TOUGHEST. DRONE. EVER.

Maybe there’s been a less intim­i­dat­ing guard drone devel­oped by the U.S. mil­i­tary. But I haven’t seen it, yet.
The ROBART III is the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center’s pro­to­type for a mechan­i­cal rent-​​a-​​cop replace­ment — designed to detect intrud­ers, and pop ‘em with a “pneu­mat­i­cally pow­ered six-​​barrel Gatling-​​style weapon that fires sim­u­lated tran­quil­izer darts or rub­ber bul­lets.“
In devel­op­ment since 1992, ROBART III uses “head-​​mounted sen­sors, includ[ing] two Polaroid sonar trans­duc­ers, a Banner near-​​infrared prox­im­ity sen­sor, an AM Sensors microwave motion detec­tor, and a video sur­veil­lance cam­era” to spot infil­tra­tors. But what hap­pens when the bot finds its foes — well, I’m guess­ing ROBART’s cre­ators haven’t thought that far ahead. Faced with a con­trap­tion that looks like a cross between Johnny Five, 2XL, and ROM Spaceknight, only the most timid of tres­passers would be scared off by the machine, you’d fig­ure.
Maybe that’ll change, when ROBART’s new helpers come on line. In a new research thrust, drone-​​builders at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center are look­ing to put together “a group of slave robots [that] would fol­low ROBART III into a build­ing and be deployed at strate­gic loca­tions to serve as com­mu­ni­ca­tion relays, rear­guard look­outs, expend­able point men… pre­vent­ing an intruder from play­ing ‘hide-​​and-​​seek’ with ROBART III.“
I feel safer already.

March 14th, 2005 | Drones | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.