Here’s a pretty inter­est­ing piece of defense tech sent over by DT reader Travis the other day about an inno­v­a­tive mast sys­tem that can be used in unmanned ground vehi­cles that allows the diminu­tive bots to see over high walls.

The so called Situational Awareness Mast uses a patented inter­lock sys­tem that dif­fer­en­ti­ates it from tele­scop­ing masts that take up a lot of room and weight when stowed, thereby lim­it­ing their exten­sion height.

Here’s what Hizook blog said about it…

The Situational Awareness Mast (SAM, also known as a Zipper Mast) from Geosystems Inc. is a tele­scop­ing lin­ear actu­a­tor that has a unique prop­erty — it’s stroke length is an order of mag­ni­tude greater than its nom­i­nal height! For exam­ple, the SAM8 is a 10 lb device with a stroke length (8ft) that is 24 times it’s nom­i­nal height (4 inches)! This can be used to ver­ti­cally trans­late a robot’s sen­sor suite for bet­ter vis­i­bil­ity while still allow­ing for a low pro­file. Read on for infor­ma­tion on the dif­fer­ent Zipper Mast vari­ants, the patent describ­ing the sys­tem, and an exclu­sive video of a Zipper Mast on an iRo­bot Packbot!

Be sure to check out Hizook for more details on how Geosystems accom­plishes the low-​​profile boom. They’ve got pics from the patent and other schemat­ics. As with UAVs, UGVs are begin­ning to come into their own and I know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence they’re a poten­tial life­saver on a bat­tle­field strewn with IEDs, mines and other boo­bie traps.

And here’s a video of the sys­tem that best explains how it works.

Geosystems Situational Awareness Mast (aka Zippermast) from Travis on Vimeo

– Christian

From the head­lines at Military​.com:

If only we could be a fly on the wall when our ene­mies are plot­ting to attack us. Better yet, what if that fly could record voices, trans­mit video and even fire tiny weapons? 

That kind of James Bond-​​style fan­tasy is actu­ally on the draw­ing board. U.S. mil­i­tary engi­neers are try­ing to design fly­ing robots dis­guised as insects that could one day spy on ene­mies and con­duct dan­ger­ous mis­sions with­out risk­ing lives. 

“The way we envi­sion it is, there would be a bunch of these sent out in a swarm,” said Greg Parker, who helps lead the research project at Wright-​​Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. “If we know there’s a pos­si­bil­ity of bad guys in a cer­tain build­ing, how do we find out? We think this would fill that void.“ 

In essence, the research seeks to minia­tur­ize the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan for sur­veil­lance and reconnaissance. 

The next gen­er­a­tion of drones, called Micro Aerial Vehicles, or MAVs, could be as tiny as bum­ble­bees and capa­ble of fly­ing unde­tected into build­ings, where they could pho­to­graph, record, and even attack insur­gents and terrorists. 

By iden­ti­fy­ing and assault­ing adver­saries more pre­cisely, the robots would also help reduce or avoid civil­ian casu­al­ties, the mil­i­tary says. 

Parker and his col­leagues plan to start by devel­op­ing a bird-​​sized robot as soon as 2015, fol­lowed by the insect-​​sized mod­els by 2030.

(more…)

…but close.

From Military​.com head­lines:

Killer robots which can change their shape to squeeze under doors and through cracks in walls to track their prey are mov­ing from the realms of sci­ence fic­tion to the front line in the fight against terrorism. 

The US mil­i­tary has signed a GBP 1.6m deal with a tech­nol­ogy firm to design robots which are intel­li­gent enough to work out how to wig­gle through small spaces to reach their target. 

The action film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, fea­tured a seem­ingly unstop­pable killer robot played by Robert Patrick. The machine was made from liq­uid metal and could change its form to slide under doors and walk through iron bars. 

America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and the Army Research Office has awarded the con­tract to iRo­bot, which has devel­oped other robots for the military. 

They want sci­en­tists to come up with a design for a tiny robot able to move under its own power and change shape so it can get through gaps less than half an inch wide. 

The US admin­is­tra­tion has not said what it wants the robot to do but its spec­i­fi­ca­tion says: “Often the only avail­able points of entry are small open­ings in build­ings, walls, under doors, etc. In these cases, a robot must be soft enough to squeeze or tra­verse through small open­ings, yet large enough to carry an oper­a­tionally mean­ing­ful payload.” 

(more…)

(I’m still par­tial to Troy’s suit, if not for the spot-​​on mar­ket­ing tech­niques [joking])…

(Gouge: CL)

– Christian

Last week we had exoskeletons…this week it’s bionic arms. And I think this is from the guy who invented the Segway.

[Source: All Things Video]

Enjoy!

– Christian

Military​.com has an inter­est­ing story about a “bum bot” that rolls around an Atlanta neighborhood:

Cars pass­ing O’Terrill’s pub screech to a halt at the sight of a 300-​​pound, waist-​​high robot marked “SECURITY” rolling through down­town long after dark.

The reg­u­lars hardly glance out­side. They’ve seen bar owner Rufus Terrill’s inven­tion on patrol before — its bright red lights and even brighter spot light blaz­ing, infrared video cam­era film­ing and water can­non at the ready in the spin­ning tur­ret on top.

