castledoom.com

[CooJoe]

I read this article (http://science.howstuffworks.com/exoskeleton.htm) and found it fairly interesting.

It looks like the possible future of combat, and manual labor, but I could be wrong.

http://www.springwalker.com is the website of a prototypish version.



[edit] I changed the thread title. Joe.

[Brf]

The springwalker guy is a little weak on math...

Quote: it has taken 200 years of human engineering to catch up

Archimedes, the Father of "extending the power of a man", lived like 2300 years ago... not 200.

[CooJoe]

I just noticed that there was a video.

I was thinking that it would atleast go kinda fast, but he's struggling to keep up with the guy walking next to him.

I can't see that being used in combat.

[JuntaJoe]

If the military has any sense at all, they will finally begin a serious partnership with the Carnegie-Mellon Institute in Pittsburg.

These guys have been embarrassing MIT, CalTech, and NASA in the field of robotics for several decades.

When everything else looked weak, NASA finally woke up and had them make the Mars Rovers. One of the two had a software glitch early on that was finally corrected, but both robots ultimately lasted more than twice the expected service life.

This was the same place that invented Stereo-Lithography. Don't know what that is? Imangine a copier that makes a plastic copy of any 3 demensional object. The machine scans the object and makes an exact exterior duplicate out of sintered plastic. Or you can feed the machine the 3 demensional CAD plotting of an object and it will crank one out. Manufacturing companies can now take a CAD plotting and whip up a prototype in a few minutes instead of giving the design to a fabricating shop and waiting days or weeks. At some point, expect this technology to finally arrive on the assembly line floor instead of just the engineering shop.

CMI in the 1980's also pioneered laser cutting of hard objects on an assembly line. No need for monster hydraulic forge presses or endless replacement of diamond cutting bits anymore. Chances are that the cheap stainless chopping knife in your kitchen was made this way. If the item has sheet or thin bar metal in it today then it was likely made using that CMI technology.

I've been harping on this school for years and told every last smart kid that CMI should get an application from them. I can think of only several schools in the world where on graduation that a company in your field will hire you before they even meet you. CMI is one. Colorado Schools of Mines is another. Harvard Law and Harvard Medical are on that list. MIT, Oxford, and CalTech round out that short list. A degree from anyhere else requires an interview to get a job.

[JuntaJoe]

In the same vein.........

Army Prepares 'Robo-Soldier' for Iraq
January 22, 2005 6:57 PM EST
ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. - The rain is turning to snow on a blustery January morning, and all the men gathered in a parking lot here surely would prefer to be inside. But the weather couldn't matter less to the robotic sharpshooter they are here to watch as it splashes through puddles, the barrel of its machine gun pointing the way like Pinocchio's nose. The Army is preparing to send 18 of these remote-controlled robotic warriors to fight in Iraq beginning in March or April.

Made by a small Massachusetts company, the SWORDS, short for Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems, will be the first armed robotic vehicles to see combat, years ahead of the larger Future Combat System vehicles currently under development by big defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Corp.

It's easy to humanize the SWORDS (a tendency robotics researchers say is only human) as it moves out of the flashy lobby of an office building and into the cold with nary a shiver.

Military officials like to compare the roughly three-foot-high robots favorably to human soldiers: They don't need to be trained, fed or clothed. They can be boxed up and warehoused between wars. They never complain. And there are no letters to write home if they meet their demise in battle.

But officials are quick to point out that these are not the autonomous killer robots of science fiction. A SWORDS robot shoots only when its human operator presses a button after identifying a target on video shot by the robot's cameras.

"The only difference is that his weapon is not at his shoulder, it's up to half a mile a way," said Bob Quinn, general manager of Talon robots for Foster-Miller Inc., the Waltham, Mass., company that makes the SWORDS. As one Marine fresh out of boot camp told Quinn upon seeing the robot: "This is my invisibility cloak."

Quinn said it was a "bootstrap development process" to convert a Talon robot, which has been in military service since 2000, from its main mission - defusing roadside bombs in Iraq- into the gunslinging SWORDS.

It was a joint development process between the Army and Foster-Miller, a robotics firm bought in November by QinetiQ Group PLC, which is a partnership between the British Ministry of Defence and the Washington holding company The Carlyle Group.

Army officials and employees of the robotics firm heard from soldiers "who said 'My brothers are being killed out here. We love the EOD (explosive ordnance disposal), but let's put some weapons on it,'" said Quinn.

