Thursday, October 18, 2007

Remember The Roomba® Vacuum?...well now they've packed 150 lbs of Guns and Ammo on it

The Roomba® Vacuum has guns and it's going into battle soon.

Who would have thought?..the friendly little "robot" vacuum cleaner, The Roomba® would be in combat. That's right. The compact autonomous vacuum cleaner that "cleans routinely so you don't have to" has evolved. Whereas the commercial version of the Roomba® is weak and non threatening, the military version,the iRobot Warrior X700, is the polar opposite.

Packing....
..a Metal Storm 4 barrel, 40mm cannon attracted more than a little attention on the show floor. Metal Storm is known for its stacked electronic small arms firing system that allows their weapons to fire LOADS of bullets/grenades in milliseconds. Combine this with iRobot's latest 200+ lbs, 15 mph beast and you get the the grandfather of The Terminator. militarytimes
....
The robot-mounted weapons shoot as far as 800 meters, according to officials at Metal Storm, the Brisbane, Australia-based company that makes the firing system.

According to Metal Storm, to understand how to shoot a million bullets a minute it's "necessary to look in an unlikely place, the ink jet printer. This print head distributes its ink very quickly, precisely, and efficiently from a large number of barrels [video]"
Sure. Except this isn't an ordinary inkjet 'printer'...it's the "new" iRobot Warrior X700....
“It is the largest vehicle that can still go into a building. We’re looking at urban warfare and going into lots of different types of buildings with it,” said Helen Greiner, iRobot chairman and co-founder. “We really think of it as a multimission platform. It can be deploying weapons systems. It can be doing re-supply operations, taking ammo or water to troops who are pinned down, perimeter security and building clearing. ” armytimes
The 250 lb weapons toting robot can move faster than you can run...
"Right now, it can go 10 miles per hour. When we finish the development, it will be able to do a four-minute mile,” said retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joe Dyer, iRobot’s president of the government and industrial division. “You are starting to see the first robot that can really haul your pack and be not only a partner but be a stronger and faster partner.” armytimes
Hell..the vacuum of autonomous death can now 'rove' around on it's own and can 'call home' when necessary...
the Warrior and PackBot are being engineered with advanced software, giving them the ability to perform some battlefield functions autonomously. “The software says, ‘Hey, robot, get back up yourself.’ If you lose [communications], right now you have to go get the robot,” Dyer said. “A capability they are building into PackBot is if you lose comms, go back to where you could talk last and re-establish comms on your own.” armytimes
Great...autonomous robot killer vacuums.. Save US all. The funny thing is, if one takes Moore's law into consideration..the multimillion dollar X700 will be out of commission in 4 months.

Come on U.S. military. The enemy that we are fighting are committing their "ied" crimes with unsophisticated methods. Nothing more than a cell phone and a few lines of code, a little solder here a little there. Taadaa..X700 is now useless. The Pentagon can spend millions upon billions..the robot "electronic weapons" systems will always be fraught with Moore's Law. Every battlefield "tech wonder" will have met his/her nemesis in less than 4 months after deployed into the battlefield. Come on, military.."keep up with the Jones'

I guess that means we'll be seeing X800 soon, too.

the beauty of "planned obsolescence".

Same Players. Different Scandal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

doesn't this violate asimov's laws of robotics?

News Sophisticate said...

asimov never dealt with DARPA. Darpa makes many 'laws' irrelevant