“You’re tres­pass­ing. That’s pri­vate prop­erty,” Terrill scolds an older man through the robot’s loud­speaker. The man is sit­ting at the edge of the dri­ve­way to a child care cen­ter down the street. “Go on.”

The man’s hands go up and he shuf­fles into the shad­ows. Almost imme­di­ately, a group of men behind him scat­ters too.

The Bum Bot’s rep­u­ta­tion, it seems, has pre­ceded it.

The elec­tronic vig­i­lante — on the beat since September — has enraged neigh­bor­hood activists, who have threat­ened protests. Street peo­ple say it’s intim­i­dat­ing. And home­less advo­cates ques­tion the inten­tions of its inven­tor, who uses the Bum Bot as a mar­ket­ing tool and a polit­i­cal prop.

Read the rest of the arti­cle here.

– Ward

As a sup­ple­ment to the UAV plan out­lined in the post below, Gizmodo has a post about this wild con­cept the Army has laid at the feet of select engi­neer­ing schools, includ­ing the University of Michigan. Here’s an excerpt:

The pro­posal is for the bat to be just six inches in length, weigh only four ounces and use just one watt of power, backed by a lithium-​​ion bat­tery, which could be charged by not just solar energy, but wind energy and ran­dom vibra­tions as well. The bat’s intended goal would be to run sur­veil­lance ops and relay data in real­time, includ­ing sights and sounds from mini­cams and mini-​​microphones, but also radi­a­tion and poi­son gas readings. 

(more…)

Here’s a quick video fix to start your Tuesday:

As the man says, “Why send a sol­dier when you can send a robot?”

– Ward

Thanks to cam­eras, speak­ers and micro­phones there are robotic vehi­cles that can see, talk and hear what’s hap­pen­ing at some poten­tially dan­ger­ous perime­ter or check­point and relay the info in real time to a secu­rity center.

And, if nec­es­sary, the robotic gate guards can open or return fire on human command.

And while the machines still lack the “nose” to sniff out trou­ble, that soon could change thanks to a new, com­put­er­ized scent detec­tor man­u­fac­tured by Israeli Defense Industries.

The U.S. Army has been talk­ing to Scent Detection Technologies of Israel, which brought the Mini-​​Nose sys­tem to the United States about six months ago, about adapt­ing it to a robotic vehi­cle, said Tom Neugebauer, SDT’s U.S. Operational Integration Manager in Dallas.

“The Army con­tacted us a few months ago,” he said today in Washington, D.C., where he was pre­sent­ing the sys­tem at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meet­ing and expo­si­tion. “They want to put it in places where they would need to screen people.”

Neugebauer said the com­pany devel­oped the sys­tem at the request of the Israeli and U.S. gov­ern­ments. Israel was espe­cially eager for a new-​​generation explo­sives detec­tor because of the his­tory of sui­cide bomb­ings in the coun­try, he said.

Unlike the sys­tems used through­out U.S. air­ports, which rely on a chem­i­cal analy­sis of swabs rubbed across cloth­ing and other items, the Mini-​​Nose uses a vac­uum gun to “sniff” an object. The gun’s nose is then placed into a small sen­sor cham­ber about the size of a desk phone where the vac­u­umed par­ti­cles are analyzed.

The results are imme­di­ately view­able on a touch screen that is based on a Windows mobile oper­at­ing sys­tem. The beauty of that is that if any new chem­i­cals or com­bi­na­tions begin emerg­ing on the ter­ror­ist explo­sive scene, the infor­ma­tion can, once known, be down­loaded to the cham­ber to be rec­og­nized when sniffed out.

Currently, at least one U.S. hos­pi­tal and some cor­po­ra­tions have adopted the Mini-​​Nose, but it’s not yet being used at American air­ports. Negebauer said the com­pany is still going through the process to be cer­ti­fied by the Transportation Safety Administration.

– Bryant Jordan

This month’s National Defense mag­a­zine reports that the Army has qui­etly intro­duced a rifle-​​toting robot into the Iraq war. So far three of the Special Weapons Observation Remote Reconnaissance Direct Action System (SWORDS) have been deployed. (Wouldn’t that acronym actu­ally be SWORRDAS? And how long did some major at the sys­tems com­mand spend work­ing that one up?)

The SWORDS is armed with a M249 rifle and is remotely con­trolled by a sol­dier through a ter­mi­nal. There are no reports of the SWORDS being used in actual com­bat yet, however.

The 80 robots approved under an urgent materiel release are being held up “due to lim­ited fund­ing in fis­cal years 2006–2007,” said Lt. Col. William Wiggins, a spokesman for the office of the assis­tant sec­re­tary of the Army for acqui­si­tion, logis­tics and technology.

While SWORDS is cur­rently not a pro­gram of record, the Army has ini­ti­ated a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment between ARDEC and Robotic System-​​Joint Project Office to expe­dite estab­lish­ing a funded pro­gram to meet Army needs,” Wiggins said in a writ­ten statement.

(Gouge: CM)

– Ward