Working with soldiers and engineers at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, it took just six months and only about $2 million in development money to outfit a Talon with weapons, according to Quinn and Anthony Sebasto, a technology manager at Picatinny.

The Talon had already proven itself to be pretty rugged. One was blown off the roof of a Humvee and into a nearby river by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Soldiers simply opened its shrapnel-pocked control unit and drove the robot out of the river, according to Quinn.

The $200,000, armed version will carry standard-issue Squad Automatic Weapons, either the M249, which fires 5.56-millimeter rounds at a rate of 750 per minute, or the M240, which can fire about 700 to 1,000 7.62-millimeter rounds per minute. The SWORDS can fire about 300 rounds using the M240 and about 350 rounds using the M249 before needing to reload.

All its optics equipment - the four cameras, night vision and zoom lenses - were already in the Army's inventory.

"It's important to stress that not everything has to be super high tech," said Sebasto. "You can integrate existing componentry and create a revolutionary capability."

The SWORDS in the parking lot at the headquarters of the cable news station CNBC had just finished showing off for the cameras, climbing stairs, scooting between cubicles, even broadcasting some of its video on the air.

Its developers say its tracks, like those on a tank, can overcome rock piles and barbed wire, though it needs a ride to travel faster than 4 mph.

Running on lithium ion batteries, it can operate for 1 to 4 hours at a time, depending on the mission. Operators work the robot using a 30-pound control unit which has two joysticks, a handful of buttons and a video screen. Quinn says that may eventually be replaced by a "Gameboy" type of controller hooked up to virtual reality goggles.

The Army has been testing it over the past year at Picatinny and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland to ensure it won't malfunction and can stand up to radio jammers and other countermeasures. (Sebasto wouldn't comment on what happens if the robot and its controller fall into enemy hands.)

Its developers say the SWORDS not only allows its operators to fire at enemies without exposing themselves to return fire, but also can make them more accurate.

A typical soldier who could hit a target the size of a basketball from 300 meters away could hit a target the size of a nickel with the SWORDS, according Quinn.

The better accuracy stems largely from the fact that its gun is mounted on a stable platform and fired electronically, rather than by a soldier's hands, according to Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos of the EOD Technology Directorate at Picatinny. Gone are such issues as trigger recoil, anticipation problems, and pausing the breathing cycle while aiming a weapon.

"It eliminates the majority of shooting errors you would have," said Tordillos.

Chances are good the SWORDS will get even more deadly in the future. It has been tested with the larger .50 caliber machine guns as well as rocket and grenade launchers - even an experimental weapon made by the Australian company Metal Storm LLC that packs multiple rocket rounds into a single barrel, allowing for much more rapid firing.

"We've fired 70 shots at Picatinny and we were 70 for 70 hitting the bull's-eye," said Sebasto, boasting of the arsenal's success with a Vietnam-era rocket launcher mounted on a SWORDS.

There are bound to be many eyes watching SWORDS as it heads to battle. Its tracks will one day be followed by the larger vehicles of the Future Combat System, such as six-wheel-drive MULE under development by Lockheed Martin, a 2.5-ton vehicle with motors in each wheel hub to make it more likely to survive.

The Pentagon's research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also recently awarded contracts to aid research of robots that one day could be dropped into combat from airplanes and others meant to scale walls using electrostatic energy - also known as "static cling."

Many of the vehicles being developed for the FCS will have some autonomy, meaning they'll navigate rough terrain, avoid obstacles and make decisions about certain tasks on their own.

They may be able to offer cues to their operators when potential foes are near, but it's doubtful any of them will ever be allowed to make the decision to pull the trigger, according to Jim Lowrie, president of Perceptek Inc., a Littleton, Colo., firm that is developing robotics systems for the military.

"For the foreseeable future, there always will be a person in the loop who makes the decision on friend or foe. That's a hard problem to determine autonomously," said Lowrie.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press.

[JuntaJoe]

More robotic coolness. 8)

Note how well Carnegie Mellon did too.


Four robotic vehicles finish $2 million Mojave Desert race

October 08, 2005 11:44 PM EDT
PRIMM, Nevada - Four robotic vehicles finished a Pentagon-sponsored race across the Mojave desert and achieved a technological milestone by conquering steep drop-offs, obstacles and tunnels over a rugged 132-mile (212-kilometer) course without a single human command.

The vehicles, guided by sophisticated software, gave scientists hope that robots could one day wage battles without endangering soldiers.

"The impossible has been achieved," cried Stanford University's Sebastian Thrun, after the university's customized Volkswagen crossed first on Saturday. Students cheered, hoisting Thrun atop their shoulders.

Also finishing was a converted red Hummer named H1ghlander and a Humvee called Sandstorm from Carnegie Mellon University. The Stanford robot dubbed Stanley overtook the top-seeded H1ghlander at the 102-mile (164-kilometer) mark.

"I'm on top of the world," said Carnegie Mellon robotics professor William "Red" Whittaker, who said a mechanical glitch allowed Stanley to pass H1ghlander.

The sentimental favorite, a Ford Escape Hybrid by students in Metarie, Louisiana, was the fourth vehicle to finish Saturday. The team lost about a week of practice and some lost their homes when Hurricane Katrina blew into the Gulf Coast.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, plans to award $2 million to the fastest vehicle to cover the race in less than 10 hours. The taxpayer-funded race was intended to spur development of robots that could be used on the battlefield without remote controls.

The race announcer did not immediately declare a winner because 22 of the 23 robots left the starting line at staggered times at dawn, racing against the clock rather than each other. Stanley finished in less than 7 1/2 hours.

Race officials planned to resume the race Sunday so the sole remaining vehicle, a mammoth six-wheel truck, could compete in daylight.

The so-called Grand Challenge race is part of the Pentagon's effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015.

Last year's much-hyped inaugural robot race ended without a winner when all the self-navigating vehicles broke down shortly after leaving the starting gate. Carnegie Mellon's Sandstorm chugged the farthest at 7.5 miles (12 kilometers).

Of the 23 robots that competed Saturday, 18 vehicles failed to navigate the entire 132-mile (212-kilometer) course, but most still managed to beat Sandstorm's mileage last year.

The unmanned vehicles must use their computer brains and sensing devices to follow a programmed route and avoid hitting obstacles that may doom their chances.

Vehicles have to drive on rough, winding desert roads and dry lake beds filled with overhanging brush and man-made obstacles. The machines also must traverse a narrow 1.3-mile (2-kilometer) mountain pass with a steep drop-off and go through three tunnels designed to knock out their GPS signals.

This year's field was more competitive. Even before Saturday's race, many teams tested their vehicles in parts of the Southwest desert under race-like conditions including some that practiced on last year's course from Barstow, California, to Primm.

The vehicles were equipped with the latest sensors, lasers, cameras and radar that feed information to several onboard computers. The sophisticated electronics helped vehicles make intelligent decisions such as distinguishing a dangerous boulder from a tumbleweed and calculating whether a chasm is too deep to cross.

Cornell University's military light strike vehicle traveled about nine miles when it failed to cross a bridge. Team members were trying to figure out what went wrong.

"We're at a loss," said Ephrahim Garcia, a Cornell mechanical engineer. "It's a disappointment."

The military currently has a small fleet of autonomous ground vehicles stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the machines are remotely controlled by a soldier who usually rides in the same convoy. The Pentagon wants to eliminate the human factor and use self-thinking robotic vehicles to ferry supplies in war zones.

---

On the Net:

http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge
http://www.grandchallenge.org

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[skeeber]

ugh, the Mojave Desert.... have memories of that infernal place. :evil:

I don't talk much about my military experience, but I was with the 101st (Screaming Eagles, puking buzzards etc etc) and have a Ranger tab. I saw combat a few times, not limited to Panama and the first Gulf war.

Anything that saves lives is good. Yea, use robots! Save lives!

[sethwbcl91]

Yes, but it would be pretty expensive to buy all of those robots.... :?

[CooJoe]

The one thing that troubles me is how can these things distinguish friend from foe?

[s_stabeler]

the SWORDS? they don't. the human operator uses the camera and presses a button to use the weapon. although with the incidents of friendly fire in the iraq war at the beginning, i don't know if it would make much difference..................

[JuntaJoe]

CooJoe wrote: The one thing that troubles me is how can these things distinguish friend from foe?

It's called IFF. Identification Friend or Foe. The technology has been on planes and ships since the 60's. I'm sure it has evolved quite a few generations in the meantime. Part of that evolution will be size constraints.

I'm sure putting it on land vehicles is easy and probably exists in armored units already.

Getting it on people may be harder, but I remember that a satellite telephone was the size of a suitcase when I was a Marine 25 years ago and look at them now. Shrinking the IFF package would not take long if the government make a real stab at it.

[s_stabeler]

wasn't it IFF trouble that caused the friendly fire though? i mean, if the whole army was rtelying on these things to avoid being shot in the back by the SWORDS, then it might cause more than a small problem.

