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The Far-Reaching World of DARPA
A rocky foreign terrain. Platoons of remotely controlled cyborg-insects sniffing out landmines, transmitting their location back to human handlers. --------------------------------- Back in the lab, work is well-advanced on a biomimetic underwater robot that the agency calls the "robolobster." It mimics the action of its organic cousin, scurrying along the ocean floor, looking for mines and buried bombs. Then, there's "BigDog," a "robotic beast of burden" that's being developed to haul over rough terrain at least 40 kilograms of supplies that soldiers have to carry. And not least, the Raptor project, a "marsupial" robot aircraft that will command a squad of roving robots. In the military scenario, Raptor would be airdropped into enemy territory and, like a kangaroo spilling out her young, would release a squad of small robots. They would traverse unknown terrain using night vision lenses and laser radar and the intelligence they pick up communicated back to the Raptor for transmission to the humans at base. Posted by: Captain America 2006-04-02 |
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