with other joint sensors and shooters, Navy UCAV assets detect, track and identify enemy air defenses, surface and submarine forces, missile launchers, C2 nodes, and WMD sites. Joint commanders working with the Navy fleet and carrier strike group assets prioritize targets and assign them to persistently orbiting unmanned aerial systems. The Navy UCAV’s flexible payload enables battle managers to match the right weapon to each target, while its onboard sensors update the targeting picture through weapon release and damage assessment.

The US Navy wants this all to be a reality by 2025. According to DefenseTech.org, the Navy is actively seeking competitive prototypes of an unmanned combat air vehicle to replace F/A-18s on aircraft carriers, which is a fairly major step. There are lots of upsides, though, including lower costs, increased time on station, higher survivability, and lower risk. Northrop Grumman is clearly in the lead when it comes to UCAVs after beating out Boeing’s X-45 program to win a $635 million development contract from the Navy, and it seems like the focus is probably going to remain on Northrop Grumman’s X-47, with other companies contracting out some of the construction. The X-47B is a strike fighter sized high subsonic unmanned carrier based aircraft with a combat radius of 1500 miles, a ferry radius of 3500 miles, and a payload of 4500lbs (weapons or sensors) carried internally. The first flight of a full-sized demonstrator platform is set for November of 2009, with carrier trials to be completed 3 years later. More info, pics, and video, after the jump. (Read more…)

We first wrote about the Microdrone last September… It’s a German-made UAV that can navigate autonomously and provide realtime surveillance video. We mentioned that several civilian organizations (like police departments) had expressed interest in the Microdrone, and it looks like one of them has ponied up for one of the $60,000 aerial bots: the British Transport Police. They’ve been using a Microdrone to help prevent thefts of metal from railways, which is actually kind of a big problem. The cool part, though, is that they’ve mounted some kind of squirt gun on the bot, which fires SmartWater that can be used to track suspected perps. Most squirt guns are fairly short range weapons, and this particular model looks like little more than a tube, so I imagine (and I am totally imaging this right now) that the robot’s controller has perform some sort of high speed close range strafing run on the criminals, who (if they have any sense at all) are probably trying to gtf out of there as fast as they can.

Please, please, somebody take some video of this happening.

Please.

[ BTP Press Release ] VIA [ Telegraph UK ]

iRobot has announced that they’ve received funding from DARPA to design and construct a prototype LANdroid. We wrote about DARPA’s LANdroid solicitation over at OhGizmo last June; the idea is to create an army of small, mobile, autonomous, network routers to keep advancing troop connected in battlefield conditions. LANdroids are designed to be used primarily in urban environments which have all sorts of inconveniently placed buildings that block more conventional wireless access points. These little guys are actually disposable: the idea is that they get dropped by advancing troops, whereupon they wander around until they find the most effective place to act as a network node. The bots work together to cover “shadowed” and indoor areas, and if one of them gets blown up, the rest will move themselves to keep the network operational.

From iRobot’s press release:

iRobot will design and develop the LANdroids robot. This robot will be small enough that a single dismounted warfighter can carry multiple robots, inexpensive to the point of being disposable, robust enough to allow the warfighter to drop and throw them into position, and smart enough to autonomously detect and avoid obstacles while navigating in the urban environment.

The terms of the award include $1 million per year for up to three years for software development; after that, the next stage of the award will be designing the robot itself, followed by an evaluation period. There will be other players besides iRobot in the running, but I imagine that having so much PackBot experience probably gives iRobot a head start.

VIA [ Robot Stock News ]