[JuntaJoe]

Battle Bot: Machine Designed to Extract Wounded Troops

The Vecna BEAR robot (Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot) is being developed as an adjunct to other rescue technologies for extracting combat casualties.

The BEAR bot has three main elements; hydraulic upper body, mobile platform and dynamic balancing behavior. The robot should be able to fully stand up by straightening the tracked units.

According to Gary Gilbert, Ph.D., Program Manager, U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC—part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command): "Robotic extraction of combat casualties from under fire or from hostile or contaminated environments is the 'holy grail' of the TATRC mobile robotics program. The BEAR prototype as envisioned in the VECNA proposal and current research contract is the most promising approach I have seen to safely extracting casualties from urban and wooded terrain or from other areas with numerous obstacles that would impede entrance by other vehicular or aerial robots. The versatility and flexibility of the BEAR that would enable it to do multiple combat support tasks—such as loading vehicles or carrying heavy equipment—make it more attractive than other robots that can only support a limited set of specialized tasks."

Copyright © 2006 SPACE.com.

[JuntaJoe]

Incredible New Military Robot

Meet BigDog, a mechanical mutt that does more than snare Frisbees and irrigate fire hydrants. It totes hundreds of pounds of gear so soldiers won't have to, and it will never spook under fire.

Developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the U.S. military, the BigDog prototype is arguably the world's most ambitious legged robot. Its stability and awareness of its own orientation make it the first robot that can handle the unknown challenges of the battlefield. The Great Dane–size 'bot can trot more than three miles an hour, climb inclines of up to 45 degrees, and carry up to 120 pounds—even in rough terrain impenetrable to wheeled or tracked vehicles. But this one is just a puppy; Boston Dynamics expects the next iteration, ready this summer, to be at least twice as fast and carry more than twice as much.

BigDog's body is a steel frame that houses a one-cylinder gasoline engine driving a hydraulic system, a computer, and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that uses a fiber-optic laser gyroscope and a suite of accelerometers to track its movement and position. These devices function together with the legs to create BigDog's precision gait.

Each of the robot's aluminum legs has three joints that the computer can reposition 500 times a second using hydraulic actuators. The joints are fitted with sensors that measure force and position, and the computer cross-references this data with information from the IMU to determine where the legs have to be to keep the 'bot upright and moving in the right direction. By regulating the flow of hydraulic fluid to each joint, the computer precisely places each paw.

And the robo-rover has eyes: It sports a stereo camera and laser scanner mounted where the head would go, if it had a head. Although these don't currently influence navigation, the next BigDog will use them to read the terrain ahead and spot obstacles.

For now, the robot is remote-controlled, but future versions will come unleashed, able to make intelligent decisions about their course without guidance from humans. The more powerful, autonomous BigDog will be ready for battle within the next eight years.

Copyright 2006 Popular Science

[JuntaJoe]

Tough All-Terrain Military Robot Unveiled

Researchers unveiled today a unique unmanned military vehicle prototype that combines mobility, payload-carrying capacity, and ruggedness to aid troops in combat.

The "Crusher" is a 6.5-ton vehicle made of high-strength aluminum tubes and titanium nodes protected by a steel skid plate that can absorb shocks from impacts with rocks and other objects.

The vehicle navigates on its own through tough terrain and overcomes obstacles such as ditches and boulders. It can also carry more than 8,000 pounds in payload and armor. [Video]

With electric motors set in the vehicles' six wheels and powered by a hybrid system that uses a turbo diesel generator, the Crusher can travel almost 26 mph.

"We're developing Crusher to provide technology insights to the broader Army community to show people what can be done and pave the way for the future," said John Bares, director of the National Robotics Engineering Center and the principal investigator for the project. "Although it's not being designed for production, Crusher could be matured further to withstand the rigors of military fielding."

Automated forces like Crusher might initially be used in support roles and later for tactical functions, researchers predict.

"In five to 10 years, we should see robots working alongside our troops to protect them and help with tasks in the field," Bares said.

The technologies used in the development of the Crusher can also have potential use in fields such as construction, faming, and mining.

Copyright 2006 Popular Science

[CooJoe]

for some reason I'm thinking a robotic suicide bomb would be really intimidating.

[s_stabeler]

why bother with a bomb? just run the robot through the enemy ranks, and watch them get crushed. that crusher doesn't look like something i'd want to be up against in combat ( maybe if I was in an armoured vehicle though)