Mr. Future

The Register reports,

“The march of the killer droids continues, with news that a US robot helicopter gunship has passed a significant milestone - engine testing.”

With engine testing cleared, Northrop “We put the Sky in Skynet” Gruman can now fast track the militarized robot helicopter known as the Fire Scout for production. The Navy expects to have 200 of these in operation by 2008, and the Army is exploring variants of these for work in Iraq.

The robot gunship can be outfitted with a variety of “death to the humans” weaponry including 70mm Hydra rocket pods and Hellfire laser-guided missiles.

“It truly is a flying robot, not a remote-controlled aircraft; Fire Scouts have made autonomous trial landings aboard US warships underway at sea, without any pilot guidance.” ( as shown in this autonomous landing demo clip.)

Link (via Engadget)

TokyoMango.com has a quick little writeup on Sega Toys’ new HakoRobo. HakoRobo is a tiny cube shaped robot that comes paired with “family-figure” type cubes, that it can sense and react to. So, for instance, little “Boy” HakoRobo always runs toward the “Mama” cube, and runs away from the angry looking “Papa” cube. With additional Hakorobos, you can recreate the entire maze of modern family relationships. There’s a high-bandwidth teaser movie on the Hakorobo main site showing the little bots in action. Anyone know of a US distributor for these great toys?

Link to the mini English writeup

From New Scientist Tech:

“A robotic submarine yesterday mapped the bottom of the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole for the first time last Thursday. Similar autonomous craft could some day be used to explore the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa, researchers hope.”

The two meter 1.2 ton robotic sub known as DEPTHX (Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer) charted the unexplored bottom of El Zacatón Cenote in eastern Mexico while collecting samples from the walls at depths down to 270 meters.

DEPTHX is one of the few autonomous submarines that use the advanced navigation method known as SLAM: Simultaneous Location and Mapping. This allows DEPTHX to create maps as it goes, which it then uses to predict, navigate, and explore.

Link

(via Slashdot.org)

BBC News Reports:

The UK’s first police remote control helicopter has taken off.

These 3 ft wide, 2lb four-rotor flying craft, originally used by the military, are due to be operational by June for a three month trial by Merseyside police.

“The machines, which are flown by remote control or using pre-programmed GPS navigation systems, are silent and can be fitted with night-vision cameras. The images they record are sent back to a police support vehicle or control room.”

“Our drone will be used primarily to support our anti-social behaviour taskforce AXIS, in gathering all important evidence to put offenders before the courts.”

Here’s a clip of a prototype demonstration filmed in Berlin: